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From Outward Bound to Inward Bound: the Prophetic Voices and Discursive Practices of Spiritual Management Development

  • This article seeks to identify the theoretical foundations and practical features of spiritual management development (SMD) through social movements which have enabled the diffusion of religious practices into secular life and led to the development of a more spiritualized psychology. Although similarities can be seen with outdoor management development, SMD is distinctive because it encourages subjects to search for meaning in their everyday working life through engagement with an inner self. It thus encourages an internalized, implicit form of religiosity where the search for self-understanding and the search for meaning are closely aligned. Through a re-contextualized, critical reading of the idealistic, Utopian visions portrayed by Maslow and Fromm and the spiritual, transpersonal psychologies of Jung and Assagioli, the intellectual foundations from which SMD practice has developed are traced. Analysis of the texts associated with SMD practice illustrates how these discourses are made meaningful to managers through the concepts of self-realization, holism and personal and embodied experience which define events as implicitly religious. However, by defining managerial identity in terms of the inner self and placing responsibility for change on the individual, SMD is isolated from possible critique and transformed from a potentially enlightening into a potentially repressive project.

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Metadaten
Author:Emma Bell, Scott Taylor
Parent Title (English):Human Relations, Vol. 57, No. 4 (2004), pp. 439-466. [Online ISSN 1741-282X] [doi.org/10.1177/0018726704043895]
Document Type:Articles
Language:English
Year of first Publication:2004
Release Date:2024/04/04
Format:to purchase via publisher
IdNo:Bell_E_and_Taylor_S_2004
Writings about Erich Fromm (Secondary Literature):Articles / Artikel
Erich Fromm's Library and Erich Fromm Archive:Articles / Artikel
Licence (German):
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