The past decades have seen significant growth in something called 'workplace spirituality' -- religious and spiritual advice focused on the workplace, working, employees, etc. And what is the core message of this movement? Given that it's funded almost entirely by large corporations like WalMart, it's probably no surprise that the basic message is: work harder, be happy with whatever you get, don't rock the boat, don't complain, etc.
Yet, these post-industrial theologies rest on assumptions about the world that reify the socioeconomic structures behind the current economic crisis. Workplace spirituality imagines a future where businesses benevolently guide us toward peace, prosperity, and spiritual vitality; managers become therapeutic purveyors of spiritual wisdom and for-profit firms act as the ultimate arbiters of the social order. ...
Moreover, workplace spirituality teaches people that the anxieties associated with global capital are inevitable, even part of the natural order of things. Under the highly deregulated conditions that prevail in the twenty-first century, individuals struggle against constant job insecurity. Additionally, workers can expect to change careers frequently, sometimes moving to where the jobs are.
In this socioeconomic stew, workplace spirituality offers the individual a stable community where ultimate meaning and purpose become anchored to his or her place of employment. Workers feel more fulfilled and empowered on the job, and, therefore, will freely work harder and more productively, the theory goes, while ignoring more material concerns such as declining wages and diminishing benefits.
Workplace spirituality neatly legitimates globalization while muffling its psychological effects.
Source: Religion Dispatches
This "corporate spirituality" is a conservative, corporate political message wrapped up in Christian, New Age, and related religious language. Your manager becomes your minister; your office becomes your chapel.
It's the sort of religious politics that the Corporate Wing of the Republican Party would probably rather be hooked up with instead of the Christian Right. The Christian Right is already very pro-corporation and pro-capitalism, but it's not as compliant and accommodating as this "corporate spirituality" seems to be.
The key difference is probably that the Christian Right is a constituency that is independent of the corporations. Christian Right leaders might work closely with corporations, but they have followers that don't depend on the corporations. The "corporate spirituality" movement, in contrast, is entirely funded by the corporations and wouldn't really exist without corporate backing -- or if it did, it would be less than a shadow of what it currently is.
As they say, follow the money. With so much dependence on the corporations, it's inevitable that the purveyors of corporate spirituality in the workplace will consistently promote whatever message the corporations are paying for. They exist to support the interests of the owners of capital, not the interests of the workers.
Workplace spirituality's logic dictates that consumer choice will select those organizations most devoted to the good of the planet, relegating the greedy and self-absorbed Gordon Gekkos of the old paradigm to their rightful place at the bottom of the heap.
Thus, the proponents of workplace spirituality seek only individual moral transformation, leaving untouched the structural integrity of the global economy and its attendant policies...
Bill Pollard, former CEO of ServiceMaster Corporation, expressed dismay at the world's current economic woes, stating, "they are the result of ineffective government involvement in the crisis." He indicated that "an era of profound irresponsibility" caused the collapse. After all, Pollard continues, "people cause markets to work or fail; it is people are evil or good... ethical behavior cannot depend on a set of rules; governments cannot develop character. We need a transformation in business leadership" to get us out of this crisis.
Pollard insists that these problems are moral rather than structural, which calls for the solution to be the moral reform of leaders, and excludes the possibility of legal changes to economic governance. In other words, global capital would work just fine if we only had better leaders. Democratic governance of the economy only makes matters worse by Pollard's logic. Instead, he asks us to put our trust into the benevolent leadership of the spiritually driven executive.
This reminds me of how the authors of the book Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America explain the perspective of white conservative evangelicals on racism and dealing with racism: "For many, the race problem, no matter how big or how small, ultimately came down not to a social issue, but to personal defects of some individuals in some groups as they attempted to relate to each other. ...Absent from their accounts is the idea that poor relationships might be shaped by social structures, such as laws, the ways institutions operate, or forms of segregation."
Social problems are never structural, they are always personal. Social structures and social systems never produce problems (discrimination, prejudice, inequality, etc.) themselves. Social structures and social systems are always good, or at least neutral. The problem is always individuals -- fallen, sinful individuals using their free will incorrectly by choosing to do the wrong thing.
If people are hungry, the solution is to start soup kitchens, not look at changing the economic system to produce less hunger. If people are being discriminated against, the solution is for managers to turn their lives over to Jesus and stop sinning, not look at creating regulations to prevent discrimination. And if people have turned their lives over to Jesus, then there must not be any unjust discrimination or inequality -- thus whatever results we are seeing must also be the most just results possible according to whatever God intends.
This is why conservative evangelical Christianity meshes so well with authoritarian corporations. But I guess the fit still wasn't good enough for them so they are producing a new religious system that is even more amenable to their interests and goals.
And by "authoritarian," you should also understand "patriarchal":
Likewise, when a conference participant asked [Don] Soderquist [former COO of Wal-Mart,] about Wal-Mart's role in reducing income inequality, he responded, in parabolic fashion, that Wal-Mart's relationship with society is like a father's care of his children. A father must provide only the same opportunity for each child, not the same financial assistance.
"I don't know about this inequity deal," he remarked. "I only know that it is not right to take from some and give to people who don't want to work. There's too much welfare already." A perplexing comment from the former COO of a firm whose low wages often require workers to apply for government assistance.
The message is clear: businesses, freed from the constraints of government regulation, would be positioned to guide us all towards greater levels of prosperity, both material and spiritual. These organizations look after us as fathers care for their children, and when the father is led by spirit, so goes the rest of the family. Preposterous-sounding, perhaps, but maybe this is simply a picture of the world in which we already live.
This sounds a lot like the patriarchal parts of the white conservative evangelical message: women and children must follow the lead of the father in the family because the father always knows best. The father submits to God then the wife and children must trust that whatever the father decides has necessarily been imparted to them by God. Thus they must submit unquestioningly to him, just as he submits unquestioningly to God.
When this patriarchal theology is translated into the workplace, as Don Soderquist is trying to do, this means that workers must submit unquestioningly to management and executives because they are being guided by God -- as well as the Invisible Hand. Questioning the management is thus akin to questioning God and questioning God is rebellion against God. Questioning the Invisible Hand means questioning capitalism and questioning capitalism is simply communism. Whatever happens is ultimately God's will and if the situation isn't quite as good as you'd like, you must trust in God wisdom.
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