Shift in Paradigm: Organizational Values and Performance

The Spiritual Capital Construct: Contextualization.

The spiritual capital construct arises from three distinct routes: (i) from sociological constructs developing the work of Bourdieu (Verter, 2003), (ii) from attempts to align the individual concept of spiritual intelligence to the organizational level (Zohar & Marshall, 2004), and (iii) from challenges that pursue quantifying the value of spirituality and religion in economic terms (Metanexus Institute, 2006). Berger and Hefner’s (2003) postulate that this construct endeavors to bridge the gap between economics and sociology in relation to the approach embedded in the cultural capital of Bourdieu. Therefore, from the perspective of Bourdieu’s writing on religion, Verter (2003) further identified three types of spiritual capital that are in tune with the three types of cultural capital posited by Bourdieu, namely, spiritual capital as (i) an embodied state, (ii) as an objectified state, and (iii) as an institutionalized state. These three states go beyond the dissociated perceptions of spiritual capital and present a model for acknowledging a more comprehensive representation of that which the individual represents in the organization.