This paper relates to a programme of PhD research at an early stage of realisation. It aims to set out the basic premise behind the work and early ideas for concepts that will be examined using hermeneutic phenomenology in a qualitative enquiry into the everyday decision making processes of a cohort of British police officers. As a paper, it readily aligned to the 2009 Conference theme, as I was contemplating a holistic enquiry into the expression and application of spirituality, which I believe to be inherently transdisciplinary in nature. I welcome discussion and would be grateful for direction that might enhance the quality and depth of this project. Field research is intended to commence in late August 2009.

Introduction – the context for this research

The issue of ‘wise decision-making’ emerged for me in my late 20’s, perhaps my early 30’s. I was then a British police officer, with some 10 years service. I was beginning to realise that I’d been taught very little about wisdom, about people and about life, but I was finding things within myself that hinted at a deeper, innate sense of knowing what was right and what was required to achieve satisfactory outcomes. I had no clear religious upbringing to fall back on, no wisdom tradition to immerse myself in, but I knew that I wanted to find a way to be ‘true to myself’ and live my life and work with integrity. To do so meant reflecting upon what I really believed and finding the principles upon which I wanted to base my life choices – and since I was dealing with a harsh reality, it had to be a very real way of being.

I, as had all police officers, sworn an oath of service to serve:

‘…with fairness, integrity, diligence and impartiality, upholding fundamental human rights and according equal respect to all people; and that I will, to the best of my power, cause the peace to be kept and preserved and prevent all offences against people and property; and that while I continue to hold the said office I will, to the best of my skill and knowledge, discharge all the duties thereof faithfully according to law.’
Police Act (1996)

Of course this is aspirational, although some people think, or at least they will say, that it is possible to be professional and objective all the time: like, for example, officer and author Peter Bleksley, who said in a BBC report, ‘All political, religious, personal and sexual leanings must be parked at the front door of the police station’ (Geoghegan, 2006).  This concept of leaving parts of ourselves at the door of the workplace was also a noted finding in Mitroff and Denton’s (1999a) seminal ‘Spiritual Audit of Corporate America’ report, but one that I had fundamental problems with. It was as if people seemed to think that in an age of modernity that emphasises rationality and deduction, we had to behave in denial of our humanity, which had always embraced non-rational or other ways of knowing; or that in an age of postmodern relativism, nothing is worth aligning to principle – that, since everyone has their own truth, all we can go by are the rules - and that the rules will define and protect us. This utilitarian perspective persisted and was repeated itself in many ways to me over the years. It has reached an illustrative nadir in the current hiatus over British MP expenses, where the oft-repeated basic defence against immoral claims was simply that ‘they were allowed by the rules’. I concur with Robinson’s (2008) observation that:

There now seems to be an increasing concern to link spirituality with ethics in such a way that ethics are not dependent upon a particular view of spirituality, and which affirms both individual autonomy and community without slipping into meaningless relativism.
Robinson (2008:30)

In concluding this, Robinson’s specific context was that of health and social care, which highlights the ‘autonomy of the patient or client is very much the cornerstone of any professional ethic,’ (op.cit) but it is eminently transferrable to all aspects of public service, from representation of the people to policing, as made clear in the latest Home Office web-site. In introducing ‘Citizen-focused policing, which says, ‘Citizen-focused policing is a new way of policing in which the needs and expectations of individuals and local communities are always reflected in police decision-making and service,’ and that, ‘We believe that citizens must feel that the police and the criminal justice system put them first’ (Home Office, 2009).

Throughout my service, such ideals have been expressed in differing forms. I generally felt they were sincerely intended, but structurally flawed in large measure due to unwillingness or inability to address the deeper issues that I hope to approach – related to this question of how much of ourselves we bring to work. I had frequently found myself wanting to challenge what had become the required rhetoric of logical, evidence-based justification for decisions we make at work. There was an observation troubling me deeply: I observed far more evidence of people making decisions based upon some internal process of discernment, than strict logico-deductive reasoning and application of rules or even law. To their subjective reasoning, they would then have to retrospectively apply ‘reason’, ‘rationale’ and ‘logic’ as a veneer to justify and explain their actions, and never, ever mention ‘feelings’, sense of compassion, or a notion of morality, ethics, or any sense of right and wrong based upon the personal construct of justice that had been at least a part of the process. I noted that I too entered into this way of working and felt it a growing barrier to my hope to be ‘real’ in the workplace. I wanted to be able to share my struggles with the conflicts we routinely faced in our decision-making. I wanted ‘wisdom’ to rule; a synthesis of reason and logic, with feelings and a notion of ‘rightness’, but we had no language or process for this. I had a sense that we all suffered as a result: that is, police and policed, officer and community. The fact that Aristotle had delved deeply into this over two Millennia before was then unknown to me; a pity, as some historical perspective might have been helpful.

In his 2008 Metanexus Conference paper, Gary Boelhower (2008) stated that ‘Wisdom is not an abstraction… (but that) wisdom is about making choices in the concrete circumstances of life’. This rang so true to my observations. He continued, saying that ‘in the process of decision-making, persons are conscious and intentional about living their values and priorities.’ Here, I stopped sharply. He had put his finger on a key problem – and a conflict – for me. I felt that people were conscious and intentional to some extent about living their values and priorities, and indeed I feel that this should be the case, but this opened a huge chasm of an issue for me. Although I felt that people were living out expressions of their values and priorities in some ways, I suspected that it was not necessarily conscious and intentional and that whatever it was, it was being disguised by a rationale that was often suspect, even duplicitous. This was beginning to make sense; not only did I hear people at work saying that they should ‘leave their personal beliefs at the door’, but that in order to do so, they were knowingly or unknowingly conspiring to cover their decisions with parroted patterns of acceptable terminology, in order to meet public standards of objectivity. This process had the potential to avoid personal involvement, responsibility and accountability – and our systems were so structured as to make it almost inevitable. 

Boelhower asserts that people reveal their character and identity in the process of applying their decisions to life choices - even thereby ‘the enfleshment of one’s character as an individual’ and that this process is important for ‘organizations of all kinds’.  I believe there is indeed a relationship between character and identity and the decisions one may make at work, but that this is complex, non-linear and not necessarily a positive relationship in all situations. I distinguish between ‘character’ as the perceived, or open way in which one expresses their integrity, authenticity and sincerity and ‘identity’ as a more complex construct involving the deeper and sometimes hidden essential psychosocial reality of the individual. Boelhower’s paper examines a process for ‘wise decision-making’ based upon constructs taken from three theological traditions: the Jewish wisdom tradition, the Christian scriptures and the Rule of Saint Benedict, although he does not limit wisdom in any way to them and openly invites other perspectives.

In taking up Boelhower’s invitation to look into other wisdom paths, this paper outlines research proposals intended to investigate the way in which people may or may not reveal their character and identity in the decisions they make at work – and what those decisions might in turn reveal about the individual’s perception of their lived ethics, morals, values and principles. In turn, I will suggest that these aspects of the way a life is lived may be termed aspects of the ‘spirituality’ of a person. Since one of the key constructs of spirituality is ‘connectedness’, I will ask whether the term is - or is not - useful in examining the relationship between a person’s intrinsic beliefs about the meaning of life and their discernment and expression of what is right and wrong - and what this means for decision-making in the workplace.

In effect, the purpose of this examination is to explore aspects of the applied wisdom of human individuals operating within a human institution. To do this, my research proposes a hermeneutical phenomenological examination of the way in which a cohort of British police officers makes their everyday operational decisions. In my analysis, I seek to find if it is possible to discern whether - and if so, to what extent, concepts of spirituality influence officers’ decision-making and problem-solving operational choices. This research will therefore be taking a wisdom tradition approach, based upon an eclectic concept of humanistic ‘spirituality’, that does not exclude the religious, complementing Boelhower’s theologically based approach. 

By its very nature, ‘the spirit’, broadly conceptualised, touches everything and is an aspect of all we do and all we are as human beings in society, whether there is a formally recognised religious tradition associated with such a concept or not. This makes it reasonable to contend that the construct of spirituality is absolutely central to any discussion of transdisciplinarity. In every discipline, every workplace, every person there is a conversation that speaks to, of, or about spirit in some form or another. Human life is infused with spirit; it is inherent. 

In a Chicago Sun-Times interview (Falsani, 2004) the then Senator Obama expressed this in contemporary context well. Speaking of his own life, he said he personally related to his Christian faith, but acknowledged much wider influences; living in Indonesia, having a Kenyan father who was probably agnostic, but from a Muslim cultural background - and a deeply spiritual mother, from a Christian faith tradition.  Drawing from Judaism as much as any other faith, his belief is that we are connected as people and that transcending values oblige and potentially enable all to live responsibly. In these terms, my research is to see what may be discovered of these ‘transcending values’ within what Boelhower (2008) calls a ‘broadening of the web of experience’, in which he avers that ‘persons inform their consciences as they seek coherence among the considerations in the search for truth and make decisions with forethought and good will’ (op.cit). This phrase had the same effect upon me as the previous quote about ‘being conscious and intentional about living one’s values and priorities’. I believe that people do ‘inform their consciences and seek coherence,’ but I cannot say that it has always been with ‘truth’ and ‘good will’. Spirituality is not a vector; in other words it has no intrinsic direction; it can be for ‘good or ill’ as in its broadest sense it is simply about what one conceives to be their life-meaning and how they relate to the rest of life: it can have negative as well as positive dimensions, or it may transcend definition by such polarities altogether.

Boelhower emphasises too that ‘it is important to acknowledge that action itself entails a way of knowing,’ but that wisdom is not revealed ‘to some elect authority, but to all who seek it.’ Thus my research advances a process for examining the ways in which, ‘Wisdom does not come from some abstruse unrecognizable revelation but rather from close observation and clear thinking, recognizing the common natural consequences of one’s words and actions.’ In this way it will look for ‘phronesis’ in the Aristotelian and Thomastic traditions, which emphasise holistic reflection upon how we actually apply ourselves in particular circumstances: the outworking of practical virtues, or the applied wisdom that Aristotle might have called eupraxia, or ‘the good activity of free persons’.

The necessity for work of this nature to be considered in a transdisciplinary context has been championed recently by Charles Taylor, who makes a compelling case for the need for the whole of society to focus on understanding all aspects of spirituality, which he conceptualises principally in terms of ‘meaning-making’ for the individual. Bearing this in mind, my focus upon police officers, a high-profile public service role, is deliberate and has two principal driving factors:

- One, since I will undertake a qualitative enquiry, my personal longitudinal perspective may enhance my role as researcher by enabling empathic levels of understanding. I also have the ability to understand operational terminology and legal processes. However it might, in parallel, make it more difficult for me to bracket some issues as I consider the phenomenological expression of my research participants’ experience, for as they reveal their experience and perspectives, these may trigger responses in me as I relate to them. If my own process unduly distracts me, I may not be able to stay with the participant and may miss the importance of the meaning they are expressing. In this sense the more experience I have, the more potentially difficult I could find the process without careful attention to remaining in the moment.
- And two, it seems to me that people at work who have a degree of power to exercise or not exercise legal constraint through power over other, have an opportunity to apply aspects of their personal, fundamental belief-sets upon others, consciously or not, in a myriad of simple, everyday ways that may be revealed through depth enquiry.

I will investigate if there is evidence to show that people’s fundamental beliefs about the nature, value and purpose of life actually do ‘leak out’ into the decision-making and problem-solving environment at work. If there is evidence to suggest that these aspects of ‘spirituality’ are indeed significant operating factors in the way that people, particularly public servants, function and make decisions, which naturally therefore affect others, then it becomes a highly relevant issue of public concern. If the ways in which public decisions, or decisions that have an effect on members of the public who are served by the ‘public servant’ are not clear, or if they stem from unknown and thus unchallengeable personal values, ethics, morals, principles, or ‘spirituality’ then there is potential for the subversion of an open and accountable service ethos.

If it can be shown that ‘spiritual’ factors are commonly used to influence the decisions we make concerning others, then perhaps there is need to find a way to explore the nature and direction of those influences – for the health and protection of the individual decision-maker; the people who are subject to such decisions and the communities and societies affected by them. It is in this way that the subject is believed to have deep transdisciplinary relevance, as service delivery crosses the boundaries of all human activity from politics, to education, healthcare and from theology to science, economics and justice. Analysis of the research interviews through a number of open and particular perspectives will be compared with the various ways in which ‘spirituality’ is construed, alongside other established views of ‘professional ethics’ and ‘values’ to see if there is a meaningful relationship between them.

Ultimately, I am hoping to find out whether any emergent concept of ‘spirituality’ is sufficiently mature, discrete and robust to contribute meaningfully to the development of a case for the study of a ‘professional transdisciplinarity’ connecting spirituality with professional ethics and conduct; linking concepts of corporate social responsibility with personal accountability and behaviour, bridging the gaps between inner and outer modes of living, lending the possibility of deeper integration through a philosophical, wisdom approach to living a more holistic, satisfactory and meaningful life.

In a little more depth: spirituality, ethics and values

Since I aim to investigate the potential of finding any useful correlation between perceptions of spirituality, professional ethics and values, my terms of reference will need to be clear. All three terms are in wide use: ‘values’ and ‘ethics’ are fairly well defined, but there is a significant difficulty in defining ‘spirituality’.

To start with ‘ethics’: in general, I will take the term ‘ethics’ to refer to a personal moral philosophy – what an individual considers morally good and bad, right and wrong. Police officers, on behalf of the public they serve, whether they think about it deeply or not, are responsible for contributing to the outworking of normative theories and applying these sets of principles to practical moral problems. For instance, in 1968 a classic investigation into understanding the street-level actions of police officers (Wilson, 1968) resulted in defining three ways in which police officers interacted with the public as ‘legalistic, service and watchman’. His findings, long accepted and only relatively recently challenged (Liederbach, 2008) related police behaviour to the politics of the communities in which they operated. Although his methodology and some conclusions were not fully supported, other studies do reinforce the finding that officers and their style of operation in an area does contribute to a local ethic of policing.  Liederbach (2008:465) confirmed that that there is variation between local police departments, but that ‘understanding that variation and its explanation are likely to bequalitative phenomena for which we have not yet developed sufficiently precisemeasures to enable sophisticated quantitative analyses.’ It is my contention that understanding the personal decision-making processes of individual officers, as well as the environment in which they serve is necessary to accomplish this aim. However, I suspect that the ‘local ethics’ and values of policing as expressed by the administration, may or may not be those expressed by individuals and research would have to cater for an examination of both.

I am interested in these ‘normative ethics’, this ‘moral philosophy,’ because police officers do have significant opportunities to apply their personal ethical beliefs to situations. For instance, police officers quite regularly face the issue of ‘noble cause corruption’ in many guises. The question, ‘is it right to be dishonest in a good cause?’ is a significant ethical point that may arise at different levels quite frequently and relates to fundamental, practical decision making. Even the simple decision as to whether to even ‘see’ an infringement of the law is an ethical choice. To take action or not on any actionable behaviour may be labelled ‘an operational or professional judgement’ or ‘concentrating on priorities,’ or even ‘applying common sense,’ but this does not change the point that there is a discretional decision being made. These ‘opportunities’ confer the potential for officers to ‘judge’ which human actions are acceptable to them and what the beliefs and ways of life of others ‘should’ be like. As Robinson (2008:79) puts it, ‘Ethics and spirituality involve a continual wrestling with tradition and narratives… which involve mutual challenge.’ It seems likely that the opportunities police officers have to make judgments will affect what they do and to whom, as a result. But to what extent do they ‘wrestle’ and ‘challenge?’

I will principally be considering the sub-discipline of ‘applied ethics’ from the perspectives of deontological theory, which emphasises the concept of ‘inherent rightness’ in establishing standards - and teleological theory, which considers the end ‘goodness’ that is achieved by the action taken. The difference between these fundamental approaches, involving the deontological emphasis upon concepts of obligation, ought, duty, right and wrong and the teleological stress on good, valuable, and desirable outcomes will be key elements in analysis of the data.

The construct of ‘values’ and ‘value judgements’ present similar issues to those of ethics in that there are two fundamental approaches to consider. An ‘objectivist’ approach to values would tend to see values as intrinsic properties of things and thus not dependent upon individual interpretation of them; thus they are ‘discoverable’ qualities. The ‘subjectivist’ approach to values lies in assigning personal meaning to an event, facts or a situation; thus they are ‘chosen’ qualities .

What interests me in relation to ethics and values of the individual – in this case police officers in a police organisation, serving a community - is the juxtaposition of Aristotle’s concept of the person in relationship with the ‘body’ or whole community and Taylor’s notion of expressivism in human life. Aristotle said:

We see that the polis [the whole] exists by nature and that it is prior to the individual… The man who is isolated – who is unable to share in the benefits of political association, or has no need to share because he is already self-sufficient – is not part of the polis, and must therefore be either a beast or a god… Man, when perfected, is the best of animals; but if he be isolated from law and justice, he is the worst of all… justice belongs to the polis…is an ordering of the political association.
Aristotle (1946, in Barker, trans: Bk 1 Ch II p.6-7)

Thus Aristotle sees the interrelationship of the one and the many as essential for the perfection of both and that ‘law and justice’ rely on the community and the individual for expression. At the same time, Taylor, in relating to Aristotle’s references to the nature of a thing ‘tending towards its complete form’ says:

…the basis for a new and fuller individuation… the idea… that each individual is different and original, and that this originality determines how he or she ought to live.
Taylor (1989:375)

Dismissing the obviousness within the observation that we are all different, Taylor says the importance of this idea is about how it makes a difference to ‘how we’re called on to live’. Furthermore he points out that we are not just talking about the moral differences between good and bad individuals, but that our differences mean that we all have ‘an original path which we ought to tread’ and that we each have an ‘obligation to live up to our originality’ (op.cit) an intriguing viewpoint that appears to suggest that it is a normative ‘should’ to be unique and individual, but in service to the whole. Taylor is aligned with Aristotle in holding to the view of a communitarian self that is socially led and enabled; that ‘the good flourishing’ of an individual is the result of the culture in which it is embedded. This might be a very complex relationship in which the opposite also holds true: early reflections on my pilot studies show officers struggling to flourish as individuals – in different ways - against the oppressive and disabling culture of work in which they operated. This appeared to illustrate the struggle between what Heelas and Woodhead (2005:97) refer to as ‘individuated subjectivism’ - in which the individual, although willing to look inside subjectively to some extent, is still externally oriented towards indirect material solutions, or  ‘relational subjectivism’ in which individuals relate to a much deeper subjective and direct exploration of the inner life, epitomising the depth of Carson McCullers’ idea of ‘the we of me’ (quoted in op.cit:11). Heelas and Woodhead saw this distinction as capable of explaining genderised perspectives and it will be interesting to see if this aspect arises in my research.

Spirit and ‘spirituality’ are more complex to define, but this is the ultimate focus of my interest, because of what I perceive to be its holistic and integrating potential, encompassing individuality and community; involving perspectives of inherent value, meaning and purpose and personal, contextual interpretation.

I do not associate religion and spirituality automatically. The concept of spirituality that I will use encompasses theist and atheist spiritualities. Several writers, such as Saucier and Skrzypinska (2006) highlight the increasing number of ways in which spirituality and religion are differentiated and demonstrate a clear and growing common understanding that people may be ‘spiritual but not religious’. Karen Armstrong (2007) believes that many of even the ‘most fervent of atheists’ view humanity and the natural world as precious, sacred and mysterious and thus of ‘spiritual’ consequence, absolutely without need of a religious framework. ‘Spirituality’ may thus encompass ‘religious spirituality’ but is in no way limited to it. However, speaking in the context of leadership and service, Parker Palmer makes the point that:

The great spiritual traditions are not primarily about values and ethics, not primarily about doing right or living well. The spiritual traditions are primarily about reality.
Palmer (1998:199)

I concur with the specific emphasis upon ‘reality’, but wonder if Palmer overstates the dissociation of established traditions from the importance of values, ethics, doing right and living well. David Tacey (2004:4) points to the emerging revolution in spirituality being focused upon ‘finding the sacred everywhere, and not just where the religious traditions have asked us to find it’ - which simultaneously seems to emphasise that there is a new desire to discover a sacred reality over past concern for controlling perspectives on ‘rightness’ rather than a concern for finding ‘just’ reality. Tacey believes that the new concern for spirituality will lead to ‘all the more reason why public institutions must eventually take up the dialogue with popular spirituality’ (op.cit) and it is relevant aspects of this ‘democratisation’ of spiritual responsibility that I hope to find and investigate.

Rosenthal and Buchholz integrate this ‘pragmatic perspective’ of the spiritual self as a creative and relational agent in the world:

...spirituality... is a way of being, a mode of responding to the world... which underlies and overflows standardised moral rules or belief systems. It involves an enhanced sense of community, of oneself as intertwined with others, of meaningfulness in life and of the relational qualitative, value-laden richness of human existence...’
Rosenthal and Bucholz (2004:56)

The theme of ‘agency’ has been expressed in many ways. Burkhardt and Nagai-Jacobson’s (1994) research, in the context of nursing, led to viewing spirituality as a unifying force which is expressed and experienced in connection with all other aspects of life; in the knowing and the doing. They emphasise care of one’s own spirit to enhance the connection. They saw the awakening of spirit as a way for nurses to become more effective. Ruth Tanyi, in research to clarify the meaning of spirituality in nursing, concluded that it was ‘subjective, intangible and multidimensional’ (Tanyi, 2002:1). Her ‘definition’ related to a personal search for meaning, which may or may not be related to religion… and which connects one to ‘practices that give meaning to life, thereby inspiring and motivating individual to achieve their optimal being’ (op.cit:2). Delgado’s (2005) findings supported this, particularly in the context of coping with illness and enhancing the professional effectiveness of nursing.

The agency perspective is extended by Raimon Panikkar who emphasises holism and balance, pointing out that no reality is a simple duality of ‘either-or, spirit or matter, contemplation or action, written message or living people, East or West, theory or praxis or, for that matter, the divine or the human’ (Panikkar, 1995). In this light it is clear that existential circumstances should guide both intellect and spirit. Panikkar’s perspective is shared but more clearly focused and extended by Zohar and Marshall (2000, 2004) in writing about ‘spiritual intelligence’ introducing spirituality as evidence of high-level human functioning that transcends the purely psychological.

Developing the ‘psychological’ theme Paloutzian et al (2003) illustrate the distinction between religious spirituality and non-religious spirituality. For them, religious spirituality is about doing something for god or a higher power related to that religion’s teachings. Non-religious spirituality is about striving for the fulfilment of any value, or ‘higher calling’ believed to be meaningful. They relate to a concept they call ‘spiritual well-being’ as a psychological reflection on how much a person understands ‘spiritual intelligence and wellness,’ which they see as an emotional and behavioural process .

Although the differentiation of spirituality and psychology may be semantic in places and there will be real areas of overlap, especially in the realm referred to as the ‘psycho-spiritual,’ there is literature that supports an objective uniqueness to the ground of ‘spirit’ that differentiates it from ‘psychology’ (e.g Helminiak in Benefiel, 2005:8-9) However, Myers et al propose an ‘optimal conceptualisation theory’, which appears to conflate ideas of psychological identity development and spirituality:

All forms of life are unique manifestations of spirit; therefore self-worth is inherent and independent of external, physical realities. The process of identity development is actually one of increasing self-knowledge, thereby enhancing awareness of spirit, the essence of being. Accordingly, identity development cannot be separated from the context of spiritual development.
Myers et al (1991:5)

This highlights important questions for my research in trying to differentiate the complex outworking of the mixture that constitutes an individual’s personality, psychology and spirituality. For instance, how does a ‘professional’ actually behave either ‘because of’ or ‘despite’ their fundamental perspectives and nature? What conscious behavioural control does the ‘intellect’ exercise over the deeper psyche – and how is this related to soul or spirit? In addition, how do Myers’ assertions of ‘independence’ from external realities conflict with the concepts of relational reality and being, mentioned previously and related to Taylor’s dialogic reality and concept of ‘inescapable horizons’ from which we frame our significance?

In examining values, ethics and spirituality, I refer back to an important point mentioned earlier – the need to understand that there is no intrinsic ‘direction’ that one ‘must’ or ‘should’ assume is taken in relating to ‘spirituality’. It is permissible to define someone as having a ‘spiritual’ perspective even if the intent or effect of their activity is ill disposed towards others (Tepper, 2003). Marjolein Lips-Wiersma also highlights the problem:

...using definitions that draw on commonalties, such as values, do not particularly distinguish spirituality from other concepts. We may value being the best criminal the world has ever seen, or we may value power over others, but these are not usually seen to be spiritual values. Spirituality, in itself, is based on principles of what we consider to be good and bad.
Lips-Wiersma (2004:128)

It is necessary to challenge the view that ‘being a spiritual person’ is to be concerned to act always for the common good. ‘Spirituality’ can be ‘negatively’ as well as ‘positively’ oriented (accepting those labels for ease of discussion). Normative perspectives concerning this may arise from the research data.

Having reviewed some of the issues that the term ‘spirituality’ touches, at this stage I conclude and will work with the term ‘spirituality,’ in the context of an individual, as being:

A unique personal perspective about the meaning, purpose and value of life, both within the self and in relationship to others, which may include concepts of an ultimate or transcendent reality: it extends to how one perceives the interconnectedness of all life and how these beliefs are manifest in what one finds sacred, together with the ethics, values and principles by which an individual chooses to live.

Researching ‘spirituality at work’ (SaW)

Given that this research is aimed at investigating spirituality in the context of a specific workplace, through the particular device of examining decision-making and problem solving, it is relevant to refer to some of the issues that arise when specifically speaking about spirituality in this context and to reflect upon what this may mean for the research project as a whole.

There has been a considerable increase in interest in the phenomenon of ‘spirituality at work’ in the last decade. This has stemmed, in its modern context, from perhaps the 1950s, with the emergence of transpersonal and transcendent psychologies that promote a holistic, sometimes spiritual and religion-independent approach to living. An example of such would be the person-centred personality theories of Carl Rogers, summarised recently by Patterson and Joseph (2007). In parallel, the past decade has also seen a significant increase in researching ‘spirituality at work’ as a specific aspect of ‘applied spirituality’. Mitroff and Denton (1999a) found that although most people had a strong sense of spiritual belief, few felt it was possible to put those beliefs into action in the workplace. At the same time – and perhaps because of the wider positive correlates they found in the relationship between the perceived spirituality of organisations and how they were valued by their employees, they concluded a need to integrate spirituality into management. (Mitroff and Denton, 1999b).

Giacalone and Jurkiewicz illustrate their thrust to establish the ‘scientific’ study of workplace spirituality where possible and define ‘workplace spirituality’ very specifically as:

…a framework of organisational values evidenced in the culture that promotes employees' experience of transcendence through the work process, facilitating their sense of being connected to others in a way that provides feelings of completeness and joy.
Giacalone and Jurkiewicz (2003:13)

The tendency to think that a ‘framework of (inherent) organisational values’ can actually ‘promote employee experience of transcendence, completeness and joy’ contrasts sharply with the approach of Dehler and Welch (2003) who warn against the possibility of ‘spirituality’ being another cynical ‘management fad’ and for any benefit to organisations to be incidental to the spiritual welfare of employees; a view paralleled by Pfeffer (2003:31) in saying ‘there is an imperative to make organisations more consistent with human values and psychology, and as a by-product, more effective as well.’ A substantial review of many arguments concerning the instrumentality, or otherwise, of spirituality at work is to be found in Case and Gosling’s (2008) conference paper.

Krishnakumar and Neck (2002:162) conclude that ‘all views of spirituality should be encouraged in the workplace’ and that ‘a policy towards spiritual freedom will make its employees develop their potentials fully.’ The use of ‘make’ in this view may have been literal or meant to indicate a free potential, but it does illustrate the ambivalent principles that arise in commenting on the desirability of promoting spirituality at work. However, Smith and Rayment see spirituality at work in terms of the positive and mutual product of employee mindsets, nurtured and facilitated by the organisational environment with co-responsibility, and define it as:

...individuals and organisations seeing work as a spiritual path, as an opportunity to grow and to contribute to society in a meaningful way... It means individuals and organisations attempting to live their values more fully in the work they do.
Smith and Rayment (2006a:15)

In their analysis of the phenomenon, Smith and Rayment highlight the crucial importance of decision-making from the individual to the organisational and even global. They see a need for individuals and organisations to regard work as a spiritual path; living values; contributing to society in a meaningful way, applying care and compassion to the support of others. In this way, they propose that spirituality covers the ‘ultimate objectives, philosophical approaches, values and inter-relationships on which the mental processes of decision making and problem solving should be based’ (Smith and Rayment, 2007:21). The conclusion that decision-making and problem solving ‘should be based upon spirituality’ is axiomatic to my research theme. Taking ‘should’ as an aspirational comment, I hope to discover, through structured enquiry,  more detailed aspects of the forms that such spirituality may take - and the extent to which one may say that ‘spirituality’ actually does – or does not - contribute meaningfully to decision-making.

These ideas were useful to me in beginning to shape a possible phenomenology of spirituality, mirroring the concern that stretches from Aristotle to Thomas Aquinas and to Charles Taylor, that virtue and moral ideals only become authentic when expressed in action. We may be able to see ‘care, compassion and support’ and examine ‘living values’ in the workplace by analysing the decisions that people make for their ethical and moral value positions and principles, in the sense that Gibson et al meant when referring to phenomenology as an interpretive perspective directed at the meaning of everyday experience (Gibson and Hanes, 2003).

My research emphasis will be upon the participant’s experienced meaning. The phenomenological concepts of ‘intentionality’ and ‘intuiting’ will be important in examining the way people operate in the world. Spinelli (1989:72) asserts that ‘...phenomenology does not even assume any ultimate (that is, physically real) separateness of self and other’. This is potentially important, especially in conjunction with his idea that phenomenology is ‘...not ‘merely’ experiential but is best clarified through experientially based investigations’ (op.cit:191). This gives credence to an approach that seeks to work by analysing accounts of action and the thought processes, including self-perception of the motivations for the actions that underlie behaviour.

In consequence of pursuing such ‘investigations’, there have been a number of moves to systematise and integrate approaches to SaW through conceptual frameworks intended to reduce subjectivity and invite comparisons. For instance Singhal and Chatterjee (2006:175) propose a qualitatively-expressed ‘person-fit’ framework in order to ‘identify... how the individuals’ needs for expressing spirituality at work are met by the conditions provided by organizations, and what results it has for individuals and organizations’. However, there are also moves to ‘mechanise’ individual spiritual ‘quotients’ in highly quantitative ways, such as King’s (2008) ‘spiritual intelligence self-report inventory’. This, and similar approaches claim to specifically identify significant factors that lead to the ‘ability to facilitate unique means of problem-solving, abstract reasoning and coping’ by assigning spiritual quotient measurement to individual responses. 

I will not be pursuing such lines of enquiry as they challenge what I believe to be of particular value to the study of spirituality and moreover, the essence of its transdisciplinary value. In different ways, both these ‘modes’ of classifying and investigating spirituality in such reductive and objective ways are in a markedly different orientation from spirituality as an aspect of phronesis in the Aristotelian tradition. Although I acknowledge the choice I make potentially limits my research scope, I choose to emphasise holistic reflection upon how we actually apply ourselves in particular circumstances and the key issue of relationships. It’s interesting to note in passing that it could be argued that it is only a uniquely modern, Western cultural construct that has separated work and ‘the rest of life’ so significantly. This reminds me that it seems to be an aspect of wisdom that much of value has to be continually rediscovered in a spiral of contextual application, so well expressed by T.S. Eliot in his poem ‘Little Gidding’:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Eliot (c.1942:V)

The ancient roots of a philosophy of ‘spirituality as revealed in action at work’ have developed rapidly in the past 50 years, leading to many new theories of leadership and management, blending spiritual issues of ‘existence and essence’. For example, there is a philosophy of workplace behaviour in management and leadership referred to as ‘transformational leadership’ developed by Robert Greenleaf who concluded through his practice that management from the perspective of a ‘servant’ was the most effective. Developments by Burns, Bass and Avolio and personal construct research by Alimo-Metcalfe led to a conclusion that effective leadership’s ‘...fundamental themes are ‘servant-hood’, connection, transparency, and partnership’ (Alimo-Metcalfe, 2005). These transformational leadership ‘themes’ appear to be directly related to concepts of spirituality discussed so far - and leadership decisions in this mode seem likely to involve ‘spiritual’ considerations which may be phenomenologically observable by their outcomes and expression.

An approach which extends the ‘transformational’ concept is Eisler and Montuori’s (2003) ‘dominator vs. partnership’ continuum model of spirituality. The dominator polarity is a spirituality ‘abstracted’ from daily life, enabling people to withdraw to deal with life or to enforce their perspectives on others; the partnership polarity by contrast speaks of informing our everyday spirituality with an emphasis on non-hierarchical relationships, empathy and caring. The partnership dimension is favoured and the dangers of the dominator typology are discussed. The partnership aspect is believed to be most appropriate for organisations, with the caution that spirituality at work is not to be ‘...diluted into no more than another diversion’ (op.cit:47). This model sees SaW as essentially the quest for deeper meaning and emphasises the transforming activity that is required:

...developing partnership spirituality... is a process that requires ongoing learning.  It is a process that involves cognition (thinking), emotion (feeling) and conation (will).   It is both inner and outer directed.  And it requires action.
(Op.cit:54)

The association of thought, feeling and will with spirituality and action is useful in identifying elements that are open to phenomenological enquiry. Thus, if spirituality does drive the values involved in decision-making by public servants and their ethical thinking, then spirituality at work is indeed an issue of public interest. It is the ground of the professional ethic that is argued by Daryl Koehn when she concludes, in speaking of ‘pledge-based’ professionals (i.e. professional people, who act under oath or other binding persuasion – such as police officers) that:

...what is truly distinctive about the professions is their distinctive moral commitment to serve a client good which is inherently individualistic and intrinsically good...
Koehn (1994:179)

Having made this observation about ‘moral commitment’ however, Koehn makes no comment on how ‘the professional’ comes to make the judgments necessary to achieve this end. The premise of this research seeks to address this gap by examining the ‘individualistic and intrinsically good’ elements that contribute to ‘serving a client good’. To do this, I will need to pursue the psycho-spiritual constructs referred to by Canda, who integrates relevant psychology, spirituality and philosophy in the context of ‘applied wisdom’ for social workers (in this context almost entirely analogous to police officers) when he says:

...transpersonal theory suggests a concept of the self that is interdependent and united with others. ... Freedom to determine one’s life goals, morals and spiritual perspective implies responsibility to support other people’s freedom and efforts to so the same... Freedom is a transactional process, not merely a matter of formal rights or legal injunctions.
Canda (1998:101-2)

In the light of this ‘mutuality’ perspective, my focus upon everyday decision-making and problem solving for understanding the generality of the ethical, moral and value principles that apply to ‘typical’ situations seems vital. However, a contrasting perspective through examining ‘atypical’ decisions may be very revealing and may need to be considered at some stage.

The research proposal – method and methodology in more detail

Some writers, such as Giacalone and Jurkiewicz are adamant that the spirit-work connection is, and must be, ‘objectively measurable’ in the workplace to be meaningful. I have commented above that I am wary of such approaches that seek to link the ‘spirit-work’ connection too directly with what they call the ‘common end of maximising organisational performance,’ which Brown (2003) also highlights as a potentially cynical approach. As my focus is upon the interior process of the individual and the meaning of their experience, rather than seeking to justify performance application through logic or quantitative evidence, this research will be qualitative, contextual and naturalistic in orientation. The validity of this work will be oriented to the modality of ‘clear, detailed and in-depth description’ that allows ‘others to decide the extent to which findings... are generalisable...’ as argued by Schofield in Cohen, Manion and Morrison (2000).

I will use narrative and content analysis methodologies as I am seeking to explore personal accounts of deep, individual life perspectives and only the participants are uniquely qualified to comment upon their experience and worldview and I am seeking ‘rich description of experience’ rather than ‘explanation’ in the mode Robert Atkinson describes:

Life storytelling requires reflection on events and experiences that the teller may not have thought about fully. ...give words to thoughts or feelings that may not have had words before. Researchers using life stories will realise that each one is meaningful, full of personally sacred elements, valid, valuable, linked to all others...
Atkinson (1998:20)

In order to explore those ‘sacred, valuable, linked’ elements, I will conduct interviews as informal, but in-depth ‘managed conversations’ between me, as the researcher, and the participants (e.g. Cohen, Manion and Morrison, 2000). To interpret the findings, I will develop a framework to apply to the field research transcripts and observations to analyse the content against themes such as those I have discussed so far, and others. The transcribed and analysed findings will be compared with the literature to imply whether there are any constructs of ‘spirituality’ therein and what, if any, relationship with ‘values, ethics, morals and principles’ is revealed in the conversations.

The respondent group will be experienced officers serving with the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) from different roles and varying levels of responsibility. The rationale for seeking to engage with officers from the NPIA is as follows:

• I am familiar with the organisation.
• Officers are likely to be broadly experienced.
• The NPIA recruits officers on secondment from forces in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, making access to diverse backgrounds efficient.
• Participants will be familiar with the process of personal reflection.

It could be argued that my familiarity with the work environment has potential disadvantages as I may fail to investigate responses that are ambivalent, believing that I understand what is being said through assumption. As I commented earlier, the technique of ‘bracketing’ in phenomenology is to consciously suspend interpretation of the incoming data that triggers personal introjects and links with experience. I acknowledge the risk and will work to minimise it through a pilot process and careful reflection upon each interview, but I am academically and practically experienced to interview in a style that will look for potential bias and actively seeks balance. However, the strength of the process is that I may understand references that might be obscure to others and I will know how to pursue them to best effect. Ginger Charles refers to the difficulty of accessing suitable law enforcement participants for her PhD research:

…there was hesitancy among police officers to trust completely one of their own until they were confident that the researcher was from the same culture. Therefore, anyone attempting any further research in the police community should expect reluctance from the police culture, particularly if he or she is not part of the police culture.
Charles (2005:149)

Charles also concluded that her study of officers with a self-identified Christian religious-spiritual orientation was limited and that further work to question other aspects of spirituality in policing would be desirable.

Additional research in this area might also explore a “secular” approach in policing. Do these spiritual qualities and values appear in a secular approach? What does policing look like when a police officer has no belief system? The questions and comparisons may provide additional insights into spirituality…
(Op.cit)

The research I propose may go some way to addressing these questions. Interviewees will be encouraged to speak in general about their experience as a police officer in making everyday decisions and solving problems in their work. It will be emphasised that their perceived level of knowledge, skill and technical competence in the use of theories and models is not particularly sought, but that the focus is upon thoughts, feelings and actions, and where the values, opinions, morals and ethics that drive the individual to act as they do, come from.

From previous studies, it is clear that officers will relate to many factors that drive behaviour, including socialisation, psychology and personality from ‘nature and nurture’ perspectives. Some may link immediately into fundamental beliefs about the nature and value of life, moral frameworks, religious or otherwise spiritual; some may relate to ‘human rights’ as legal and/or moral imperatives. Some officers may be more concerned with just their own survival. For instance, in his PhD thesis, Smith (2004:298) found that some officers:

…said they coped with the demands… by mentally distancing themselves from their feelings and emotions.  Often they spoke of using their police uniform as a source of protection in their own mind, like putting on a metaphorical suit of armour, which they used to protect themselves and their feelings from the demands of their role.  Some officers went further and said that they had to adopt a whole thought process and demeanour of immortality, otherwise they said they would be unable to do the job they did. 

In considering this, Smith found the image telling, envisaging:

…that if this ‘suit of armour’ was worn every day for many years then perhaps it began to be removed less and less at the end of the shift, until it remained on permanently…
(op.cit.)

Smith wondered if the officer would inevitably change in response to this negative dissonance and concluded that many did enter into ‘blocked’ denial of feelings as extreme coping strategies, but he also found evidence that some officers:

…indicated that the opportunity to contribute to the community in a positive way meant that they felt their role was a rewarding and spiritually uplifting one. 
(op.cit:302)

A key question of course would be to see if it is possible to discover if there are identifiable differences in the ‘being’, as expressed in attitudes, morals, values and ethics of officers who do and do not ‘wear armour’. Smith found that his participants said that ‘they did not do anything at work in relation to their spiritual beliefs’ (op.cit:304) as ‘policing was seen as a task-focused activity and people could not see the relevance of spirituality to this’, or that ‘spirituality was too private, or too personal a subject to talk about with work colleagues’, and ‘spirituality was a topic suppressed at work because people feared they would be derided, criticised or ostracised if they did raise the subject’ (op.cit:305) Smith did also find that‘…others however suggested that officers could use alternatives strategies which required them to be spiritually and emotionally intelligent so as to be able to know themselves well and be able to manage their own emotions and feelings effectively’ (op.cit:306).

A key difference between Smith’s research and my own proposal is that I do not intend to ask about ‘spirituality’ directly, but will engage each participant in an exploration of their experiences and their concept of decision-making and problem solving. The focus will be upon praxis; what an individual actually ‘does’ in relation to their inner process and beliefs and how the doing or failure to do things in accord with their beliefs, values, morals and principles, affects the quality of their life at work (and possibly the interface between work and ‘the rest’ of their life). A more structured dialectical approach to the interview may arise as I seek to gently probe and challenge the interviewee’s thoughts and reflections, through the use of systematically juxtaposed argument, interpretation or theory. This will be necessary to try and test what the contributor really believes; how they resolve internal conflict and if/how they translate this resolution into action with any consistency.

Although I have stated that I reject the idea of systematised analysis that leans deliberately towards the idea of meeting high tests of alleged ‘objectivity’ through ‘quantitative’ attempts to research issues related to concepts of spirituality, I believe that qualitative methodology should be epistemologically sound and all measures that can be put into place to ensure rigour, should be employed. To this end I will follow up the individual interviews with focus type groups involving officers, some of whom will have been interviewed and some of whom will not. These groups will be co-facilitated and the perceptions of my partner will be recorded, analysed and entered into the overall data. In this way I will employ an approach explained by Swinton and Mowatt (2006) as hermeneutic phenomenology. This combines concern for the ‘lived experience’ of the phenomenological oeuvre with that of the hermeneutical perspective of interpretation. They describe hermeneutics as being both ontological and epistemological – that is concerned with the essential nature of the human as a naturally ‘interpreting being’ as well as more intellectually concerned with theories of justified belief.

Approaching the inherent transdisciplinarity of spirituality

Despite the lack of a clear ‘theory of spirituality’ and the number of implicit rather than explicit hypotheses I hope that this work may eventually contribute to a learning paradigm that will encourage people to reflect upon the deeper motivations for making the decisions they do and help develop holistic decision-making models. I am most interested in a pragmatic approach to ethics, morals and spirituality. I see the practical outworking of virtue as being firstly the only thing that offers observable and analysable change and secondly that establishing a sincere and meaningful transdisciplinary exploration of spirituality as being the only ‘subject-theme’ that has the potential to genuinely cross all human endeavour, experience and being.

In referring to transdisciplinarity, I wish to differentiate it from inter-disciplinarity, which I conceive as the way in which identifiably different traditions and methods agree to specific programmes of enquiry, working together towards some identified aim, but which to a greater or lesser extent still remain separate. Transdisciplinarity, in contrast, is the integrating meta-perspective that encourages contributors from any and all disciplines to share everything they know, feel and question in a way that surrenders ownership of the issue and thus transcends the potential problems of a disciplinary silo mentality. If we agree that everyone experiences spirituality in some way, no one may claim the last word on it. Experience takes precedence over disciplinary concerns, which are then able to contribute perspectives without domination. This belief is what led to my decision to propose ‘spirituality’ as an ‘inherently transdisciplinary’ subject and one that expresses the uplifting potential of seeing Gaita’s idea of the ‘universal in the particular’ realised (cf. Gaita (2000) in Robinson (2008:92)).

Addressing what workplace spirituality is ‘about’ and how to develop it by understanding what it ‘does’ and what ‘effect’ it has on and through individuals, over the prevalent concern for defining what the ultimately indefinable ‘is’, will help address Long and McLeod’s observation that:

Few researchers focused on the question of how to develop the spirituality of individuals within organizations, largely because the need to clearly understand it seems to have taken precedence over its development.
Long and McLeod (2006:10)

If finding that the subjects of this study do make decisions and solve problems in essentially ‘spiritual’ ways, this might have implications for developing, for example:

• environments that enable people to ‘live their work with congruence’
• enhanced diversity and relevance in the approach to professional ethics
• opportunities to express and share spiritual values and being, which in turn might:
• help strengthen understanding, respect and communication between colleagues and
• positively affect relationships with client groups served by the organisation

These outcomes I would characterise as being essentially transdisciplinary in their nature as they require the active participation of all, from self-examination, to self-expression of virtue, to active relationship and community activity (the ‘polis’ of Aristotle). In this way, the plural expression of human wisdom is harnessed towards reciprocal responsibility and accountability for actions, through awareness of the other (Robinson, 2008).

If, on the other hand, no meaningful correlation can be shown between spirituality, ethics, values and professional practice through decision-making and problem-solving, there may be a need to further examine structural issues in the professional development of individuals who are required to apply ‘ethical judgments’ to their everyday work, as there is a significant literature that indicates such a finding would potentially represent a significant dysfunction, possibly serious fractures, in the interface between our private and public lives. A detailed analysis of inhibitions to the expression of spirituality at work and an explanation for its absence from decision-making and problem-solving would be significant and may have implications for professional ethical processes in the workplace.

I return again to Gary Boelhower (2008) quoting from his penultimate paragraph: ‘The skills of informed decision making must become a way of life if they are to lead to effective, life-giving decisions and practical wisdom.’ To this I say ‘amen’, but with the caveat that we look ever more deeply into the root of those ‘skills’, for they may not necessarily be what they seem. The theological wisdom traditions have collated, exemplified and perpetuated much of what is wise and good, but I contend that the wisest and best is an examined, eclectic, personal and plural journey from grounded to transcendent self. Rollo May (1953) from a perspective of existential psychology, held that meaning in life is created through making conscious choices and about how we confront our limits and express our potential, which requires us to commit to our values by acting on them. This is what Elena Mustakova-Possardt (2003:44) calls ‘an individual way of being’ which is optimally expressed through a ‘critical consciousness’ oriented towards living life with a moral as opposed to an expediency motivation and this is one model that I propose to use extensively in analysing the narrative data.

This enquiry is therefore concerned with investigating aspects of the ground of being that ‘knows’. It is about whether – and if so, how - in a particular work context, people may express a moral choice to act, offering self in plural relationships, in service to the community – unafraid to engage with the other in a process whereby we may both lose and find true self. This relates to Eleni Tzouramani’s conclusion, following research with sixteen participants over a wide demographic into spirituality and identity at work:

Building up from relational and holistic repertoires, participants place the emphasis on relationships to construct their reality.
Tzouramani (2008:221)

Somehow, this seems to me to be a meaningful – and inherently transdisciplinary - expression of moral expediency at the heart of spirituality. I hope that it stimulates conversation.