Spirituality, Corporate Culture, and American Business: The Neoliberal Ethic and the Spirit of Global Capital (Critiquing Religion: Discourse, Culture, Power)

By the early twenty-first century, Americans had embraced a holistic vision of work, that one's job should be imbued with meaning and purpose, that business should serve not only stockholders but also the common good, and that, for many, should attend to the “spiritual” health of individuals and society alike. While many voices celebrate efforts to introduce “spirituality in the workplace” as a recent innovation that holds the potential to positively transform business and the American workplace, James Dennis LoRusso argues that workplace spirituality is in fact more closely aligned with neoliberal ideologies that serve the interests of private wealth and undermine the power of working people. LoRusso traces how this new moral language of business emerged as part of the larger shift away from the post-New Deal welfare state towards today's global market-oriented social order. Building on other studies that emphasize the link between American religious conservatism and the rise of global capitalism, LoRusso shows how progressive “spirituality” remains a vital part of this story as well. Drawing on cultural history as well as case studies from New York City and San Francisco of businesses and leading advocates of workplace spirituality, this book argues that that religion reveals much about work, corporate culture, and business in contemporary America. Cover -- Half Title -- Series -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- A new religious movement? A progressive business practice?Or capitalist appropriation? -- The entanglement of spirituality, corporate culture, andAmerican business -- Conceptualizing neoliberalism and globalization -- Structure and scope -- Part One The Changing Discourse of Business -- 1 The Death and Resurrection of a Craftsman: Toward a New Mythology of Work -- Management as a moral enterprise -- Work as a spiritual project -- Conclusion -- 2 A New Business for Business -- Management: America's elixir -- Servant-leadership -- Work in America -- Willis Harman and humanistic capitalism -- 3 Management, Spirituality, and Religion: Theology and Spiritual Practice in Neoliberal Society -- The neoliberal workplace -- Inventing a spirituality for the workplace -- Neoliberal theology -- Part Two Religion and Spirituality in the New Economy -- 4 Zen and the Art of Microprocessing: Liberating the Entrepreneurial Spirit in Silicon Valley -- The seeker entrepreneur: Steve Jobs -- Spiritual bricolage -- The "Reality Distortion Field"--Les Kaye: Zen and work -- 5 Conscious Capitalism: Looser Selves, Freer Markets -- David Schwerin and the genesis of Conscious Capitalism -- Megatrends: A spiritual vision of business -- Libertarian spirituality -- Mapping a neoliberal habitus -- Part Three Formations of Spiritual Labor -- 6 Not the Usual Suspects: Real Estate Rabbis, Monastic Managers, and Spiritual Salesmen in the Big Apple -- The New York groups -- Competing aims -- Class power, the Great Recession, and neoliberalism -- 7 Sacred Commerce: Neoliberal Spiritualities in a West-Coast Coffee Chain -- Café Gratitude and Sacred Commerce -- Spiritual rhetoric at Café Gratitude -- Embodying neoliberalism -- Daily "clearings"--Abounding River Workshop "By the early twenty-first century, Americans had embraced a holistic vision of work, that one's job should be imbued with meaning and purpose, that business should serve not only stockholders but also the common good, and that, for many, should attend to the "spiritual" health of individuals and society alike. While many voices celebrate efforts to introduce "spirituality in the workplace" as a recent innovation that holds the potential to positively transform business and the American workplace, James Dennis LoRusso argues that workplace spirituality is in fact more closely aligned with neoliberal ideologies that serve the interests of private wealth and undermine the power of working people. LoRusso traces how this new moral language of business emerged as part of the larger shift away from the post-New Deal welfare state towards today's global market-oriented social order. Building on other studies that emphasize the link between American religious conservatism and the rise of global capitalism, LoRusso shows how progressive "spirituality" remains a vital part of this story as well. Drawing on cultural history as well as case studies from New York City and San Francisco of businesses and leading advocates of workplace spirituality, this book argues that religion reveals much about work, corporate culture, and business in contemporary America."--Bloomsbury Publishing. By the early twenty-first century, Americans had embraced a holistic vision of work, that one's job should be imbued with meaning and purpose, that business should serve not only stockholders but also the common good, and that, for many, should attend to the "spiritual" health of individuals and society alike. While many voices celebrate efforts to introduce "spirituality in the workplace" as a recent innovation that holds the potential to positively transform business and the American workplace, James Dennis LoRusso argues that workplace spirituality is in fact more closely aligned with neoliberal ideologies that serve the interests of private wealth and undermine the power of working people. LoRusso traces how this new moral language of business emerged as part of the larger shift away from the post-New Deal welfare state towards today's global market-oriented social order. Building on other studies that emphasize the link between American religious conservatism and the rise of global capitalism, LoRusso shows how progressive "spirituality" remains a vital part of this story as well.0Drawing on cultural history as well as case studies from New York City and San Francisco of businesses and leading advocates of workplace spirituality, this book argues that that religion reveals much about work, corporate culture, and business in contemporary America