Finding Joy, Meaning, and Purpose in What You Do
The first ecumenical, evidence-based, and philosophically rigorous examination of spirituality in organizational life. Not self-help. Not woo. The serious scholarly case for meaning, vocation, and spiritual fit at work.
This book broke new ground across four dimensions no prior work had claimed.
The first book to explore workplace spirituality from a genuinely ecumenical perspective — examining what Buddhists, Christians, New Agers, and secular humanists share, rather than evangelizing any single tradition.
The first book to systematically examine the empirical evidence for whether workplace spirituality affects employee satisfaction, engagement, and performance — reviewing the organizational research literature with rigor and candor about its limitations.
The first book to bring Nietzsche and Bertrand Russell into serious dialogue with the question of work and meaning — drawing on their critiques of religion and purpose to sharpen rather than dismiss the spiritual questions.
The first book to focus on spiritual development in the tradition of Aquinas — examining how the cultivation of virtues, contemplative practice, and the examined life affects how we lead and how we work.
From individual practice to organizational design to society-level questions — the book maps the full landscape of workplace spirituality.
| Individual | Organization | Organizations & Society |
|---|---|---|
| Vocation choice / calling | Design of work | Business ethics |
| Leadership — values-based, servant leadership | Team and community building | Sustainability |
| Meaning and purpose | Poetry, storytelling, metaphor, ritual, myth | Post-capitalist organizations |
| Well-being, spiritual well-being | Systems thinking, emergence, unfoldment | Social responsibility |
| Creativity & innovation / intuition | Culture change | |
| Work-life balance | Spiritual organizing principles — democracy, anti-hierarchy | |
| Spiritual practices at work — meditation, prayer | Transformation / change | |
| Spiritual experiences at work — joy, epiphany | Interventions — e.g. EAP |
Gibbons wrote the book that needed to be written for our world — showing us how our spirituality is the key to our humanity in business.
— Marshall Goldsmith, New York Times #1 Bestselling Author of Triggers, Mojo, and What Got You Here Won't Get You There
Among the deepest and most important management thinkers of our age — someone whose ideas help us reexamine the role business plays in society and our lives. His latest book is among his most thought-provoking.
— David Bennett, Chairman, Virgin Money PLC and Chairman, Ashmore PLC
Gibbons towers above business thinkers in the way that Drucker did in an earlier era. Even Drucker did not bring to business thinking the breadth of scholarship and originality of thought that Gibbons does.
— Robert Entenmann, EVP, Global Head of E-Commerce, UniCredit; Former Global Head of Markets, ABN-AMRO
Paul Gibbons' excellent book on spirituality at work suggests gaps and weaknesses in the definitions of workplace spirituality, as well as gaps and weaknesses in the evidence that it helps workers and workplaces. His integration with other disciplines, particularly the psychology of religion, business ethics, and organizational science, produced unique and groundbreaking insights.
— Judi Neal, Founder, Tyson Center for Faith and Spirituality in the Workplace
A comprehensive and unflinching look at the conflict between humans as material cogs in the economic machine and the human potential for spiritual thriving. Gibbons' work also gives good guidance for functioning as a spiritual person in businesses driven by the bottom line.
— Don Mayer, Professor of Business Ethics and Legal Studies, University of Denver
From the deep history of human spirituality to the science of flourishing at work — a philosophically serious, empirically grounded journey through what work means and what it could mean.
How did spirituality emerge? A cross-disciplinary account of the origins of religious and spiritual experience — evolutionary biology, anthropology, psychology of religion — and why it remains central to human meaning-making in a secular age.
OriginsThe landscape of contemporary spirituality: Buddhism, New Age movements, contemplative Christianity, secular humanism, and the "spiritual but not religious" majority. What do they share? Where do they diverge? And what does an ecumenical approach allow us to see that a sectarian one misses?
EcumenicalIn the tradition of Aquinas and the contemplative philosophers, spiritual development is not passive — it is cultivated. This chapter examines models of spiritual growth, the role of virtue ethics, and how the examined life changes how we work and lead.
Spiritual DevelopmentWork has not always meant what we think it means. A history of how different civilizations — Greek, Hebrew, Christian, industrial, post-industrial — have understood labor, its dignity, and its relationship to human flourishing.
History of WorkThe idea of work as calling is ancient. This chapter examines vocation through theology, philosophy, and psychology — and asks whether the concept of spiritual fit can be operationalized in organizations, and whether it should be.
VocationMindfulness has been commodified by the wellness industry. This chapter goes back to the Buddhist source, examines the neuroscience and psychology, evaluates the quality of the evidence, and distinguishes what is genuinely supported from what is therapeutic folklore.
Mindfulness
Positive psychology, hedonic versus eudaimonic well-being, Seligman's PERMA model — a critical review of the happiness research as it applies to organizational life. What does flourishing actually require, and can organizations provide it?
FlourishingNietzsche, Russell, Frankl, and the existentialists meet the organizational purpose movement. A philosophically serious examination of what purpose means, whether it can be manufactured by corporations, and what the difference is between authentic purpose and purpose as employer branding.
PhilosophyWhat would it mean to lead spiritually? Not as religion, but as a commitment to meaning, to the dignity of those led, and to the examined life. The organizational research on servant leadership, transformational leadership, and values-driven leadership — evaluated against the evidence.
Spiritual LeadershipWritten during the pandemic, this closing chapter examines what the global disruption revealed about work, meaning, and the spiritual questions that our pre-Covid busyness had allowed us to defer. An honest, humane conclusion to a deeply personal book.
Meaning & CrisisThis book goes where the management literature rarely ventures — into philosophy. Three thinkers who never wrote a single business book have more to say about work and meaning than most who did.
On the will to power, the death of God, and what happens to meaning in a disenchanted world — implications for how we lead and why we work.
On the praise of idleness, meaningful work, and the tyranny of busyness — a secular philosopher's case for the examined life in and beyond the workplace.
On virtue, the contemplative life, and spiritual development as a practice — how the tradition of Thomistic ethics illuminates what it means to grow as a person through work.
On meaning-making under extreme conditions — logotherapy and the question of whether organizations can provide the kind of meaning human beings actually need.
Gibbons' exploration into the relationship between work and purpose embraces the diversity of spiritual experience while envisioning a common starting point of shared human values. His arguments are clear and passionate, resonating a pearl of practical wisdom and a new vision for the role of spirituality in the workplace.
Tyler Mongan · President, Ha:ku Global
The management section is full of books about purpose, meaning, and mindfulness that are long on inspiration and short on evidence. This is not one of those books.
It examines the organizational research on spiritual fit, mindfulness, and flourishing — including the gaps and weaknesses in that evidence. It draws on philosophy, theology, evolutionary biology, and organizational psychology. It asks the hard questions: whether workplace spirituality helps workers and organizations, or whether it is a cultural imposition dressed in human-flourishing language.
The answer is not simple. And that is precisely why the book is worth reading.
Available in Kindle and paperback. Book I in the Humanizing Business series.
