Management control in a spiritually-charged organisation

Recent research suggests that there is considerable interest among scholars to integrate spirituality into the workplace. One gap in the literature pertains to management control in organisations with a collection of spiritually-oriented employees (a spiritually-charged organisation); our paper fills this gap. This conceptual paper employs a hermeneutic methodology by reviewing and interpreting spiritual literature, applying selected concepts to the modern workplace and designing a management control system to align with the values of such organisations. It conceptualises spirituality from the perspectives of the important concepts of Dharma and Nishkama Karma. This paper offers the position that the management control process would be different in a spiritually-charged organisation where employees are likely to be intrinsically motivated and the firm's values and goals would appeal to the moral values of its employees. We argue that workplace spirituality should be considered an important contingency factor for organisational management, in particular related to managing with the concept of Dharma in mind. Finally, we discuss transformational leadership practices, such as inspiring a shared vision, which are consistent with the nature of such organisations.