Suggestive Objects at Work: A New Form of Organizational Spirituality?

Abstract

In Western secular societies, spiritual life is no longer limited to classical religious institutions but can also be found at workplace organizations. While spirituality is conventionally understood as a subjective and internal process, this paper proposes the concept of ‘suggestive objects’, constructed by combining insights from Gabriel Tarde's sociology with Bruno Latour's actor-network theory, to theorize the material dimension of organizational spirituality. The sacred in organizations arises not from the internalization of collective values but through the establishment of material scaffolding. This has deep implications for our understanding of the sacred, including a better appreciation of the way that suggestive objects make the sacred durable, the way they organize it.

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