Question

Can Religion be Mixed with Organizational Behavior?

This forum relates to the trend in this country in mixing religion with management and organizational behavior concepts and theories. This can be seen especially with regards to motivational speakers – they are usually hired by organizations and corporations ostensibly to boost employee commitment and productivity. These speakers often emphasize the precepts of religions to get people to work harder and exhibit loyalty to the organization.

Is this development healthy?

Discuss!

Can Religion be Mixed with Organizational Behavior?

This forum relates to the trend in this country in mixing religion with management and organizational behavior concepts and theories. This can be seen especially with regards to motivational speakers – they are usually hired by organizations and corporations ostensibly to boost employee commitment and productivity. These speakers often emphasize the precepts of religions to get people to work harder and exhibit loyalty to the organization.

Is this development healthy?

Discuss!

Answer 1

This development is not so encouraging as it can only be a motivating factor for the organization where the employees are practicing same faith or religion. It is not at all good for the secular organizations,where the employees belong to different faiths as practicing this type of culture may hurt their religious sentiments and they may feel discriminated from those employees, whose religion is emphasized. It may disturb the internal peace and harmony of the organization. The certain points due to which I think this development is not at all encouraging, which are as follows-

1. It is a threat to the practice of equal opportunity act as according do this act, nobody can be discriminated on the basis of religion or caste at employment.Practising this kind of programmes to motivate employees will be to emphasize one religion and biased towards others.

2. It may destroy the feeling of unity or brotherhood prevailing amongst the employees of the organization.If there exist discrimination on religious basis in an organization, the work will have to suffer.It will create an environment of discomfort.

3. It is a challenge to the organization principles of being tolerable to every religion followed by the employees and not to differentiate them on the basis of religion. It is a principle almost followed by every organization as the employees employed by an organization can be of different faiths and religions.

4. The employees should be motivated by different ways and not by any religious sentiments. They can be motivated by promotions, monetary support, training or anything that is related to work and not by any religious internal sentiments.

5. Every person if of the same religion , may not have the same religious sentiments and they may not feel motivated if they were insisted on following certain religious practice for motivation.

6. The employees may not share a comfort level in discussing their religion with the organization authorities.They may feel lack of privacy in the work place.

7.Employees may develop a feeling of lack of religious independence in the organization.

Thus, due to these reasons, religion should not be used as a motivating factor in any organization and steps should be taken to motivate the employees in some other ways.