Comillas Pontifical University. Madrid (Spain)
October 16th, 2026
Summary:
In organizational contexts increasingly shaped by uncertainty, moral complexity, and the coexistence of multiple values, the logic of instrumental rationality and optimization cannot fully explain decision-making. Although these approaches have dominated the literature, they prove limited when decisions involve broader human, ethical, and social consequences. At the same time, research on organizational spirituality has focused on values or individual experiences, without addressing how these dimensions translate into concrete practices within organizations. In this context, spiritual discernment emerges as a potential pathway to integrate cognitive, emotional, ethical, and spiritual dimensions into organizational decision-making. However, there remains a lack of evidence regarding the conditions that enable its adoption and application in organizational settings. Building on this gap, this dissertation examines the conditions under which employees can perceive spiritual discernment as a practice for organizational decision-making. First, it develops a conceptual framework that identifies a set of enabling and sufficient conditions at the individual level. Second, the empirical analysis extends this framework by incorporating employees’ individual perception of their workplace community; it examines the relatonships among these enabling conditions using an approach based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), analyzing their influence on perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use (PEOU), as well as the mediating mechanisms involved. Finally, this dissertation adopts a configurational approach to analyze how different combinations of these conditions explain both high and low levels of perceived usefulness. In terms of contribution, this research proposes an understanding of spiritual discernment as a soft technology and suggests that its integration within organizations requires the intentional development of enabling conditions that facilitate its use, including the development of individual capacities and individuals' perception of a communal work environment that fosters the integration of rational analysis with broader processes of deliberation. In doing so, the study offers an alternative understanding of organizational decision-making, incorporating cognitive, emotional, ethical, and spiritual dimensions outlined above, which allow for a more comprehensive engagement with human and organizational complexity.
Descriptors: Economic Sciences, Organization and management of enterprises, Financial management
Keywords: Spiritual discernment, Organizational decision-making, Workplace spirituality, Organizational spirituality, Soft technology, Technology Acceptance Model.
Citation:
N.C. Verdugo Rojas, "Embedding Spirituality into Organizational Decision-Making: A Study of Enabling Conditions for Spiritual Discernment", PhD. dissertation, Comillas Pontifical University, Madrid, Spain, 2026.
