Introduction

Abstract

Understanding the enactment of human organization necessitates an appreciation of a complex question: how do belief systems inform individual and collective action? In order to describe, assess and offer commentary on organizations of any kind, students and researchers need to seek insight into processes of socialization, identification and commitment; processes to which the notion of belief, with respect to those involved in the co-creation of organizations, is fundamental. While belief has, historically, attracted attention from the disciplines of organizational behaviour and occupational psychology – approaches that draw more or less exclusively from studies that seek to measure or somehow quantify the phenomenon – relatively less focus has been given to its exploration from interpretative perspectives. This volume marks an attempt to move the study of belief forward within management and organization studies by: (1) critically engaging with the notion of belief in work organizations from a variety of interpretative positions; (2) considering how both religious and secular belief is expressed in the workplace and, (3) advancing an original programme of empirical enquiry that applies techniques of autoethnographic representation to the study of belief.