Spirituality, administration, and normativity in current church organization An empirical study of the organizational culture in three church denominations, under conditions of social change

Abstract

The paper addresses issues regarding the current balance between spirituality and administration in different church denominations using an interdisciplinary approach which combines management science and theology. It presents a comparative study of organizational culture of the Roman Catholic Church, a Lutheran church, and a Reformed church with the use of the questionnaire based on the Competing Values Framework (Cameron/Quinn) and qualitative interviews with leading persons in church. The authors discuss the findings from two different but complementary perspectives: in relation to the four types of organizational cultures in the Cameron/ Quinn framework, and as a result of the specific denominational semantics represented in the questionnaire used for the study. The results show how the question of modernity is reflected in organizational culture of churches, and how deeply the respondents' perception of church is influenced by inherent normativity. One of the central conclusions is that religiously rooted normativity serves as an instrument of balancing the administrative and the spiritual in church.