Jesus Centered Leadership and Business Applications: An Alternative Approach

• Author: Joe M. Ricks,Christopher Doval,Richard Peters
• Published date: 01 December 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/basr.12132
• Date: 01 December 2017

Jesus Centered Leadership

and Business Applications:

An Alternative Approach

RICHARD PETERS, JOE M. RICKS JR., AND CHRISTOPHER DOVAL

ABSTRACT

In this article we evaluate Jesus Centered Leadership

(JCL), a new concept that has emerged in the realm of spiri-

tuality and business management. JCL questions the

“Christianity” of Christian business leadership, and pro-

poses principles for ethical leadership that provide a truer

representation of the teachings and traits of Jesus. We con-

sider these principles and contribute principles of our own,

thereby providing an alternative approach to JCL that

remains consistent with the JCL message of morality but

addresses issues that offer greater opportunities for adop-

tion within existing business and institutional models.

INTRODUCTION

Spirituality, both as a concept and characteristic, has dis-

tinctively informed contemporary management. Multiple

authors have delineated and discussed the influence of

Richard Peters is Associate Professor of Management at the Xavier University of Louisiana,

New Orleans, LA. E-mail: rpeters1@xula.edu. Joe M. Ricks Jr. is Professor of Sales & Market-

ing at the Xavier University of Louisiana, New Orleans, LA. E-mail: jmricks@xula.edu. Christo-

pher Doval is Assistant Professor of Business Administration at the Morgan State University,

Baltimore, MD. E-mail: christopher.doval@gmail.com.

V

C2017 W. Michael Hoffman Center for Business Ethics at Bentley University. Published by

Wiley Periodicals, Inc., 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 9600 Garsington

Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK.

Business and Society Review 122:4 589–612

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morality, faith, ethics, and values on leadership, employee morale

and even strategy in modern organizations (Dent et al. 2005; Fry

2003; Houghton et al. 2016; Karakas 2010; Krishnakumar and

Neck 2002) thereby providing a basis in the literature to discuss

the interaction between business and beliefs.

A recent, nuanced addition to the literature on spirituality is

Jesus Centered Leadership (JCL). This concept was pioneered by

Mabey et al. (2016) in their article “Having Burned the Straw Man

of Christian Spiritual Leadership, what can We Learn from Jesus

About Leading Ethically?” Interestingly, the authors question the

‘Christianity’ of Christian business leadership. They primarily

take issue with the power-centricity, manipulation, and material-

ism that have plagued previous iterations and underpinnings of

Spirituality at Work (SAW) and Spiritual Leadership (SL). They

attempt to extricate or isolate true Christian leadership from gen-

eral SAW/SL dogma. For example, Mabey and colleagues (2016)

argue that spiritual leadership used as a tool to control employee

behavior as well as suppress any dissension is contrary to Jesus’s

willingness to frequently challenge the status quo. Also they fur-

ther suggest that workplace spirituality that is viewed and used

as a means to an end that is primarily in the pursuit of profit is

often inconsistent with Christ-like virtues of humility, honesty,

love, and service.

Their work is both refreshing and enlightening. It provides a

cohesive theoretical framework that addresses some deficiencies

and discrepancies in previous spirituality research. Further, and

more importantly to our work, they offer five practical implications

help inculcate JCL into mainstream business leadership and

operations.

It is these practical implications: (1) interruption, (2) identity, (3)

instrumentality, (4) investment, and (5) internalization, that occupy

our attention.

1

While we deem them to be both relevant and poten-

tially rewarding, we argue that issues with respect to their interpre-

tation and intent may provide significant obstacles to their

successful adoption and ultimately their implementation across

diverse organizational types and settings. As noted previously, JCL

is highly critical of previous SAW/SL approaches for what is per-

ceived as a preoccupation with profit. Thus, in an effort to recap-

ture or return to Jesus’s true message, they prioritize the morality

of Christian leadership, stating that “morality must guide the

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