Spiritual identity, stakeholder attributes, and family business workplace spirituality stakeholder salience

In this paper, we argue that the spiritual identity of members of a family business can positively or negatively impact the salience of stakeholders to the complex coalition of decision-makers that comprises managers in that business. Utilizing stakeholder salience theory and role theory, we examine the complex theoretical relationships among spiritual identity, stakeholder attributes, and family business stakeholder salience. This examination reveals the multidimensionality of workplace spirituality and the need for finer-grained distinctions in stakeholder attributes, to better represent the complexities inherent in a family business context. This article develops four propositions, through which we offer the following contributions to the literature on family business workplace spirituality: (1) new analysis frameworks for future use, (2) prototypical descriptions of stakeholder types and representative vignettes for making finer-grained distinctions, (3) multidimensional implications for exploring the somewhat unexpected or under-considered topics in the workplace spirituality literature, and (4) proposals for family-business-specific effects for workplace spirituality on outcomes that arise from inherent family ties in businesses.