Sacralizing leadership: The role of the sacred in enabling organizational sensemaking,cohesion,and identity

Introduction

The concept of leadership is a durable category for most people in our contemporary world. Despite widespread organizational failures, toxic cultures, and unhappy work situations, outside of the academic study of leadership, management, and organizations rarely do you hear regular people question the concept. Leadership seems fixed in our shared imagination and nearly impossible to dislodge from our social constructions of reality. This article seeks to explain one aspect for why this social reality exists, namely that leadership functions as sacred in our contemporary world. But beyond mere cultural description, this article also seeks to go farther and delineate how the harnessing of this concept may actually enhance organizational sensemaking, cohesion, and identity.

British scholar Keith Grint (2010) was one of the first to introduce the category of the sacred as essential for understanding leadership in his article “The sacred in leadership: Separation, sacrifice and silence.” Grint articulates that the traditional concept, based on vast hierarchy around singular charismatic or heroic leaders, has been found to be generally unsatisfying to scholars and practitioners alike. Out of this context, multiple theories of leadership have emerged. Usually they are oriented toward the sharing of authority and responsibility, with distributed and collective leadership being two examples. But it seems the promise of these new configurations currently outpaces the actual long-term performance of them, particularly in large, complex, and long-standing scenarios. These problems led Grint to argue that perhaps we are missing something fundamental to the nature of leadership, the “sacred,” which is “the space within which leadership works.” ¹

While the identification of the concept of the sacred is a novel and insightful contribution to the academic scholarship on leadership, merely naming the term is not sufficient. Scholars also need a coherent definition and, more importantly, a theory for how it functions within organizational life. This article provides both a definition and theory. It also engages the concept of the sacred as a serious resource for practical work related to leadership and organizational culture by grounding the discussion in several common scenarios often encountered in organizational leadership. I will also articulate how the sacralization process works in organizations and point to how ritual and performance theory may be used as a resource for organizational and management studies. The entirety of this article will demonstrate why the category of leadership is so durable in our contemporary world.

The engagement of the sacred is not one rooted in supernaturalistic claims, but rather naturalistic explanations that focus on collective relations and group acting within organizations. The idea of the sacred is not merely a clever metaphor which illuminates already existent scholarship on the subject. Rather, it is a new theoretical perspective and one that requires a more thorough unpacking.

What is meant by the sacred

Most people have a category for what is meant by “sacred.” For many people, this often pertains to something that is evocative of a deep sense of awe in the awareness of something that transcends them. This experience may occur in nature, as they stand before vast swaths of beautiful open expanse; or it may occur in highly personal and meaningful events, such as the birth of a child or the death of a loved one. For those who are more religiously inclined, additional meaningful experiences with religiously significant persons, objects, or ideas may evoke a sense of the sacred. In most cases the sacred seems difficult to articulate and operates a bit via an “I know it when I experience it” sort of method.

Two 20th century thinkers are noteworthy here. Representing the best of a more classic view, for German theologian Rudolf Otto (1957) the sacred refers to an experience that is understood as a super-rational, personal, and a supernatural experience described by the phrase “mysterium tremendum” (1–30). This view sees the sacred as existing outside of material human existence; his is a transcendent view characterized by awe and mystery. Representing a more contemporary view, Mircea Eliade (1961) penned one of the 20th century’s most well-known books on the subject, The Sacred and the Profane. Eliade, like Otto before him, viewed the sacred as pertaining to the supernatural; but, distinct from Otto, Eliade managed to widen his perspective beyond a classical Christian notion of a monotheistic God to include concepts from other traditions in the world. For Eliade, the sacred is critical for maintaining our fundamental categories of space, place, and time. In his system the sacred is an important element of human ordering, functioning, and development without which society would struggle to operate.

For both Otto and Eliade the sacred references something beyond us individually and beyond collective human groupings; but ultimately, they both defer to supernatural explanations of the term. Both tie the origin and functioning of the sacred to a realm beyond the tangible here and now, and in doing so the ultimately theological mystery card is pulled. If the sacred is essential to our understanding of leadership this is problematic because organizational theorists and practitioners are left in the awkward position of having a key concept that is not interrogatable with naturalistic (as opposed to supernaturalistic) explanations. While spirituality or religion may be personally important for individuals within organizations, it is difficult to credibly study the secular whole if a key concept is rooted in an unverifiable domain. Like many thinkers who use the concept of the sacred, both Otto and Eliade hung their figurative sacred hat on a theological articulation of the term. Deferring to another realm may be appropriate for the study of particular religious traditions, but not for a more secularized discourse in organizational studies. For this we need a different theory of the sacred, one that is rooted entirely in naturalistic explanations.

The use of the term “sacred” in this article is likely quite distinct from what many readers might expect. My operative definition is the sacred is a felt experience of individual connection to the larger collective whole. That said, a definition of the sacred does not provide all that is required to understand how the term might work in the academic study of leadership. For this we need a fully developed theory and description and we will turn to the academic study of religion, sociology, and anthropology for this resource. For this task, Emile Durkheim is most useful due to his well-regarded naturalistic theory of religion.

Durkheim’s theory of the sacred

To understand Durkheim’s notion of the sacred it is first necessary to clarify the basics of his larger explanation of religion. Durkheim’s Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912) still stands as a productive sociological theory of religion. Put into one terse concept, for Durkheim “society is God.” He developed this theory through studying his period’s ethnographic descriptions of the indigenous people of Australia and North America.

Contrary to much of the discourse of his time, Durkheim thought that religion was a fruitful enterprise that could provide its adherents with psychological and social benefits. From Durkheim’s (1912) perspective, “religion is first and foremost a system of ideas by means of which individuals imagine the society of which they are members and the obscure yet intimate relations they have with it” (227). This system of beliefs and practices strengthens “the ties between the faithful and their god – their god being only a figurative representation of the society.” Durkheim does not defer to supernatural causes to articulate his system. Instead, his work is rooted in how humans construct meaning via their complex social relationships.

In understanding the concept of the sacred in a Durkheimian system it is helpful to think about the term in two ways. On one hand, something is sacred because it pertains to the collective grouping, versus that which pertains only to the individual. Therefore, it is accurate to see the sacred as the binding agent for a grouping of people or larger society (Durkheim, 1912: 351). This binding is powerful and is described as a form of kinship which transcends other social, biological, or historic relations. On the other hand, the sacred is a mechanism by which the collective world is interpreted back to the individual (Durkheim, 1912: 35). We will see that the sacred provides a way for the singular person to understand their place in their grouping while also interpreting how they should individually act in accordance with its collective ends.

There is nothing inherent about a given sacred thing that sacralizes it, but rather the quality of sacredness is “superadded” to it via the collective feeling it inspires in its followers (Durkheim, 1912: 230, 327, 416). The sacred object, idea, or person is so because of the collective orientation toward it by its adherents. Since the sacred is not inherent in the object, idea, or person, it should come as no surprise that sacrality is transferrable and fluid. Durkheim claims that “society never stops creating new sacred things,” and important to this article is the sacrilizing of people in leadership roles. Durkheim writes:

If society should happen to become infatuated with a man, believing it has found in him its deepest aspirations as well as the means of fulfilling them, then that man will be put in a class by himself and virtually deified. Opinion will confer on him a grandeur that is similar in every way to the grandeur that protects the gods…. The routine deference that men invested with high social positions receive is not qualitatively different from religious respect…. [Speaking of this deference, the follower’s] feeling in these circumstances is so closely akin to the religious feeling that many do not distinguish between them. Sacredness is ascribed to princes, nobles, and political leaders in order to account for the special regard they enjoy…. The moral power with which sacred beings are invested are of fundamentally the same origin and composed of the same elements. (215)

Sacrifice holds some responsibility for the maintenance of the sacred in Durkheim’s (1912: 350–352) system in that it sets the sacred process in motion. It is not merely that individuals need their sacred person, objects, or ideas, but also that the “gods” (sacred beings) require the veneration of their followers. This connection operates as a sort of circle whereby an individual is deemed sacred by the ongoing respect from those around them and thus something can stop being sacred when the followers lose respect. Durkheim famously articulated this with the statement “the gods can no more do without their faithful than the faithful can do without their gods” because, fundamentally, the grouping itself is “god.”

The question of how the Durkheimian system sacralizes a given person, object, or idea is important for our use in the study of leadership. Durkheim argues that any sacralization does not happen instantaneously. Rather it is a collective process whereby individuals come together to “multiply the contacts between them and make those contacts more intimate” (Durkheim, 1912: 343, 350). This charging of the collective relations of the group is what powers the sacred circle. Often this relating is accomplished via ritual or ceremony, in addition to normal day-to-day interactions. The mode by which these rites occur may take different forms. Therefore, many different rituals or ceremonies could be used. The important thing is that this ritualized action provides an organizing and authoritative opportunity for individuals to assume their role in the larger grouping.

The sacred is not static. Rather it dynamically builds (or recedes) based on a powerful positive feedback loop that is tied to the religious saliency of the sacred idea, object, or person. The feedback loop consists of the feeling the individual experiences in relation to the sacred followed by the action of the individual toward the collective ends of the group. This acting then reinforces this same sacrality by strengthening the binding of the group and works in unison with what Durkheim (1912: 218–228) calls “collective effervescence,” whereby the religious system is recharged. Effervescence is developed through the powerful collective experience of a grouping being together and acting toward the group’s symbolic ends.

The sacred is not only a symbol, but it is also a felt experience for its adherents. More precisely Durkheim claims that it is an experience of a “moral force” which could be thought of as a sort of deeply held compulsion imbued in individuals in a community. What makes it moral is that it pertains to the collective binding of this individual with the larger whole and it is experienced by the individual as originating from outside of themselves. This force creates a “genuine respect” out of which an individual acts in accordance with the larger whole.

Following a sacred person, idea, or object is not rooted in some sort of utilitarian calculation of probable positive outcomes that may accrue to the follower. Instead, it is a compulsion from within the individual. This acting seems rational to the person because it derives from a socially coherent understanding of reality. Additionally, the sacred enables the individual to approach their world with a “heightened energy” in which they hold a special kind of confidence in acting (Durkheim, 1912: 211). This unique form of confidence derives from the powerful symbolic capacity of the sacred to “make sense” of the collective complexity of the group.

The sacred provides sense for complex social systems in two ways (Lukes, 1985: 462, 465–470). First, the sacred provides people with an interpretive framework for understanding the complex social relationships around them. But note that the interpretation is fundamentally internal to the individual and works, as we saw earlier, through an experience of a moral force which leads to a genuine respect for the ordering and directing of their social grouping. Second, the sacred provides a basis for the individual to contribute back to the grouping. This is part and parcel to the first idea in that by “understanding” the seemingly natural order of things the person can find their place and perform the functions that is theirs to undertake. The sacred provides a powerful set of social narratives that create the opportunity for an individual to comprehend social realities. Additionally, the individual understands their social placement to be an accurate representation of the reality of their world. This system becomes so engrained and explanative for the adherent that it seems to simply describe the order of existence that seems naturally occurring. The outcome of these workings is the sense that things are just the way they are with little consideration for the long-standing social inertia out of which they arise (Worley, 2013: 72–80). The world seems naturalistically unchangeable, when actually it is completely socially constructed and changeable. ²

Applying the sacred to organizational sensemaking, cohesion, and identity

The sacred pertains to leadership rather than individual leaders. It is a collective phenomenon which frames the relationship between leaders and followers. The sacred enables groups to hold tension with the distinction between roles, rights, responsibilities, and rewards. It is a mutually constructed system that aligns activities and motivations and does so through the moral compulsion and genuine respect it imbues in the individual. The sacred is a socially constructed concept that must be continually and mutually enacted by both followers and leaders. As we will see, the sacred is a macro-mechanism which contributes to sensemaking, group cohesion, and identity formation within an organization. The idea of the “macro” here is in direct response to Weick et al.’s (2005) notion of sensemaking as a “micro-mechanism” which functions within organizations. The sacred’s macro nature is the space in which both sensemaking and group cohesion occur.

The sacred enables sensemaking in organizational life. It does so both by providing an idea of what is happening along with how participants might act toward the grouping’s ends. As Weick et al. (2005) wrote, sensemaking is about both “what’s going on” and “what I do next.” Sensemaking provides significant value in a present organizational moment as it relates to the group’s feelings about their particular leadership regime. These feelings toward the management are important for their ability to align individuals around a shared group cause.

In most organizations, there is an operative set of mental categories, a belief system, which the collective grouping uses to order their acting. Moreover, these beliefs may not be explicitly stated and may actually be carefully embedded in particular ways of acting which are simply “the way we do things around here.” Seen from this angle, decision making would apparently be rooted in a form of organizational culture. Thought of from the perspective of the sacred, the culture is imagined out of social narratives, rituals, and performances which create organizational reality for participants. The imagination of reality orders the experience of individuals at all levels of the organization by legitimizing what is inherently inequitable. “Why is the boss the boss” one may ask? “Because this company values promotion from within; and did you know that he started at the bottom of this company and worked his way up?” Narratives such as this seek to legitimize inequality by calling on institutional culture derived from the organization’s mythology.

As was mentioned earlier, the organizational narratives that the sacred fuels are critically important when things go wrong. The storytelling and operative belief systems provide a way for the organization to symbolically return to its essential mythological self. When a major breakdown occurs, the rationale is usually not directly delivered via empirical facts such as “unsustainable expenditures” or “insufficient market interest,” but rather that “we lost track of our core mission and values.” The common use of the word “core” is a telling example because it signals that organizational mythology is actually about something deeper than operations or outcomes. An organization’s social mythology is about collective identity. The balance sheet, while being technically important, does not directly tie to meaning. Collective identity does. While there may be technical issues at play, these tend to be unsatisfying in providing a sense of meaning because organizational meaning is always tied to collective realities. An organization’s social narratives are the ground in which sensemaking grows.

In considering the legitimation of differing roles let us engage a generic example. Consider a fairly traditional hierarchically led organization in which a singular leader or small leadership team make decisions from above. Assume the leader(s) is well regarded and held in the highest esteem by people on all levels of the company. When this leader(s) enacts consistent actions which are congruent with the larger institutional culture, the organization’s social narratives are strengthened. In this scenario, daily operations progress in a normative way, “business as usual” so to speak. This is consonant with Meindl et al.’s (1985) observation that organizations tend to privilege the symbolic gestures of leaders. Similarly, when things do not go as planned a leadership-sympathetic form of sensemaking is enacted. On the surface it provides an opportunity for feedback from the group to the leader(s) but from a more sophisticated perspective it acts to legitimate the conception of leadership itself. If the leader(s) is perceived as receptive, this temporary failure will end up strengthening the organization’s sense of binding. On the shop floor the sentiment of the followers is that the leader(s) “listens to her people” or has the ability to “correct to changing conditions.” This reinforces the social system with a stronger binding than before. If the leader(s) is perceived as resistant to these learnings, it is likely that over time the esteem in which she is held will diminish. In the latter scenario, the leader(s) is understood to disregard the ideas, perspectives, or needs of her followers. This in turn weakens the binding between individuals within the organizational system.

The thin line between leaders being perceived positively or negatively will likely be significantly tied to the ceremonial and symbolic actions taken by the organization while in crisis. Inevitably meetings will be called, various stakeholders will meet to listen to one other’s views, and recommendations will be made. The meetings themselves are valuable not primarily because of the new insights produced, but rather because of the action of congregating itself (Bolman and Deal, 2017: 287–290). The affective interaction between entities produces a form of collective feeling that “this organization cares about its people,” which is also a form of Durkheimian collective effervescence which undergirds sacrality itself. The symbolism of the meetings is valuable not primarily because of the information it relays, but rather because of the performative and ritualistic role it enacts in upholding the organization’s social narratives. These meetings are rituals in which participants are confirmed in their belief about the organization. But equally important is the fact that they are also ceremonies in which followers have the opportunity to act toward positive shared ends. These actions assist in enacting and reifying the social narratives which bind individuals to the broader whole. All of these elements operate within the larger canopy of the sacred that exists in organizational life.

Under extraordinary circumstances, such as a great failure, the sacrality of the organization’s leader(s) might be destroyed. This rapid loss of sacredness is a genuine existential threat to the organization itself. If desacralization has occurred, serious actions must be taken. Someone, or a group of people, must be organizationally sacrificed. Most typically this occurs via a firing or a major demotion. In so doing, the organization ritually makes right the failure, order is restored, and new sacrality can be reestablished around a new executive leader or set of leaders. This is essential because it provides for the preservation of the concept of “leadership” by sacrificially rooting out what has been collectively perceived as an ineffectual singular leader or group of leaders. Note that in a failure rarely do individuals (or the larger organization) consider whether their model of leadership is flawed, rather they assume that the individual within the structure is at fault. This is a vital theoretical point because it is here that we see how the sacred is so essential for the enactment of leadership. The sacred preserves the category of leadership as a necessary reality, one that does not get questioned in the social system. The reason for this is the same as why the concept of “God” is so rarely questioned in religious monotheism. Instructively here, the sacred status of God is so because the concept pertains to the collectivity of its adherents. Similarly, the concept of “leadership” is sacred for the same reason. Neither can be challenged from within the sacred system.

We have observed that the nuances of how leadership is perceived are critical since the sense being made is fluid and interpreted using information which is ambiguous in and of itself. Sensemaking is hinged on key elements of using and deploying symbols via ritual, ceremony, or speech which help determine for followers their shared meaning. Stepping back and looking at this concept in terms of organizational sacrality, we recall that the sacred pertains to the collective and the sacred is fluid in that it is “superadded” to virtually any entity. Therefore, if the sense provided from a critical mass of the organization itself is not perceived to have been taken seriously by the leader(s) it is likely that organizational cohesion will diminish and the esteem of the individual leader, or larger grouping of leaders, will eventually be held in contempt. If this occurs group binding decreases and the organization may ultimately fall apart.

We see here that sensemaking and binding are connected in that when positive sense is made, binding increases. But this is not a one-way dynamic, it is a self-reinforcing system because binding also increases the likelihood that the group feels that the leader(s) has accounted for their perspective. This reciprocating cycle of good will—to positive interpretation—to furtherance of good will is a reflection of the circular nature of the sacred system. The result of this self-reinforcing system is a form of deeply held “genuine respect” by organizational adherents themselves. It is the sacred respect originally outlined by Durkheim, and we see here how both sensemaking and cohesion operate within this larger sacred system.

It is interesting to note that the sensemaking function is not dependent upon the accuracy of interpretation of the underlying events themselves, which is validated by Mezias and Starbuck (2003). What is important is that the sense that is made is deemed to have been considered and acted upon resulting in a semblance of care for the collective whole. This care regenerates willingness to continue to work together, validates the importance of individuals and groups who are not deemed “leaders,” and binds the whole. We also see the micro-mechanism of sensemaking within the macro-mechanism of the sacred. For it is the sacred which has fueled and sustained the beliefs of the organization which can also be thought of as the organization’s social mythology. Out of these narratives sense is made.

The sacred also pertains to the deeply held attitudes of individuals within organizations. Elsbach (2017:52) states that “further exploration of emotion and sensemaking is crucial to clear up questions such as whether [intraorganizational] institutions are better portrayed as cold cognitive scripts built around rules or as hot emotional attitudes built around values.” The answer deduced from the sacred is a “both-and,” but with a caveat. The sacred system creates a moral compulsion in individuals to act in accordance with shared ends. As we saw earlier in Durkheim’s system, this moral authority leads to a unique confidence in which an individual is confident of their place and role in the larger whole. The meaning created for the individual leads ultimately to a genuine respect that is held by the individual toward the organization, one that is deeper than “cognitive scripts” or “values.” Scripts and values are born out of, nursed to maturity, and maintained as strong social elements because of the macro-mechanism of the sacred.

The sacred is also relevant to the daily actions of individuals in organizations. The benefit of the sacred in any group is the moral compulsion imbued in individuals toward their collective whole. This compulsion leads the individual to act in accordance with their perception of their place in the larger order of organizational existence. As mentioned above, the person performs their role with a heightened sense of confidence in the rightness of their acting. Put into classic religious terms, this translates as something like “God is on our side.” But as we have seen, this sacredness does not need to be explicitly labeled “God” to function, because the system itself rests on the collectivity of the grouping obscured and reinterpreted back to the individual. In this context, the organization is god as it relates to the individual’s role. At its best, the sacredness of the system maintains the feeling within the individual that they are a part of a larger meaningful whole. It does this while obfuscating other elements of organizational life like inequality and differences in responsibility and rewards.

The sacred imbues organizational life with a deeply held sense of being meaningful for the individual participant. The distinction of roles is legitimated within a respect for the natural order of existence which the sacred system defines. In light of this view of reality, differing rights and responsibilities are not just accepted, they seem morally justified. When the saliency of the sacred is high, the organization appears to function well for virtually everyone.

The application of the sacred to leadership theory contributes to clarifying multiple elements of how leadership functions in organizations. The sacred enables three significant elements of organizational existence. First, the sacred explicates how collectively held organizational beliefs manifest in individual acting in an organization. This is an important individual outcome which derives from a collectively held organizational culture. Second, the sacred helps us understand how collective organizational identity is maintained when groups are in crisis and failures occur. This contributes to explaining the resilient nature of the concept of leadership in organizational groupings even when circumstances would dictate that the concept would be most vulnerable to legitimate critique. Third, the self-reinforcing process of sacrality, which is a macro-mechanism, enables organizational sensemaking, which is a micro-mechanism. Out of the combination of these two mechanisms the group’s moral authority is maintained which provides for both group cohesion and produces a unique confidence which is critical to individual acting in an organization.

The quality and work the sacred performs has the possibility of significantly enhancing how we see leadership. As we have seen, the quality of sacredness is one that must be recharged and maintained and is always “superadded” to a person, object, or idea that is sacralized. The sacred moral compulsion in individuals creates a unique confidence for a person in interacting with their world. The work of the sacred is one of symbolic interpretation which helps the individual to understand their collective relations, as they pertain to their grouping, while also providing a moral compulsion for them to contribute to the group’s functioning. From the perspective of the group, the sacred provides a common interpretive framework and a set of social narratives that align people toward shared ends. It also maintains their commitment and compels them toward goals that are not actually in their individualized (utilitarian) interests. It does this all while obscuring the complicated social relations which undergird the network. Importantly, the sacred provides the individual with a mechanism to contribute back to the grouping which further solidifies group cohesion.

Discussion and possibilities for further study

Keith Grint opened a new conversation concerning leadership with his 2010 article. His initial identification of the value of the concept of the “sacred” to organizational studies has paved the way for this article. That said, there is one significant corrective that I wish to assert here, along with suggesting two additional discourses which should be more fully explored in future academic work in the fields of organizational and management studies.

First the corrective. The role of sacrifice in leadership is a main point in Grint’s article but I think Grint overvalues this concept and is mistaken on precisely what it does. Grint (2010) states that “sacrifice constructs the sacred space without which leadership cannot occur” (100). But this is incorrect. Instead, sacrifice is a lesser function which sets into motion the sacralizing process itself which enables the concept of “leadership” to persist. To repeat what I argued in more detail earlier, the Durkheimian process of sacrilization upholds organizational beliefs and identity resulting in the maintenance of the moral authority of the group. Sacrifice is not primary and alone is not sufficient. Instead, sacrifice is essential because it initiates the more macro circular and self-referencing sacralization process articulated throughout this article.

To engage this distinction more fully let us revisit the example I posed earlier about the necessity of a firing in maintaining legitimacy in an organization. On the level of the individual, sacrifice sets in to motion the psychological mechanisms required to bind the individual to their community, legitimate their particular role, and uphold the group narratives. Therefore, the act of firing an individual leader is essential to preserve the larger whole not because it creates the space in which the sacred operates, but rather because it restarts the processes of sacralizing the grouping. It is this ritual and performative action which enables collective effervescence to work. In this coming together, through the post firing meetings and review process, the social mythology of the group is reenvisioned, which is to say the narrative moorings of the group are reestablished. Here we see that the performative elements of the actions following the firing are as important and the decision to fire itself. Without the enactment of meaning via the ritualized acting following the dismissal, the firing may fail to dispel serious doubts about the organization’s current leader(s) and an organization may find itself in a downward spiral of diminishing respect and commitment from its adherents. To tie back to the notion of sacrifice, it is not that sacrificing the leader works to dispel doubt. Instead, the sacrifice of the leader is a first step in the ritual of recharging the group’s sacrality. This is an important and critical distinction, and one with practical significance to organizational leaders, because sacrifice must also be followed by certain ritualized actions in order to be effective.

This naturally leads us to a critically important theoretical component developed in this article. Systems of leadership must be continually resacralized. Looking back at Durkheim’s account of how indigenous communities sacralize their world, we should spend considerable attention in developing new practices which recharge our own organizational groupings. For this task, robust theories of ritual are required. Rites are essential in organizational life because they create stronger and more intimate connections between people, which are important for group cohesion. Additionally, they serve to provide the individual with a sense for their place and connection to the larger organizational whole.

An awareness of the sacralizing process has significant relevance to leadership on the ground and varies depending upon the particular structure of an organization’s leadership. Classic hierarchical organizations, built around the individual leader, benefit from being normative for most people in our contemporary world. Therefore, the burden of maintaining the sacred system is lesser than a newer, more counter-normative, system of leadership. If we wish to further develop lasting and effective new forms of leadership, such as distributed or collective structures, we should pay close attention to the process of sacralization. It may be helpful to draw on resources from disciplines not often tapped in organizational studies, such as ritual and performance studies. Doing so would enable the formation of new organizational rituals and ceremonies which are essential for building new institutional cultures. This type of culture building is not a luxury in an organization, it is an essential element for enabling new leadership configurations to grow and thrive.

To increase the intensity of the sacred in organizations we must pay close attention to ritual theory. As I mentioned earlier, one resource for this task is scholarship from academic fields outside the normal array used in organizational studies. A more robust engagement with theoretical insights from ritual and performance studies could enhance many claims already made by organizational theorists. For instance, Kezar and Eckel (2002b) stated “change strategies seem to be successful if they are culturally coherent or aligned with the culture.” This seems to track closely with the idea of religious and theological imagination, which could be succinctly articulated as the process of making “real” the things in which we believe. In light of this, a fruitful endeavor might be discourse on the further development of “organizational imagination,” the key line of thinking being about how groupings create binding sufficient to enable more diffuse forms of leadership. Additionally, the use of theoretical elements like speech-acts (Austin, 1962), formal rituals and ritual change (Bell, 1989; Rappaport, 1999), liminality (Turner, 1969), rites of passage (Gennep, 1960), and secular ceremony (Warner, 1974) may provide greater depth for discourses related to leadership, management, and organizational culture.

This article has contributed several key points to the discourse related to the sacred and leadership. First, how an organization maintains moral authority and legitimacy has been shown to directly tie back to an individual’s respect and confidence in an organization, which is directly enabled by the collectively operating “sacred” system. The outcome of this system is that the organization’s leadership configuration seems morally justified even to those who least benefit from the current structure. Second, the sacred is the macro-mechanism within which an organization’s key narratives operate. Therefore, the sacred enables the individual to interpret the symbols of an organization and to do so in alignment with the larger whole. This is the work the sacred does and it shows how the sacred upholds organizational sensemaking, cohesion, and identity. In addition to further explaining the concept of leadership in organizations, the sacred also helps us understand and build organizational cultures.

The sacred is an essential notion for our investigation of leadership in the 21st century. As I have attempted to demonstrate, the sacred preserves the category of “leadership” in an organization and insulates it from being seriously questioned by anyone in the social system. Practically speaking, the sacred does not exist in organizations in a sui generis way, rather it is the outcome of an always ongoing process of reestablishment in which all individuals in an organization (often unknowingly) participate. It is an organizational phenomenon that has largely been unexamined, but one that deserves continued scholarly inquiry.