Purpose – The paper aims to study the impact of five dimensions of workplace spirituality (team's sense of community, alignment with organizational values, sense of contribution to society, enjoyment at work, opportunities for inner life) on affective, normative and continuance commitment. Design/methodology/approach – A sample of 361 individuals from 154 organizations were interviewed. Correlations, regressions and cluster analyses were carried out. Findings – The five spirituality dimensions explain 48, 16 and 7 per cent of the unique variance of, respectively, the affective, normative and continuance forms of commitment. The findings suggest that when people experience workplace spirituality, they feel more affectively attached to their organizations, experience a sense of obligation/loyalty towards them, and feel less instrumentally committed. Research limitations/implications – Dependent and independent variables were collected from the same source, simultaneously. This can produce the risk of common method variance, leading to an inflation of statistical relationships. Future studies may use a double source method. A longitudinal research design may also be suitable. Practical implications – By improving spirituality climates, managers can promote organizational commitment and, thus, individual and organizational performance. It is likely that this occurs because people react reciprocally towards an organization that satisfies their spiritual needs, allows them to experience a sense of psychological safety, makes them feel that they are valued as human beings and that they deserve respectful treatment, and allows them to experience senses of purpose, self-determination, enjoyment and belonging. Originality/value – The paper contributes by filling a gap in the organization and management literature, in which empirical studies on organizational spirituality have been scarce until now.

The study of paradox in strategy and organization studies has grown rapidly over the last 25 years. Paradox, as contradictory yet interrelated opposites that exist simultaneously and persist over time, can be qualified as a successful area of study. Yet success, however sweet, may come at a price, namely, premature convergence on theoretical concepts, overconfidence in dominant explanations, and institutionalizing labels that protect dominant logics. We discuss the risk of paradox theory being vulnerable to the paradox of success and focus on ways to avoid narrowness in theory building.

This paper demonstrates how the art form jazz improvisation can be applied to organizational innovative activities, focusing specifically on product innovation. In the past, the literature on product innovation focused on well-planned approaches which followed a clearly-understood structure based on a rational-functionalist paradigm. However, it is becoming increasingly evident that this model is inappropriate in today's highly competitive business environment. A balance between structure and flexibility seems to be an appropriate way to manage the contradicting demands of control and creativity faced by organizations in highly competitive environments. Jazz improvisation provides this synthesis through the concept of `minimal structures'. We characterize the minimal structures that allow jazz improvisers to merge composition and performance, and then proceed to apply this approach to new product development.