Corporate chaplains: Clergy role enactment in the for-profit organization

Abstract

This study explored the phenomenon of spiritually-oriented organizational support; particularly how corporate chaplains manage the role negotiation and enactment that occurs in their simultaneous roles as clergy in the community and their roles as corporate chaplains. Findings demonstrated that role negotiation and enactment was trumped by chaplains' ubiquitous identification with their religious vocation, as the particular jobs as clergy (i.e. minister) and corporate chaplain seemed to fall under the wider umbrella of vocation. Thus any context (job) may be integrated as long as it allows the individuals to pursue their vocations. Second, the findings acknowledged how strategic ambiguity positively supported the situational emergence of the chaplain's role and the individualization of those roles.