Searching for Spiritual Intuition in Management

Abstract

This research is a search for spiritual intuition in the management literature. Spiritual intuition research is slight compared with research into other types of intuition (creative, expert, moral and social). This article: (a) searched and reviewed research on spiritual intuition in management; (b) identified Frances Vaughan as one of the primary exponents of the concept; (c) traced backwards from Vaughan into transpersonal psychology and Jung; (d) found evidence for spiritual intuition in the work of Willian James and Abraham Maslow; (e) identified links between spiritual intuition and other types of intelligences and capabilities. This article adds a fifth type of intuition to the four extant types and shows how it is relevant for management. The types of intuition are related, but they draw on different source disciplines (Jungian/ transpersonal/humanistic psychology in spiritual intuition, mainstream behavioural science in the case of the other four types) and have different implications for management. A framework is presented encapsulating the five types, and spiritual intuition is proposed as being an intuition that is fundamentally different in type in terms of its ontology, epistemology, and methods of inquiry.