This chapter aims to cast light on the vastly different ways in which individual leaders and followers live out their own religious commitments in the workplace. I have already discussed many kinds of conflicts that can occur from differences in employees' beliefs and practices, but I have yet to delineate the varieties of religious expression at work. For some people, being religious means they dress or act in ways that obviously set them apart from most of their co-workers. For others, it refers to their own understanding of their work as religious work or to their quiet actions to help co-workers or customers. Employees who call themselves spiritual, secular, or atheistic can also live out their deepest values and commitments in the workplace in ways that are readily compared to religious expression.

This chapter begins by drawing upon a deceptively simple distinction between individual and institutional expressions of religion. The distinction does not provide a magic key to unlock the confusion or ambiguities surrounding appropriate roles for religion and spirituality in the workplace. However, it does offer insight into the different ways – sometimes conflicting – in which scholars employ phrases like “workplace religion.” Is workplace religion about the religion that individual employees bring to work or is it about the religious ethos of the organization itself? It may be both; this chapter and the following one emphasize the importance of recognizing differences between individual and institutional expressions.