Religion can be explosive, dynamic and amazingly magnanimous: Professor Edwina Pio
“Religion can be explosive, dynamic and amazingly magnanimous,” Professor Edwina Pio, told the full capacity audience, of over 200 people, who had come to hear her inaugural professorial address at AUT’s City Campus this week.
Edwina, a Professor of Diversity at the AUT University Business School, is an educator, author and researcher with a longstanding interest in the intersections between work, ethnicity, religion and pedagogy. She constantly engages with diverse audiences from the academic, business, spiritual and social sectors, many of which were represented at the address.
In her address Edwina focused the intersection between religious expression and organisational practices, a subject explored into her recent book ‘Work and Worship’.
“While the religiously unaffiliated continue to increase, so too do the number of people who consider aspects of religion and spirituality an important part of their daily life.”
Edwina pointed out that global migration has ensured organisations have a rich base of potential employees and access to multifarious worlds, markets and knowledge bases, but said “business leaders have a corresponding obligation to find and celebrate the multiple perspectives in their organisations.”
“Organisations need to push beyond conventional frameworks and challenge themselves and engage with work issues in novel ways. There is a compelling need to include sacred spaces in thinking about secular organisations.”
View the video of Professor Pio’s inaugural professorial address