Garrett Potts

University of South Florida | USF · Department of Religious Studies

This chapter demonstrates the role that displacement can play in generating moral injury (MI) within refugee communities. To better understand the consequences of displacement, it considers how individuals' identities and values are formed through their local communities. While there are many reasons that displacement ought to be understood as a po...

Searching for your ‘calling’ can be a source of joy – but also stress and distraction. As it turns out, the way that people think about the meaning of work matters. Pursuing meaning in terms of individual success and achievement makes the goal post of happiness become elusive. What if meaning finds us when we’re not so focused on looking for it?

This audio discussion highlights the central themes of my monograph, Work as a Calling, and it engages with the insightful questions of Edward David, who published a review of my book in Business Ethics Quarterly (BEQ).

This chapter aims to carefully distinguish Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from Moral Injury (MI) and review the role of the spiritual dimension in the causation, healing, and prevention of both syndromes. We argue that by giving due consideration to this spiritual dimension, the U.S. military can better prepare soldiers to encounter potentia...

This chapter imagines the case of a leader named John who faces a moral dilemma while managing his team of developers at a social media organization. We show how John draws on virtues and character traits informed by the paradigm of servant leadership to promote democratic deliberation across his team about how to move forward in light of existent...

One in four American patients now identify as religiously unaffiliated. This study utilizes thematic analysis to deliver qualitative results from in-depth interviews conducted with five chaplains at a premier cancer research institution in Florida to envision what care for their spiritual dimension should look like in practice. It demonstrates why...

This chapter considers how ‘work as a calling’ can mitigate declining social capital, which often occurs following unprecedented circumstances. ‘Work as a calling’ situates individuals within tradition-based communities that foster relationships based on collective dedication to historically established standards of excellence. This shared sense of...

In this article, we engage with a theory of management advanced by MacIntyrean scholars of business ethics and organization studies to develop an account of “chronic moral injury” in the workplace. In contrast to what we call “acute moral injury,” which focuses on grave, traumatic events, chronic moral injury results from poor institutional form—wh...

In an effort to consider what the U.S. can do to mitigate threats to the relatively new battlefield of cyberspace, this chapter calls readers’ attention to how critical infrastructure and software breaches often happen. Next, the chapter engages with questions regarding who can help us to learn from the breaches further. An answer is provided in li...

Amidst the exponentially growing interest in "work as a calling," contemporary discussions have taken an individualistic turn away from the earlier prosocial character that once marked this orientation to work. Now, discussions about "work as a calling" mostly prioritize personal fulfilment via the pursuit of deeply "meaningful work." Excessive fo...

Research evidencing the consequences of the experience of ‘calling’ have multiplied in recent years. At the same time, concerns have been expressed about the conceptual coherence of the notion as studies have posited a wide variety of senses in which both workers and scholars understand what it means for workers to be called, what they are called t...

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the physical, mental, and spiritual health of many soldiers. As a result, the pandemic has illuminated a need to think holistically about military service members' human nature to promote their well-being and the U.S. military's readiness. Herein, a tridimensional model of understanding the whole soldier, roo...

This paper extends an ongoing discussion about establishing a sharper way to conduct ethical investigations into managerial virtue. It does so by relying on Alasdair MacIntyre's moral philosophy in place of those more dominant approaches taken by scholars who make up the field of positive social science. A connection is drawn herein between a MacIn...

Christopher Dawson identified with sociology, wrote extensively for the original Sociological Review, was a stalwart of the Sociological Society in the interwar years, achieved international recognition as a sociologist, engaged with Karl Mannheim and the Moot, and in the postwar period defended meta-history and the sociologically oriented historic...