Workplace Spirituality, Work-related Attitudes & Organizational Performance: Moderating Effect of Organizational Culture's Elements.
| Date | 01 October 2023 |
| Author | Dhir, Swati |
Introduction
Recently, workplace spirituality has become an eye-catching concept to explore. However, there is a difference between spirituality and workplace spirituality, which is still not clear to management scholars and practitioners. The former is associated with faith, religious beliefs, and organized religion (Marques et al., 2006), whereas the latter is a human-centered aspect, which accumulates self-awareness, life purpose and community engagement. This has led to a better and more rational investigation of spirituality, its construction and its impact on employers and organizations.
Workplace spirituality is an integral part of human beings at the workplace. It can be defined as the "recognition that employees have an inner life which nourishes and is nourished by meaningful work taking place in the context of a community" (Ashmos & Duchon, 2000). In other words, it is a state that provides a feeling of understanding, support, inner wholeness or connectedness. Definition of workplace spirituality consisted in terms of sense of community, meaningful work, and value of organization (Hassan et al., 2016). Therefore, workplace spirituality is considered a crucial element that delimits the concept of self and demonstrates a high order of human awareness (English & Gillen, 2000; Karakas, 2010; Vallabh & Singhal, 2014).
Researchers suggest that workplace spirituality may help to reduce internal and external conflicts and stress. Good atmosphere at work leads to increase in job satisfaction, employee wellbeing and eventually employee will stay long in the workplace. Furthermore, fostering spirituality at the workplace enables an employee to be authentic at work, which increases organizational performance. Workplace spirituality prevails in the culture and increases peer knowledge and it enables their feelings toward others (Giacalone & Jurkiewicz, 2003).
According to Milliman et al. (2003), workplace spirituality shows the importance of employees with his or her task, duties and responsibilities, resulting in enhanced job satisfaction and leads to improved organizational performance. Sheep (2006) suggested that workplace spirituality has potentially strong relevance to the wellbeing of individuals, organizations and societies. Further, the organizational culture is the overarching element, which determines all interactions and upward or down ward flows within the organization. If organizational culture is positive, it may enhance employee satisfaction and his wellbeing, in turn leads to organizational performance which is still an unexplored area, especially in the Indian context.
Therefore, this paper aims to explore the link between workplace spirituality, work-related attitude and organizational performance. Also, it explores the moderating effect of individual elements of organizational culture on organizational performance. Work-related attitude comprises job satisfaction and employee wellbeing. These two elements are a crucial part of work-related attitude because when employees are satisfied with their job and observe an appropriate environment in the form of organization culture, they perform better. The paper tries to analyze the interaction effect of organizational culture elements as hierarchical structure, group structure, developmental and rational structure with job satisfaction (Harrington & Guimaraes, 2005). The study has clearly shown the combined effect of work-related attitude and organizational culture. What follows is a review of prior literature on the selected constructs. Based on this review, hypotheses were developed, and consequently, a research model has been proposed. Next, the research plan is described, thereafter, the results have been discussed. The findings are then discussed with the respective implications for theoretical and practical aspects. Finally, the limitations of this study as well as future research opportunities have been summarized
Workplace Spirituality
Workplace spirituality (WPS) develops trust between individuals by connecting each other for a particular work process that helps organizational culture to improve cooperative feeling, motivation, positivity, which reflects in overall organization performance (Afsar & Rehman, 2015; Khari & Sinha, 2020). In the past, people who preferred individual culture, are now moving toward spiritual values. Workers who trust an organization give their best output and improve organizational performance. The trust establishes a relationship with employees through which they feel satisfied, improve and provide full dedication towards organizational goals. Human beings always need approval from others to find themselves worthy and connected to others, workplace spirituality supports this basis and inculcates this in organizational culture by motivating employees, providing opportunities, improving their risk management capabilities, etc. WPS is a multidimensional construct that behaves as a connecting bridge between individuals and organization (Lee et al., 2014). Some components of WPS such as compassion, mindfulness bring positive change in the employees; when employees inculcate compassion, they have empathy for others and try to alleviate their pain like it is his/her own. On the other hand, mindfulness helps employees to be aware of self of each moment's thought, feeling, bodily sensation, etc (Petchsawang & Duchon, 2009).
Previous studies have shown that there must be a general distinction between individual spirituality and workplace spirituality (Giacalone & Jurkiewicz, 2003). Kolodinsky et al. (2008) stated that individual workplace spirituality consists of spiritual values that an individual brings to the workplace while organizational spirituality is the spiritual values of the organization as perceived by the employees (individual), and further, they concluded that each spirituality is quite a different construct.
Employee Wellbeing
Employee wellbeing is not limited to employee's health or financials but it includes all the aspects that help employees to keep them safe and functioning (Ryan & Deci, 2001) such as physical wellbeing, psychological wellbeing, social wellbeing, financial wellbeing, and spiritual wellbeing (Grant et al., 2007). These are critical areas of wellbeing, which represent the health of the organization (Wilson et al., 2004). Employee wellbeing directly influences employee's productivity (Grant et al., 2007). There is evidence which reveals the impact of wellbeing on performance and survival of employees, ranges from illness, financial issues, turnover, absenteeism to discretionary effort (Danna & Griffin, 1999). The wellbeing of employees should be a prime concern for any organization because it is in the best interest of employees, employer, communities and organization (Hart et al., 2003).
This study presented spirituality as an antecedent of employee wellbeing. As discussed above, the workplace spirituality helps in developing a culture for the organizational environment, which has become the norm for an organization. Moreover, any conflict in the alignment of individual values and organizational values disturbs the work culture in the environment of an organization, which can directly impact employee wellbeing (Grant et al., 2007). Hence, this study hypothesizes that:
H1: WPS positively impacts employee wellbeing.
Job Satisfaction
Job satisfaction is seen as the result of a comparison between the desired outcome and actual result (Cranny et al., 1992; Worth et al., 1992). The difference can be explained through many factors. However, this study has explored the effect of workplace spirituality on job satisfaction. Workplace spirituality accomplishes the inner self needs of the individual and these inner needs are a part of job satisfaction. Hence, we can say that there is a significant relationship between workplace spirituality and job satisfaction (Gupta & Gehlawat, 2013), also meaningful work, interest in work, and community at the workplace are part of WPS, which directly impacts job satisfaction.
Generally, there are higher chances that if any individual is satisfied with life, he/she can be satisfied with any job, irrespective of work or place (Van der Walt & De Klerk, 2014), Therefore, if one is satisfied with life, it means an individual has achieved spirituality, which reflects in his/her intent to accept any work. One view also suggests WPS de velops values and community in an organization, which leads to a positive impact on employee satisfaction (Milliman et al., 1999). One particular study in the field of medicine, shows nurses feel more satisfied with a job where spiritual work environment was present (Reineck & Furino, 2005).
H2: WPS positively impacts employee job satisfaction.
Organizational Performance
Organizational performance is a crucial measure for any organization's success. It is the combination of the output of all employees represented by the unique measures. Organizational performance is not a single direction construct; it is multi-directional. The organizational performance comprises three areas of the firm namely financial performance, product market performance, and shareholder returns (Lomax et al., 2004). In the firm, a sense of...
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