Spiritual Alignment in the workplace: Discernment or Recruitment?
Abstract
Employees need to fit the organisation that they are employed by, whilst personalities are recruited, their skillsets to match the needs of the workplace. Spiritual alignment with the goals, collegial support and vision of the employer that of the employee can enable a stable and satisfied workforce. However, often in industry, once an employee has been engaged, we see a shift in this alignment: people are expected not to express themselves as they truly are, requested to leave their “attitude at the door” before a shift, and standards and procedures over-rule the organic nature of creativity. Spiritual enlightenment at work should typically create a happier workforce who fit the surroundings and ethos of their organisation, resulting in commitment to the employer, this study identifies how that can take place.
Keywords
Spirituality, commitment, collegial support, Partial Least Squares.
Introduction
Using the organisational spirituality and motivation literature this paper demonstrates that the more spiritual (in organisational terms)employees are, the more committed they tend to be both the industry and individual workplace. Therefore, we highlight that if organisations can align the spirituality of their workplace with that of individual employees, this will lead to a more stable and committed workplace and all the associated benefits of that. We both build and test the limited theory surrounding workplace spirituality by creating a conceptual framework of workplace spirituality, support, commitment and flow then test it in one of the first large scale empirical studies to combine spirituality with workplace commitment in the hospitality industry.
Often mistaken for an effort to encourage religious behaviour in the workplace (Groen, 2001; Renesch & DeFoore, 1996), organisational spirituality refers to much more; a deeper meaning for leadership styles (Briskin, 1998), and embracing what really matters to employees and the organisation, in order for development and improvement (Briskin, 1998). Whilst there is a definite linking of ethics, religion, and spirituality, each, as a concept is very different to the other (Garcia-Zamor, 2003) and those who find workplace spirituality need not always have a religious connotation linked with it (Neck & Milliman, 1994). It has been shown that spirituality began to leave the home and emerge in workplaces following the greed of the 1980’s where pole had the ability to earn vast sums of money, with a diminishing effect on personal values (McLaughlin, 2005). Workplace spirituality has emerged as a full connection of the employee with their organisations core values (Milliman, Czaplewski, & Ferguson, 2003; Mitroff & Denton, 1999a).
This paper, as an initial research question, asks: ‘Does organisational spirituality affect an individual’s commitment to an organisation?’ In order to answer that question it now divides into four main sections, beginning with a two stage literature review of organisational spirituality and commitment. The second section presents our conceptual frameworkand very briefly explains the methodology used in acquiring empirical industry based data which is later analysed. The third is empirical where results are presented and analysed is to illustrate the link between workplace spirituality and workplace commitment. Finally the results are interpreted and applied to industry focusing on developing longevity of service in hospitality organisations.
Literature Review
Organisational Spirituality
Personal spirituality develops when a person searches for meaningful work that gives one a deep feeling of purpose in the work that is chosen to complete (Chalofsky, 2003; Milliman et al., 2003). Motivation to work is found within and is represented by how the employee or organisational member interacts with daily tasks, portrayed by completing activities which give further meaning to not only their own life, but of the lives of those around them (Ashmos & Duchon, 2000; Milliman et al., 2003) in order to build a sense of community and realisation of dignity in one’s own work and how that impacts others in both the workplace and home life (Wheatly, 1994). Religious groups may also show supportive, integrative communities for many of their members (e.g., collegial support in an organisation) (Idler et al., 2003). Often staff are told to leave their attitudes or problems at the door when they come to work, paste on a smile, and be happy and friendly (Callaghan & Thompson, 2002). Organisations that exhibit spirituality have created an environment where both personal and professional lives are able to be infused as one, allowing the individual to express themselves as a whole in the workplace environment (Jurkiewicz & Giacalone, 2004; Saks, 2011). Whilst many organisations acknowledge the importance of spiritual alignment with employees, many often consider the subject taboo (Exline & Bright, 2011; Sense & Fernando, 2010). Whilst spirituality is understood as a separate construct from religion, many organisations still relate the two practices as one, and wish to segregate the principles of “church” or religion, from the operations of their business or work (Exline & Bright, 2011) to reduce perhaps political obligations or implications, or to simplify business decisions making by disposing of heightened moral aspirations or suggestion (Wald, 2009; Whetten, 2004).
As many individuals inadvertently relate their work experiences to their own religious and spiritual beliefs, it is natural for them to also portray their beliefs (whether religious or spiritual) within the work role (Exline & Bright, 2011) which we already appreciate as integration or infusion (Ashmos & Duchon, 2000). This, in turn, has shown to be associated with the tendency to increase not only standards of work through connectedness with the (aligned) organisation, but, also increase the expectations of the operations and beliefs within the workplace and co-workers alike (Bunderson & Thompson, 2009). However, this expectancy may face struggle itself when spiritual workplace behaviour or beliefs are questioned by the organisation (Exline & Bright, 2011; Schaeffer & Mattis, 2012). Struggles of spirituality can arise for a number of reasons in the workplace. The extent of which individuals should be encouraged to express their spirituality may be questioned by leaders or managers as whilst some people may openly encourage the creativity and relationship fostering that comes with true spirituality, others may be intimidated, or merely disinterested (Exline & Bright, 2011). Some individuals may have current or previous experience of being discriminate about how open they are with their connection to work, and become intimated and withdrawn from the organisation – since they are not able to fully immerse or infuse the home and work life relationship that is evident in truly aligned and spiritual encounters (Lynn, Naughton, & Van der Veen, 2013). The level of individual spirituality may be disparate to others within the organisation, or differ from that of the organisation itself, resulting in a feeling of isolation and diminished bonds with workmates, or similarly experienced through a lack of interest in spiritual relationships from others who simply attend work to do a job without meaning (Cavanagh & Bandsuch, 2002; Lips-Wiersma, Dean, & Fornaciari, 2009).
Organisational Commitment
Organisational commitment can be defined as individual identification within a particular organisation, normally that person’s place of work (Porter, Mowday, & Steers, 1979), or place of other interest (church, school, involvement in charitable organisation, etc). The commitment can be further categorised by three categorizing factors:
- Belief and acceptance of the organization’s goals and values
- Individual is willing to exert effort on behalf of the organization
- Individual has a desire to continue their involvement in the organization
(Porter et al., 1979)
Commitment, defined within the above classifications, has a strength beyond loyalty, it requires an active relationship between the individual and organisation, one that ensures that members are contribute not only in order to achieve goals, but to maintain and/or enhance its well-being through passion for the organisation (Wenger & Snyder, 2000). Organisational commitment, though dependant on, differs from job satisfaction as an attitude, in so far as it is considered “global” and reflects affectionate response toward the organisation as a whole, as opposed to merely the task or job in question. Similarly, commitment refers to a feeling of attachment toward the overall organisation (including goals, aims and values), whereas job satisfaction also only concerns the performance area of specific tasks relevant to the persons job (Markovits, Davis, Fay, & Van Dick, 2010; Porter et al., 1979).
This type of commitment draws from the individuals’ attitude toward their organisation. Organisational achievement is dependent on contribution and commitment from employees working toward aims and overall survival (Rousseau, 2004). To this end, as with empowerment, it is important to have clear guidelines between each other of how the individual will perform and contribute within their role, thus creating the psychological contract (Bal, De Lange, Jansen, & Van Der Velde, 2008; Restubog, Bordia, & Bordia, 2009), which consists of promises made between both the employee and employer, or person and the organisation (if not a place of work) (Rousseau, 2004).
‘Flow’ is a feeling of fulfilment experienced by workers who operate with complete involvement, immersing themselves in the task and workplace completely (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975; Fullagar & Kelloway, 2009). Those experiencing flow engage intensely in their role at work, work at full capacity, and seem-less effort that is cognitive through the matching of workplace tasks and personal skills (Fullagar & Kelloway, 2009; Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi, 2002).Whilst early work (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975) shows the main characteristics of Flow to be a balance of skills (personal) and challenge (task-related), more recent research has identified additional dimensions (Jackson, 1996; Jackson & Marsh, 1996a; also see Table 1).
Table 1: Dimensions of Flow
Dimension / DescriptionChallenge-skill balance / For completion to be successful, one must experience a match between the challenge faced within work operations, and skill ability
Merging action and awareness / Prompts automatic response from the participant as task completion become integral to one’s skillset
Clarity of goals / Aware of what they are aiming to achieve by completing tasks which are aligned with the organisations mission or goal statements
Unambiguous feedback / Received directly from the task itself, allowing the individual to understand how well they are performing
Concentration on the task at hand / Sees the participant’s total focus on the activity that they are completing, their total concentration ensures a lack of distraction
Paradox control / Occurs when the individual exercises control over a situation without the feeling of trying, having to be in control This has also been described as a state of mind that occurs leaving one with the feeling of being able to accomplish anything
Loss of self-consciousness / Self-concern dissipates when the individual experiences flow and they become immersed in the activity, and a natural performer of the task
Transformation of time / During this experience, the individual has an altered perspective of time. Through immersion in tasks, the flow-experiencer either feels that time slows down or passes more quickly than in reality.
Autotelic experience / The individual wholly satisfied having completed a task which was enjoyed, or where completion leaves you on a high, and is considered the ultimate result of a person being in flow
Adapted from: Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi, 2002; Chen, 2007; Quinn, 2005; Fullagar & Kelloway, 2009; Lehman et al 2002; Vlachopoulos et al. 2000; Csikszentmihalyi, 1975; Jackson & Marsh, 1996.
Conceptual Framework and Methodology
In order to answer the research question and explore how organisational spirituality may affect commitment, from the literature it is theorised that a supportive, collegial environment effects individual commitment and influences flow. Whereasmotivation effects employees’ commitmentand flow;this is illustrated in Figure. 1:Conceptual Modelof Organisational Spirituality.
Figure 1: Conceptual Model of Organisational Spirituality
As first step to test this conceptual modulea non-probability, purposive sampling approach was adopted and online surveys were employed to 1133 hospitality staff in part or full-time employment across UK. Now, it could be considered odd that that a positivistic approach is adopted for such an abstract research interest as spirituality, as one of the reviewers observed for this paper: “lets develop a 5 item, 7 point Likert scale to see if God really is real and then crunch it in SEM with a bunch of other variables to see if thinking that God is real has a positive relationship with how many pizzas we can sell on a Saturday nite.” However, this is not our intention, organisational spirituality (as distinct from personal religiosity or spirituality) is by its very definition a socially constructed phenomenon and this model allows us to explore it in the first instance. A later stage of the research is to explore it qualitatively via indepth interviews, observations or suchlike depending on exactly what we have identified via this quantitative stage.
The average age of respondents was 32 and 65% of the sample were female. 68% of respondents have worked with their current employers more than 6 years. To analyse the data we used Partial Least Squares (PLS). Unlike co-variance based structural equation modelling (e.g., AMOS), which use the structure of latent variables, PLS is a component based approach suitable for both predictive applications and theory building (Gotz, Kerstin, & Krafft, 2010) and appropriate for small sample sizes and different levels of data (Camarero, Garrido, & Vicente, 2010; Henseler, Ringle, & Sinkovics, 2009). It is also used to estimate the structural paths coefficients, R2 and Q2 using 500 randomly generated sub-samples (Gotz, et al., 2010). PLS was also chosen as the method of analysis because it suits predictive applications and theory building (Chin, 2010), and is gaining popularity in tourism research (Alexander et al., 2012). Furthermore, Alexander et al. (2012) and Chin (2010) used the geometric mean of the average communality and R2, within a range of values from zero to one as overall goodness of fit (GoF) measures for PLS.
To ensure content validity of our survey we initially conducted a literature review to identify appropriate measures, employing existing scales for the main constructs (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007; Idler et al., 2003; Wiley, 1997; Williams & Anderson, 1991). Scales were measured using five point likert scales with “disagree strongly-agree strongly” as anchors. In the case of the scales (Table 2), Composite reliability (ρcr) scores range from .71 to .90 above the recommended cut off of .7 (Hair et al., 2010). Convergent validity was assessed using average variance extracted (AVE) and our factors scored .50 and .58 once again meeting the .5 threshold suggested (Chin, 2011; Hair et al., 2010). Finally, discriminant validity of the scales was measured by comparing the square root of AVE (represented the diagonal with inter-construct correlations in Table 3). All appear to support the reliability and validity of the scales.
Table 2: Assessment of the Measurement model
Construct / Item loading / Composite reliability / AVECollegial Support / 0.80 / 0.58
If I was ill, my colleagues would help me / 0.86
If I had a personal problem, I could rely on my colleagues for support / 0.86
My colleagues are critical of me / 0.68
Flow / 0.87 / 0.53
I get carried away by my work / 0.77
When I am working, I forget about everything else around me / 0.70
I would still do this work, even if I received less pay / 0.68
I find that I also want to work in my free time / 0.77
I work because I enjoy it / 0.82
When I am working on something, I am doing it for myself / 0.71
Personal Motivation / 0.81 / 0.52
I enjoy being in an environment which requires order and discipline / 0.78
I am looking for career progression and development opportunities / 0.68
Job security is important to me / 0.75
Working hours are important to me / 0.76
Personal Spirituality / 0.90 / 0.54
I believe in a religion / 0.68
I believe in God / 0.70
I think about how my life is part of a larger spiritual force / 0.79
I work together with God as a partner / 0.80
I look to God for strength, support, guidance / 0.80
I feel that God punishes me for my sins or lack of spirituality / 0.83
I wonder whether God has abandoned me / 0.72
I try to make sense of the situation and decide what to do without relying on God / 0.68
Commitment / 0.71 / 0.50
If the values of my organisation were different, I would not be as attached to it / 0.71
Since working here, my personal values have become more similar to the organisation / 0.68
The reason I prefer this company is because of its values and what it stands for / 0.68
My attachment to the company is based on our similarity in values / 0.85
What this organisation stands for is important to me / 0.70
I am proud to tell people that I am part of this organisation / 0.78
I talk up this organisation to friends as a great place to work / 0.80
I feel a sense of ownership for my organisation rather than just being an employee / 0.70
Unless I am rewarded in some way, I see no reason to expend extra effort at work / 0.74
How hard I work is directly linked to how well I am rewarded / 0.76
My private views of my organisation are different to those I display publicly at work / 0.77
In order for me to get rewarded at work, it is necessary to show the “right” attitude / 0.78
Note: Only the significant items used in Table2. Non-standardized coefficients; p< 0.50
Table 3: Latent variables correlation matrix (discriminate validity)
Collegialsupport / Flow / Personal motivation / Personal spirituality / CommitmentCollegialSupport / 0.76
Flow / -0.37 / 0.72
Personal Motivation / 0.46 / -0.37 / 0.72
Personal Spirituality / -0.33 / 0.38 / -0.13 / 0.73
Commitment / 0.57 / -0.24 / 0.49 / 0.31 / 0.70
Findings and Discussion
To answer our research question, the structural model (Figure 2) was simultaneously tested within SmartPLS(Ringle, Wende, & Becker, 2011). All values of the Q2 are positive which confirms the model’s predictive relevance (i.e. if Q2 > 0 the model has predictive relevance) (Chin, 2010). The modelled constructs explain 42% of the variance in commitment and 27% of the variance in flow; the overall GoF is 0.52. The results show that collegial support has strong positive influence on commitment; however it has small negative influence on flow. Personal motivation has positive influence on commitment; but it has negative effect on flow. Personal spirituality has negative influence on commitment; however it has positive influence on flow. The outcome requires further investigation in other to explore such relationships.
Figure 2: Structural Model