The effect of spiritual values on employees' organizational

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The effect of spiritual values on employees' organizational commitment and its models Morteza Raei Dehaghi a*, Masoud Goodarzi b, Zahra Karimi Arazi c abc

Department of Industrial Management, Mobarakeh Branch, Islamic Azad University, Mobarakeh, Isfahan, Iran

Abstract Organizational commitment, productivity and efficiency are among the most important issues of organizational management, and generally, a significant subject in socio-economic life of the countries and spiritual values at work are the valuable and effective factors that can escalate this commitment. Spiritual values at work means that the individuals and organizations consider working in a spiritual path, in an opportunity to grow and contribute to society in a meaningful way, attempting to live their values more fully in the work they do. It is also about care, compassion and support of others; an integrity and people being true to themselves and to others. In America, managers have an increasing interest in combination of spirituality and management at present. This combination has the deepest values that are effective on their work and to the same degree promise them more success. In management scope it seems that spirituality at work could have numerous applications regarding organizational behaviour. Organizational commitment has much importance among the organizational behaviour variables, since it can predict employees' turnover as a working attitude and affects output considerably.The paper aims to study the effect of spiritual val ues on employee's organizational commitments as well as the application of different spiritual models that could provide insights on how and under what conditions spiritual values can positively affect profitability and employees behaviour in organization. T he result of the study revealed that spiritual value at work is one of the most important factors that create employees organizational commitments and the relationship between them are significantly positive. The finding also indicates that when employees experienced spirituality at work, they feel more effectively closed to their organization, experience a sense of responsibility and loyalty towards them, and feel less materially committed. What seems important is that organizational commitments and increasing productivity had a certain relation with spirituality at work and as a result, manager must improve spirituality climate in order to promote organizational commitments and, thus, employ and organizational performance. © byby Elsevier Ltd.Ltd. Selection and/orand/or peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr.ofHuseyin Arasli © 2012 2012Published Published Elsevier Selection peer review under responsibility Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Arasli Keywords: organizational commitments, spiritual values, sense of responsibility, models;

1.

Introduction

We are living in an unprecedented time, one in which the world is changing rapidly. Many of us believe that it is a time of rapid human evolution and spiritual growth. In the past, several hundred years, Westerners have created a distinct separation between the outer world of worldly activities and the inner world of spirituality and religion. In many ways this helped the human race to rise above superstition and the power and domination of churches. But in many other ways, it separated us from what is best and highest in being human (Neal and Biberman, 2003: 263). American business leaders operate in a culture where notions of spirituality run counter to the models of organizational effectiveness that they learn and expected to follow (Payne, 2010: 68). Thus, they show much * Corresponding author. Morteza Raei Dehaghi,Tel.: +983114425161; fax: +983114393852. E-mail address: [email protected]

1877-0428 © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Arasli doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.09.025

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interests towards spirituality, religion and spiritual ceremonies, especially ceremonies of East Asia, in order to fill their spiritual emptiness (Shaygan, 2008: 32). Work attitudes of this strong force have radiated management and business principles, and have affected its theories that are regarded as a major change and advance in management and business scope in viewpoint of some of the clear-sighted. Despite criticisms and doubts in theoretical and experimental fields, the growing process of research about this subject is undeniable among academicians, researchers, consultants and theoreticians of management and organization science (Abedi and Rastegar, 2009: 100). Undoubtedly, the biggest challenge in each individual's life is not just to obtain reward, promotion or great successes, rather the important issue is how to establish balance among personal, work and spiritual life successfully. Creating such balance is regarded as a major challenge for some individual employees (Atashpour, Aghaei and Kazemi, 2008: 237). Today, organizations need individuals who will struggle for the benefit of the organization beyond their delegated duties which in turn will be so important especially in sensitive and critical jobs. Ignorance, with regard to creating such commitment, dependence and psychological reliance among the members of the organization will lead to increase ample expenditures in establishing accurate and complex supervision and control systems. Therefore, it is necessary for organizations to identify effective values on employees' organizational commitment and try to maintain and enhance their employees' commitment by applying such values. The purpose of this article is to represent an acceptable framework of spiritual values at work which includes individual, group and organizational levels. The present paper also assessed the impact of spiritual values on employees, customers, and organizational performance such as organizational commitments. Because spirituality in the workplace emerged as a grassroots movement with individuals seeking to live their faith and/or spiritual values in the workplace, it had presented different models of spiritual values to serve as a framework to concentrate for a more comprehensive analysis of spiritual values on employees' organizational commitments. The paper is structured as follows: It starts by definitions of spirituality at work. Next, it explains the advantages of spirituality at work. Then it discusses different spirituality and commitments models, followed by discussion and conclusions. The major contribution of this study resides in the evidence it provides for the relationships between spiritual values and organizational commitments. 2.

Spirituality at work and its definition

Ashmos and Duchon define spirituality at work as the recognition of employees inner life that nourishes and is nourished by meaningful work and takes place in the context of community (Ashmos and Duchon, 2000: 137). Spirituality at work has seriously been proposed in management researches in the world for about ten years. The International Center for Spirit at Work (Wikipedia, 2011) uses the following definition for the Spirit at Work. Spirituality is a state or experience that can provide individuals with direction or meaning, or can provide feelings of understanding, support, inner wholeness or connectedness. Connectedness can be to themselves, other people, nature, the universe, a god, or some other supernatural power. transcend the individual ego or self-esteem. The name you put on the vertical component might be God, Spirit, to other humans and the planet. In the horizontal we seek to make a difference through our actions. This dimension is manifested externally. Spirituality in the workplace means that employees find nourishment for both the vertical and horizontal dimensions of their spirituality at work. Examples of vertical organizational spirituality include: meditation time at the beginning of meetings, retreat or spiritual training time set aside for employees, appropriate accommodation of employee prayer practices, and openly asking questions to test if company actions are aligned with higher meaning and purpose. Companies with a strong sense of the horizontal component will generally demonstrate some or all of the following: caring behaviors among co-workers; a social responsibility orientation; strong service commitments to customers; environmental sensitivity; and a significant volume of community service activities. The vertical and horizontal dimensions should be well integrated so that motivations (sourced from the vertical) and actions 2

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(horizontal manifestations) are explicitly linked. When done properly, Spirit at Work enhances the overall value of the organization. Definitions of spirituality at work are very different. A clear-sighted scholar has defined it according to his viewpoint and reaching to an acceptable definition by the majority at least seems very difficult if not impossible (Rastegar, 2010: 93). Thus, studying various definitions of this notion is important and obtaining an acceptable definition for experimental researches is necessary. 3.

Spirituality models

3.1 Value based model A model of how spiritual values are proposed to affect an organization is shown in Figure 1. This figure is based on an integration of the literature on spirituality in business with two models - Anderson's (1997) value-based management model, which focuses on the impact of values on top management strategy, and Schuler and Jackson's (1987) strategic human resource management framework, which focuses more on the implementation of organizational strategy. The combination of these frameworks provides an integrated approach for analysis of spirituality in organizations.

Organizational Spiritual Values Outcomes .Organizational performance .Employee Attitude & Spirituality

Business and Employee Plans & Goals

HRM Practice to Reinforce Plans/values

Figure 1. Spiritual value-based management model (Milliman et al, 1999: 223)

At the top of Figure 1 are the organization's core spiritual values which represent the philosophical views of the organization as well as its priorities and sense of purpose (Anderson, 1997). In a real sense, these values represent the soul of the organization (Blanchard and O'Connor, 2003) and reflect its sense of spirituality and purpose. As shown in the right-hand side of Figure 1, the organization's core values shape its business plans and individual employee plans (Anderson, 1997). The business plan determines the organization's various businesses and states specific directions, time frames, and goals. As illustrated at the bottom of Figure 1, HRM represents the fundamental way an organization develops and motivates its employees so that they exhibit the behaviors and high productivity needed to help the company accomplish its business plans (Schuler and Jackson, 1987) and value-based goals. The successful attainment of the company's strategy then reinforces the company's spiritual values and purpose as shown in the upper left-hand side of Figure 1. Therefore, the model shows an iterative cycle of how spiritual values can be integrated throughout the organization. This model is used to examine the effect of spiritual values on organizational commitment. 3

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3.2 Three levels model Milliman et al. (2003) examined how three workplace spirituality dimensions (meaningful work, sense of community, value alignment) explain five work attitudes: affective organizational commitment, intentions to leave, intrinsic work satisfaction, job involvement, and organizational-based self-esteem. The meaningful work dimension represents the degree to which people experience a deep sense of meaning and purpose at work. The sense of community dimension means people see themselves as connected to each other and there are some types of whether or not individuals experience a strong sense of alignment between their personal values and the

(organization level). Figure 2 graphically depicts the conceptualization of workplace spirituality used in this study.

Figure 2. Spirituality at work (Milliman et al, 2003: 428)

The main findings of Milliman et al. (2003:438) were the following: The meaningful work dimension explains affective commitment, intrinsic work satisfaction, job involvement and self-esteem. The sense of community dimension explains all the attitudes. Value alignment explains commitment and intention to quit. 4. Advantages of spirituality at work Studies reveal that encouraging spirituality at working environment could result in many advantages. Organizational change management is one of the management scopes, while traditional approaches aim at managing change from the "outside in", knowledge of the spirituality foundation of life suggest that change can be handled from the "inside out" (Heaton and Schmidt-wilk, and Travis, 2004: 62-63). Also researchers state that encouragement of spirituality at work could be resulted in advantages such as enhancement of creativity (Freshman, 4


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1999), increasing of integrity and confidence (Wanger-Marsch and Conley, 1999), increased sense of personal evolution (Burack, 1999), enhancement of organizational commitment (Delbecq, 1999; Milliman et al, 2003), improvement of employees' work attitudes like job satisfaction, job involvement as well as decreasing turnover intention (Milliman et al, 2003), and increasing of working behavior and conscience and higher motivation (Marques et al, 2005). All of these advantages can directly and indirectly improve performance, profitability and organizational effectiveness. 5.

Organizational commitment and its definitions

Newstrom and Davies (2002: 211) define employee commitment as the degree to which an employee identifies with the organization and wants to continue actively participating in it. Like a strong magnetic force attracting one metallic object to another, it is a measure of the employees' willingness to remain with a firm in the future. It often reflects the employees' belief in the mission and goals of the firm, willingness to expend effort in their accomplishment, and intentions to continue working there. Commitment is usually stronger among longer-term employees, those who have experienced personal success in the organization, and those working with a committed employee group. Motahari (2010) states that commitment in Islam means binding to principles and philosophy or contracts to which humans bound and believe in them. A committed person is the one who is loyal to his agreement and pledge and preserves his objectives. Luthans (2006: 535) explains that, as an attitude, organizational commitment is most often defined as: a strong desire to remain a member of a particular organization; a willingness to exert high levels of effort on behalf of the organization; and a definite belief in and acceptance of the values and goals of the organization. 6.

Organizational commitment models

6.1. Three pillar model Martins and Nicholls (1999: 813) cited in Mullins (2005), view commitment as encapsulating by giving all of yourself while at work. This commitment entails things as using time constructively, attention to detail, making that extra effort, accepting change, co-operation with others, self development, respecting trust, pride in abilities, seeking improvements and giving loyal support. Based on case studies that focused on employee commitments of 14 British companies, including Jaguar, Royal Bank of Scotland, British Steel, Pilkingtons, Rothmans, Raleigh, and Schweppes, Martin and Nicholls formulated a model of commitment based on three major pillars, each with three factors, as shown in figure 3. These pillars are:

I A sense of belonging to the organization

Committed workforce

III Confidence in management leadership

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II Sense of excitement in the job

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Morteza Raei Dehaghi/ Procedia et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 62 (2012) 159 – 166 Morteza Raei Dehaghi Social and Behavioral Sciences 00 (2012) 000 000 Figure 3. Three pillar model of commitment (Mullins 2005:813)

A sense of belonging to the organization: this builds upon the loyalty essential to successful industrial relations. The sense of belonging is created by managers through ensuring that the workforce is informed, involved and sharing in success. A sense of excitement in the job: improved results will not be achieved unless workers can also feel a sense of excitement about their work which results in the motivation to perform well. This sense of excitement can be achieved by appealing to the higher-level needs of pride, trust and accountability for results. Confidence in management: the senses of belonging and excitement can be frustrated if workers do not have respect for and confidence in management leadership. This respect is enhanced through attention to authority, dedication and competence. However, creating commitment is hard. It takes time, the path is not always smooth and it requires dedicated managers (Mullins, 1999: 813). 6.2. Three component model According to Meyer and Allen's (1991) three-component model of commitment, as shown in Figure 4, are as follow, where prior research indicated that there are three "mind sets" which can characterize an employee's commitment to the organization: Affective Commitment: It refers to employee's emotional attachment to, identification with, and involvement with the organization. Employees with a strong affective commitment stay with the organization because they want to. Continuance Commitment: It refers to employee's awareness of the costs associated with leaving the organization. Employees, who perceive that the costs of leaving the organization are greater than the costs of staying, remain because they need to. Normative Commitment: It refers to employee's feeling obligation to the organization. Employees with a strong normative commitment stay with the organization because they feel they ought to. Affective Commitment

Organizational Commitments Normative Commitment

Continuance Commitment

Figure 4. Three component model (Allen & Meyer 1991:68)

7.

Discussion

This study uses rigorous spiritual and organizational commitments models to investigate how spiritual values can be manifested in an organization and influence its performance and with the application of these models, it is understood how and under what specific conditions spiritual values can positively influence organizational commitments of employees in the organization. In this regard, following models has been investigated: value-base; three levels; three pillars and three component models. The combination of these models provides an integrated approach for the analysis of the relationship between spiritual values in the organization and organizational commitments. Some issues have been represented about various levels and dimensions of spiritual values at work and organizational commitment which indicate that these concepts are multi-sectional structures. Of course, ultraspirituality aspect hasn't been emphasized, as it is believed such aspect is more likely effective on individual life of a 6


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person than organizational life. In contrast three individual group and organizational dimensions or levels of spirituality are focused that have closer relations with working behaviors and attitudes of employees, more likely. 8.

Conclusion

Based on the investigation of different models as well as the combination of their frameworks, the finding shows that employees who experience spiritual values in the workplace feel more affectively attached to their organization and at the same time experience a sense of obligation and loyalty towards them. Also, the study reveals that by improving spirituality at work climates, organizational commitment and individual and organizational performance can be promoted. These promotions likely to occur because people react reciprocally towards an organization that satisfies their spiritual needs and make them feel that they are valued as human beings. Employees who know their values and purposes are parallel to values and mission of the organization; perceive the environment and atmosphere of the organization positively and are sensitive to perform duties better and improve the picture of the organization. By and large we can conclude that there is a direct impact of spirituality at work on organizational commitment. Moreover, it has been specified in previous researches that spirituality at work is one of the factors that create job attitudes such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment and so on. Therefore, we can conclude that spirituality at work directly and indirectly affects organizational commitment. Further research is needed to explore more deeply the relationship between spiritual values and organizational commitment. References Abedi, H., & Rastegar, A. (2008). The advent of spirituality in organization: Definition and its concepts. Journal of Management Science, Iran: 100. Allen, N.J., & Meyer, J.P. (1991). A three-component conceptualization of organizational commitment. Human Resource Management Review, 1(1), 61-89. Anderson, C. (1997). Values-based management. Academy of Management Executive, 11(4), 25-46. Ashmos, D.P., & Duchon, D. (2000). Spirituality at work: A conceptualization and measure. Journal of Management Inquiry, 2(9), 134-145. Atashpour, H., Kazemi, E., & Aghaei, A. (2006). Behavioural elements of organization, management and employees. Rana Publications: 237. . San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler. Burack, E. (1999). Spirituality in the workplace. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 12(4), 280-291. Delbecq, L.A. (1999). Christian spirituality and contemporary business leadership. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 4(12), 345349. Freshman. B, (1999), An exploratory analysis of definition and applications of spirituality in the work place. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 4(12), 318-323. Heaton, D.P., Schmidt-Wilk, J. & Travis, F. (2004). Constructs, methods, and measuring for researching spirituality in organizations. Journal of Organizational Change Management,1(17), 62-68. Luthans, F. (2006). Organizational behaviour. Business & economics. McGraw-Hill/Irwin: 535. Marques, J., Dhiman, S., & King, R. (2005). Spirituality in the workplace: Developing an integral model and a comprehensive definition. The Journal of American Academy of Business, Cambridge: 1(7), 81-91. Milliman, J., Ferguson, J., Trickett D., & Condemi, B. (1999). Spirit and community at Southwest Airlines: An investigation of spiritual valuesbased model. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 3(12), 221-233. Milliman, J., Czaplewski, A.J., & Ferguson, J. (2003). Workplace spirituality and employee work attitudes: An exploratory empirical assessment. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 4(16), 427-447. Motahari, M. (2010). Management and leadership in Islam. Sadra Publications: 34. Mullins, L.J. (2005). Management and organisational behaviour. Prentice Hall/Financial Times: 813. Neal, J.A., & Biberman, J. (2003). Introduction: The leading edge in research on spirituality and organizations. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 4(16), 363-366. Newstrom, J., & Davies, K. (2002). Organizational behaviour. 11th edition, McGraw-Hill/Irwin. Organizational commitment, "Model of commitment". (2011), 1-2. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/organizational_commitment. Payne, S. (2010). Leadership and spirituality: Business in the USA. International Journal of Leadership in Public Services, 6(2), 68-72. Rastegar, A. (2009). Spirituality and management. Haft Aseman Quarterly, 22, Retrieved in November 10, 2010 from http://www.manaviat.blogfa.com/post-109.aspx Rastegar, A. (2010). Representing a motivational model based on spirituality. PhD dissertation, Tehran University: Department of Management. 7

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