| Preface |
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| Chapter 1 Spirituality at Work: Past, Present, and Future Trends |
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Cynthia M. Montaudon Tomas |
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This chapter presents a general overview of workplace spirituality. |
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A bibliometric analysis was developed to show the evolution of research in the field; the most relevant areas of study; leading institutions in which research is being performed; funding agencies; top authors, journals, and publishers; as well as additional relevant information. |
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Different conceptualizations and topics connected to spirituality at work have been included. |
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Differentiations are established between spirituality and religion. |
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Various scales developed to assess spirituality at work are included, along with guidelines about how spirituality can be promoted in the workplace. |
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| Chapter 2 A Discussion on Perceived Life Quality, Work-Family Conflict, and Workplace Bullying: Challenges for Modern Families and Human Capital |
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Working adults have been facing several challenges in their work lives. |
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Individuals encounter conflicts between their work and domestic duties and feel strain due to job-related and family-related demands. |
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Workplace bullying is increasingly being recognized as a serious problem in the modern organization. |
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Being exposed to workplace bullying influences individuals' relations with other family members and their personal lives as well. |
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Thus, since organizational psychology and management science have been increasingly focused on spiritual aspects of individuals' experiences within work life, the main goal of the study is to highlight the importance of improving the quality of work-life and its relationship with modern families. |
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In particular, this study focuses on the relationship between workplace bullying, perceived life quality, and work-family conflict within the scope of human capital and workplace spirituality. |
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Following the conceptual definitions and findings of previous research, some practical and theoretical recommendations are presented. |
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| Chapter 3 Employee Attitudes to Spirituality at the Workplace: An Exploratory Study in Lithuania |
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Vilmante Kumpikaite-Valirmiene |
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Lithuania was known as a very religious country at the beginning of the 20th century. |
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However, it spent 50 years under Soviet occupation with all religious life restraints. |
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Lithuania gained its independence and freedom of religion in 1990. |
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Already, a new generation has grown up with this freedom. |
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However, some restraints of religion can still be seen. |
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Therefore, this chapter reviews the understanding of spirituality between employees in Lithuania. |
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It is built on a quantitative study of 109 working respondents. |
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The results revealed differences in selecting a definition of spirituality and its connection to religion. |
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Moreover, the study highlighted the main features of spiritual organization. |
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| Chapter 4 The Role of Spirituality in Ethical Decision Making During Projects |
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Unethical behaviour of individuals in various professions is rife. |
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The purpose of this study was to describe the relationship between workplace spirituality, virtue ethics and rational ethical decision-making. |
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The reason for this is that the project management profession values ethics but unethical decision-making is on the rise. |
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The findings of the study indicate that spiritually based organisational values significantly impact on virtue ethics, and that virtue ethics significantly impact on rational ethical decision-making. |
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This implies that supporting the development of good character among employees, through the creation of spiritual workplaces, will enable them to make rational ethical decisions. |
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| Chapter 5 Workplace Spirituality for More Sustainable Organizations |
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Climate change is threatening the Earth. |
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Organizations are the main contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. |
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If organizations do not take any action against climate change, the world will soon enter an irreversible path. |
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This chapter begins with the definitions of climate change and pro-environmental behavior. |
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Spirituality directs individuals to live a more meaningful life, and workplace spirituality can benefit green organizations. |
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After the conceptual definitions of spirituality and workplace spirituality, their effects on green organizations were explored. |
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The chapter then follows with eco-spirituality that combines a positive attitude towards the environment and spiritual elements. |
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The chapter concludes with recommendations to decision-makers and future research ideas. |
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| Chapter 6 The Association Between Meditation, Egocentrism, and Workplace Spirituality |
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An analytical framework seeking to understand the application of practicing meditation towards mediating egocentrism is presented. |
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It emphasises achieving emotional balance. |
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It is assessed through four propositions on whether practicing meditation facilitates a decrease in egocentrism: If duration is increased, do practitioners progress from Dharana to Dhyana? If "one pointed" attention of meditation technique is used, does it counter egocentrism? and, When both aspects of practicing meditation are used, does the practitioner develop positive leadership? It contributes to the studies on management, leadership, and people practices. |
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It mainly contributes to the studies on egocentrism and will facilitate transforming egocentric leaders into using positive attributes and becoming productive in leadership style, assessing and transforming the younger generation of potential leaders into positive leaders, and in guiding business education to develop leaders free of egocentrism. |
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| Chapter 7 The Experience Economy, Marketplaces, and Spirituality: Creating Spiritual Experiences in the Marketplace |
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The premise of this chapter is the assumption that a spiritual shift is taking place globally and that the labour landscape and essence of work has changed dramatically. |
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The working individual spends more time at work than at home, with the consequence that people bring more to work than just their body and brains. |
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They also bring their soul and spirit to work. |
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Spirituality is also increasingly impacting the behaviours of consumers. |
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Spiritual motivations are not restricted to the choice of a particular sect, guru, or religion. |
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Corporate firms are increasingly using spiritual appeals to identify and bond with consumers. |
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The result of this stance is that employees in the workplace become the facilitators through a certain product, brand, or service delivery of the consumer's spiritual experiences. |
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In that sense, the employees in the workplace, persons such as retailers, restauranteurs, waiters, salespeople, and people in the tourism and hospitality industry are "replacing" the shaman or priest as the facilitator of the ritual during the spiritual experience of the consumer. |
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| Chapter 8 Development of the Scale of Spirituality for Workplaces |
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Spirituality is not a new area of research. |
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The unavailability of standardized assessment measures of spirituality is the basis of the present investigation. |
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Phase 1 of the present study developed themes through 'self-report measurement' administered to 15 participants (G1) of different spiritual organizations and studying the glimpses of Indian spirituality. |
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Results revealed 90 themes, which were used as variables for the development of the scale. |
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Phase 2 involved the development of measures of spirituality for an adult sample. |
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The author selected N=300 (G2) MCQ for Part-1 and Likert format for Part-2 of the scale. |
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Beginning with an over-inclusive 100 items (40+60) WSIS in the study, a series of exploratory analyses led to a reduced set of 51 items (17+34). |
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With another 1200 participants (G3), a priori criterion PCA yielded a 14-factor structure: 6 factors WSIS (Part 1) and 8 factors WSIS (Part 2). |
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The author proposed the Workplace Spiritual Intelligence Scale (WSIS), which was standardized and showed satisfactory validity and reliability. |
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| Chapter 9 Spiritual Leadership and Well-Being in the Context of the Modern Workplace |
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Organizations of modern times experience business loss in the form of financial, physical, psychological, and cultural loss with their employees, clients, suppliers, or any other related persons. |
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To cope with such issues, we need to introduce spirituality at our workplace; and as leaders manage organizations, spiritual leadership needs immense research for growth. |
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Spiritual leadership has been actively debated in recent decades and is a disputed subject attracting research and practice. |
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Spirituality has evolved into a valuable tool for coping with stress and resolving business concerns. |
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Leadership lacking ethics may be harmful, damaging, and even toxic. |
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Though often addressed in the literature, spiritual leadership has been taken as a construct in a few types of research for empirical study. |
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The main aim of the study was to develop knowledge into how spiritual leadership would be the essential need in the modern workplace. |
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| Chapter 10 FOSCE: A Scale Measuring Equanimity Defined on the Tenets of Swadharma and Its Role in Contributing to Workplace Spirituality |
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The purpose of this chapter is to develop a definition of equanimity and present a scale for its measurement. |
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Equanimity is defined as a non-cognitive behavioural having the qualities of flexibility, objectivity, self-awareness, compassion, and equilibrium (FOSCE). |
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In turn, it is linked to the development of workplace spirituality through Swadharma. |
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The presence of equanimity is accepted as presence of Swadharma. |
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Gaps in the previous assessments of equanimity provide a foundation for its development. |
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FOSCE measures the five qualities from two perspectives - the participants and that of their associate/s. |
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The maximum match of responses proves the presence of equanimity. |
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The simplicity and versatility of the developed measure means that it can be applied without being time consuming makes it an ideal tool to assess equanimity and comprehend the maturity of Swadharma in individuals. |
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Practical application of the scale includes assessing leadership development and assessing equanimity for detecting the presence of workplace spirituality. |
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| Chapter 11 Spiritual Knack Model: A Model of Workplace Spirituality |
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Spiritual intelligence covers a multitude of qualities; its conceptualization has been the issue of great concern for today's social scientists. |
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The author presented an inclusive model of workplace spirituality, the 'Spiritual Knack Model'. |
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The first part of the model displayed how the essence of spirituality develops in 'Shunya', and more to the point, 'The Growth Cycle' and 'The Stages of Spirituality' are also explained. |
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Another imperative concept, 'Spiritual Knack Virtues', is obtained from this chapter. |
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This fourteen-dimensional map gives details of the significant features of a spiritually oriented person. |
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The last part of the model comprises the detail of the process and activities related to 'Development of Spiritual Values' amongst employers and employees for the augmentation of the holistic productivity of the organizations. |
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| Chapter 12 Surviving Through Religious Coping and Intrinsic Spirituality: A Study of Working Professionals During COVID-19 |
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The COVID-19 pandemic has in more than one way caused dramatic disruption in the way workplaces and workforces are being managed. |
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The challenge today is to address immediate to long-term psychological effects of such a crisis on employee well-being. |
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Religiosity and spirituality have been found to be contributing to- the resolve and resilience of human beings. |
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The present study aims to explore the role of sex, marital status, religious preference, and family-type of the respondents on their religious coping and intrinsic spirituality as mechanisms to deal with a mental illness, depression, during the COVID-19 pandemic. |
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Respondents are working professionals working from home amid COVID-19. |
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The findings reveal that religious preferences played a significant role in differentiating religious coping mechanisms of respondents. |
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Intrinsic spirituality, religious coping, and sense of fear significantly explained the depression experienced by employees. |
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The chapter discusses implications of the findings and simultaneously underlines the holistic approach of employee management amid a crisis such as COVID-19. |
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| Chapter 13 Integrating Spirituality in Modern Workplaces: Reviewing the Spirituality at Work During COVID-19 |
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The organizational system across the world is undergoing a transition and is affected by numerous factors ranging from technology to psychology as the COVID-19 pandemic has created a perplexing situation in all spheres of life. |
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The pandemic made people experience trauma, anxiety, stress, and psychological pressure. |
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The stressors can damage health and influence the sense of well-being, behaviour, and mental health. |
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The magnitude of issues faced by the organizational members and approaches to overcome these post-COVID situations have to be given high importance, and the present study is an attempt to understand the relevance, applicability, and appropriateness of workplace spirituality and its interconnectedness with occupational burnout, work engagement, and employee wellbeing. |
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Previous research studies have been relied upon for developing the conceptual framework of the study. |
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The insights gained from the study include a positive linkage between workplace spirituality and employee wellbeing mediated by thriving at work, work engagement, and occupational burnout. |
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| Chapter 14 Spirituality in Education Administration |
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Joseph Varghese Kureethara |
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The ability to think about the past and to plan for the future and mould situations the way we want distinguish human beings from all other living beings. |
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Emotion, intelligence, and spirituality are three vital aspects of human existence. |
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Though the ancient academic engagement was focused on an integral vision of human development, recent heavy focus on professional and vocational development has skewed the purpose of higher education and delimited its scope. |
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Hence, integral education aimed at a new world order marked by ethical sensitivity and global citizenship, social sensitivity, social involvement, and social contribution should focus on whole-person education that emphasizes connectedness with oneself, others, the environment, and at a deeper level connect with the supreme power or reality. |
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The authors present a brief review of current practices relating to spirituality in educational administration. |
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| Chapter 15 Impact of Spiritual Resources Within the Health Impairment Process of the Job Demands Resources Model Across Diverse Geographical Regions |
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This study investigated the effects of spiritual resource variables on employee emotional exhaustion and emotional ill-health across different geographical regions in the context of job demands and resources (JD-R) theory. |
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Overall, the findings largely confirmed the JD-R hypothesis as spiritual resources did not directly predict emotional exhaustion and subsequently emotional ill-health. |
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The study further confirmed that spiritual resources are relatively independent since spiritual resources were seen to be directly associated with the motivation process of the JD-R model. |
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The findings also suggested that the effects of spiritual resources on emotional exhaustion and emotional ill-health may differ across cultures. |
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Although these findings largely supported the JD-R model and previous studies, in some cases, some findings were not similar across cultures. |
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The findings provided tangible information and data to decision-makers allowing them to make informed choices about which spiritual resource variables mitigate emotional exhaustion and emotional ill-health in different cultures. |
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| Chapter 16 Impact of Workplace Spirituality in Reducing Emotional Labour Among Academics |
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It has been long recognized that everyone wears an emotional mask. |
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Specially, in the context of the service sector, job requirements mandate display rules requiring the expression of certain emotions that may not necessarily be felt by employees. |
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Such regulation of emotions often leads to stress and burnout that negatively impact employees' physical and psychological health. |
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Emotional labour is thus a worrisome phenomenon. |
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Against this backdrop, this chapter concerns itself with finding solutions that could potentially alleviate the associated problems of personal and organizational well-being. |
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Extant literature observes numerous suggestions about these detrimental effects being mitigated by spirituality. |
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Academics recommend that organizations could employ workplace spirituality initiatives to replenish the emotional resources exhausted due to emotional labour. |
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This chapter thus addresses the empirical association between workplace spirituality and emotional labour among teachers in higher education sector - the service professionals claimed to be most negatively impacted by emotional labour. |
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| Compilation of References |
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| About the Contributors |
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| Index |
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