Workplace Spirituality: A Comparative Study of Various Models

Abstract

It is difficult to define the term “workplace spirituality” precisely as it means different things to different people. The confusion arises due to the use of the word spirituality and religion synonymously. But workplace spirituality is not the same as religion. Spirituality at workplace is as simple as having a sense of connection between own self and the workplace. In a fast-moving world, employees often face anxiety, fear, and depression. Working in an environment that supports the employees’ right to openly express their beliefs helps them to have better working relationships with colleagues, feel safer, and be more engaged in their work. Therefore, more and more organizations are inculcating spirituality in their environment, as the impact of a good environment is not only felt by the employees but can be measured through economic outputs, using measures such as quality, productivity, and profitability. In the current research, previous literature has been reviewed to study the rising interest in workplace spirituality as well as to understand its importance for the employees in an organization. It was found that workplace spirituality has a significant impact of work attitudes like organizational performance, job involvement, job commitment, and job satisfaction as a whole. Some of the models given by various authors over time were also studied. These models established relationship between the three aspects of workplace spirituality (inner self, meaningful work, and sense of community) and different work attitudes. The models are quite similar in most of the studies leading to positive results related to influence of workplace spirituality. Few models even suggest the role of spiritual leadership as well in influencing workplace spirituality. Overall, these models suggest that there is significant and positive impact on employees due to workplace spirituality as seen from both empirical and theoretical evidence. Finally, the managerial implications and some suggestions for future research in this area have been provided.