Role of Workplace Spirituality in Relationship between Organizational Culture and Effectiveness

Abstract

The article tries to explore the role of workplace spirituality in relationship between organizational culture and organizational effectiveness. Denison’s theory of organizational culture and effectiveness is used for articulation of the above relationship. Denison’s framework focuses on four cultural traits: involvement, consistency, adaptability and mission. These traits collectively facilitate an organization’s capabilities for integrating and coordinating internal resources as well as its adaptation of the external environment, thereby leading to organizational effectiveness. All these cultural traits and their relationship with spirituality and organizational effectiveness are discussed in the article. This article is an attempt to emphasize that organizational culture should give a place for spiritual expression.

Keywords

Workplace Spirituality organizational culture effectiveness

Introduction

Workplace spirituality has attracted the attention of several organizational researchers in recent times. Spirituality is recognized as one of the fundamental forces (body, mind, heart and spirit) of the human existence.

It is increasingly recognized that managers not only need rational business skills but also a ‘spiritual worldview’ and ‘moral virtues’ for making good decisions (Howard, 2002; Mele, 2010). In order to develop the ability to take prudential decisions, looking at constraints from ‘higher level of awareness’ or from the ‘context of planetary consciousnesses’ is recommended for the future leaders (Clark, 2010; Gibson, 2008; Howard, 2002; Mele, 2010). Spirituality is also considered as a ‘new dimension’ (Howard, 2002) and an ‘emerging new paradigm’ in the area of management (Karakas, 2010). ‘Spirituality in business’ has also been identified as one of the top seven megatrends of the coming decade (Aburdene, 2005).

Spirituality penetrates the corporate wall in many ways that varies from subtle ways of e-mail signoffs that quote scripture or employee intranet postings inviting colleagues to a religious service to more prominent ways of hiring of corporate chaplains by more than 1,000 companies in the United States and Canada’s appointment of chief belief officer by Future Group in India. Companies like Yahoo, Armani Exchange, AT&T offer free yoga and meditation classes to their employees throughout the week; Statistical Analysis System (SAS), the world’s largest private software company has a meditation garden on their campus (Carey, 2004).

In management literature, various studies indicate the positive impact of workplace spirituality on job satisfaction (Altaf & Awan, 2011; Gupta, Kumar & Singh, 2013), lower rate of absenteeism (Chawla & Guda, 2010), leadership effectiveness (Abdullah, Alzaiyeen, & Aldarabah, 2009), team effectiveness (Daniel, 2010) and so on.

But, one of the most challenging aspects about workplace spirituality is to define it. Workplace Spirituality means different things to different people (Van Tonder & Ramdass, 2009). In literature, it has been defined in various ways. For example, according to Pawar (2009), the term workplace spirituality refers to employee experiences of spirituality at workplace (SAW) which include aspects such as sense of meaning, community and transcendence.

Kolodinsky, Giacalone and Jurkiewicz (2008) have conceptualized the workplace spirituality at three levels: (a) personal spirituality, (b) organizational spirituality and (c) an interaction of these two. According to them, personal spirituality can be viewed as the incorporation of one’s own spiritual ideals and values in the work setting. Their view presumes that one’s personal spiritual values have an effect on worker behaviour as well as interpretations of, and responses to, work-related events. According to them, organizational spirituality reflects an individual’s perception of the spiritual values within an organizational setting and it is an individual barometer of an organization’s spiritual values and involves assessing worker perceptions of the macro organizational environment. Their third view of workplace spirituality reflects the interaction between an individual’s personal spiritual values and the organization’s spiritual values. They say conceptualizing workplace spirituality in this way parallels the concept of person–environment fit. When fit is strong between a worker’s values and his or her perceptions of the organization’s values, better work outcomes will result.

Whenever researchers talk about the term SAW, topic of religion often arises. Keeping this point in view, Krishna Kumar and Neck (2002) has examined three perspectives of looking at SAW including the intrinsic-origin view, the religious view and the existentialist perspective.

According to them, the intrinsic-origin view of spirituality is that which argues that spirituality is a concept or a principle that originates from the inside of an individual and spirituality is something which is beyond the rules of religion. Spirituality implies an inner search for meaning or fulfilment that may be undertaken by anyone regardless of religion. They have defined religious views of spirituality as those that are specific to a particular religion as for example, the Christians believe that spirituality is the ‘call for work’. For the Hindus, one of the important principles is that the effort towards the goal is most important, and the results are supposed to be provided by god. According to them, existentialist view of spirituality is perhaps the most connected to the concepts such as the search for meaning in what we are doing at the workplace.

In a study conducted by Zafar (2010) in Pakistan among university faculty and army men, it was found that people could differentiate between spirituality and religion at work and both are present in organizations.

Many researchers have noted that the presence of spiritual component in organizational culture has several benefits for the organization (Driscoll & McKee, 2007; Fry, 2003; Milliman et al., 1999). Giacalone and Jurkiewicz (2003, p. 13) have defined workplace spirituality in terms of ‘a framework of organizational values evidenced in the culture that promotes employees’ experience of transcendence through the work process, facilitating their sense of being connected to others in a way that provides feelings of completeness and joy’. This definition also suggests that the presence of workplace spirituality in culture has positive implications for the organization.

Here, this article tries to examine the relationship between spirituality component in organizational culture and effectiveness from the existing literature. This attempt is based on the idea that spirituality is integrated in organizational culture and viewing organization effectiveness from a perspective of the culture embedded with spirituality may better explain the importance of spirituality in organizations. Although, effectiveness itself is a vast concept but here, it is considered as the combination of desirable attributes in an organization. Denison’s theory of organizational culture and effectiveness (Denison & Mishra, 1995; Denison et al., 2006) is used for articulation of the above mentioned thoughts.

Denison’s framework focuses on four broadly defined cultural traits—involvement, consistency, adaptability and mission. According to Denison’s model, the above mentioned four cultural traits collectively facilitate an organization’s capabilities for integrating and coordinating internal resources as well as its adaptation of the external environment, thereby leading to superior organizational effectiveness. According to Denison, each cultural trait will exert positive effects on overall firm performance and a wide variety of effectiveness measures, independently from the effects of other trait (Denison & Mishra, 1995). Relationship between each cultural trait and effectiveness is established by Denison. His findings suggest that each of the cultural traits of involvement, consistency, adaptability and mission influence firm effectiveness. Managers aiming to improve a broad spectrum of effectiveness measures should therefore focus on increasing their organizations’ scores on all trait measures. Looking at the relationships in the above discussion, we arrived at the following proposition.

Proposition 1: Workplace spirituality will influence the relationship between cultural traits (involvement, consistency, adaptability and mission) and effectiveness.

Furthermore, we also put the specific hypothesis to refine the above proposition. With the help of each cultural trait in Denison’s framework and its relationship with effectiveness and spirituality, four specific hypotheses are suggested by this article.

Involvement

Involvement and Effectiveness

According to Denison’s model, involvement trait is composed of the component indexes of empowerment, team orientation and capability development. Organizations that value (a) individual authority and employee initiatives, (b) working cooperatively towards common goals and (c) the development of employee skills are theorized to score high on this trait (Denison et al., 2006).

Involvement trait helps the organization bring multiple viewpoints to the decisions made, creates a sense of ownership and responsibility, enables the activation of group dynamics for the solution of complex problems, enhances employee commitment and desire for the implementation of decisions and thereby facilitates internal integration, flexibility and creativity. As a result, organizations high on the involvement trait are expected to perform better (Yilmaz & Ergun, 2008).

Involvement and Spirituality

The characteristics of involvement trait such as empowerment, team orientation and capability development are achieved by spirituality in workplace.

This is evident from work of various researchers. Fry (2003) in his article states that high-commitment workplace spirituality practices, by tapping into the fundamental spiritual survival dimensions of calling and membership, create an intrinsic motivating force that elicits spontaneous, cooperative effort from people, and make it more likely for employees to learn, develop and use their skills and knowledge to benefit both themselves and their organizations.

Kolodinsky, Giacalone and Jurkiewicz (2008) state that workers who view their organizations as more spiritual will feel less friction and frustration at work, in part because spiritual organizations tend to be more participative and inclusive in their decision-making and information sharing helping workers to feel empowered and important. Furthermore, they state that we believe that the very nature of spiritual organizations embracing openness and a community orientation will further reduce organizational frustration and will lead to positive work behaviour.

Milliman et al. (1999) discuss the application of spirituality in South West Airlines (SWA). According to them, integral aspect of spirit at work mentioned in the literature is the empowerment of all employees. True empowerment involves several levels, including whether employees believe they can: really make change; be a source of creativity; behave in a self-managing way; fully accept the values and culture of the organization and have inputs into corporate policies. They have mentioned how SWA has incorporated all these values in their culture. They state that many of the levels of empowerment are found at SWA. The employees, including flight attendants, customer service reps and baggage handlers, are encouraged to take whatever action they deem necessary to meet customer needs or help fellow workers—even if it means breaking company policies. If employees make mistakes in judgement, the employees are not punished, but given feedback on how to improve the next time. In fact, errors are sometimes celebrated with the intent of turning failures into personal growth. All of these practices work to reinforce the self-worth of employees. A related aspect of empowerment is that employees are strongly encouraged to give suggestions to create continuous improvement of the company. To this end, employees and their unions are given many opportunities to influence the company’s decisions and policies. In fact, at SWA, the input of unions is often actively sought in company decisions. SWA also constantly surveys its employees and unions to identify their perceptions and solicit ideas about how to run the company. Thus, from above discussions, a close relationship between spirituality and involvement can be seen. Thus, we arrived at the first hypothesis.

Hypothesis 1:Workplace spirituality will mediate the relationship between cultural trait ‘involvement’ and effectiveness.

Consistency

Consistency and Effectiveness

According to Denison, organizations are effective when they are consistent and well integrated. Consistent organizations develop a mindset and create organizational systems that build an internal system of governance based on consensual support. These implicit control systems can be a more effective means of achieving coordination and integration than external control systems that rely on explicit rules and regulations. These organizations have highly committed employees, a distinct method of doing business, a tendency to promote from within, and a clear set of ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’. This type of consistency is a powerful source of stability and internal integration. Coordination and integration is the core of this trait (Denison et al., 2006). The consistency trait, with its emphasis on commonly accepted beliefs, values and frames of reference, is theorized to enhance organizational efficiency and effectiveness by reducing the need for (and costs associated with) explicit control systems and by facilitating coordination and communication (Yilmaz & Ergun, 2008).

Consistency and Spirituality

Spirituality at workplace is characterized by people working towards a common goal, altruism, helpfulness and cooperation (Giacalone & Jurkiewicz, 2003). According to Kanungo and Conger (1993), organizational practices that encourage an empathic understanding of the problems of others (identifying with or taking another person’s perspective) would increase altruism among employees. They further say that such practices can reinforce one’s beliefs about the social reciprocity and responsibility norms and encourage altruistic behaviour. Organizational members cooperate and help each other when they are engaged in altruistic behaviour primarily because of internalized reciprocity norms—they expect mutually beneficial consequences from their actions. Thus, we can say that SAW leads to altruism, and thus cooperation among organizational members which displays consistency. Thus, the second hypothesis is stated as follows.

Hypothesis 2: Workplace spirituality will mediate the relationship between cultural trait ‘consistency’ and effectiveness.

Adaptability

Adaptability and Effectiveness

The adaptability trait concerns how the organization copes with external contingencies and changes. This trait includes the component indexes of creating change, customer focus and organizational learning. Adaptable organizations are driven by their customers, take risks and learn from their mistakes, and have capability and experience at creating change (Denison et al., 2006). The adaptability trait facilitates the transformation of external signals and customer expectations into internal changes, and improves the organization’s ability to cope with the increasing dynamism and volatility in its environments. Therefore, adaptability is generally seen as a specific predictor of a firm’s ability to forge new territories (e.g., innovations and market development programmes) as well as its defensive capacity which in turn enhances efficiency (Yilmaz & Ergun, 2008).

Adaptability and Spirituality

Spirituality helps organizations to cope with external contingencies like changing customer needs through creativity and innovation. Krishna Kumar and Neck (2002) noted that spirituality can assist the individual to achieve increased intuition and creativity. In the case of spiritually enriched organizations, creativity is encouraged through the continual improvisation in service and also in adapting to the customers’ needs. They have quoted the example of the turnaround of the Iomega Corporation to show how a careful analysis of the customers’ needs can foster creativity and thereby lead the organization to success.

Milliman et al. (1999) in their case study of SWA state that SWA came up with an innovative concept of low-cost, no frills air travel and succeeded. SWA in a way seeks to give an opportunity to fly to people who ordinarily could not afford it. SWA is also very focused in taking care of customer needs. The same case study mentions that organization places an extraordinary focus on showing ‘heart’—caring to its customers. For example, there are times when employees have driven customers to their destinations when they missed a flight, had a customer stay at their home when they were undergoing medical treatments in an unfamiliar city, taken care of a customer’s pet when a customer had no other alternatives, or paid for a customer’s ticket when they did not have enough money. While every company has a few stories like this, at SWA they appear to happen on a much more regular basis.

Another well encouraged factor in spiritually inclined organization is trust which helps the organization to cope with external changes. According to Krishna Kumar and Neck (2002), in times of economic depression, when the company is not doing well, trust between the management and the employees plays a pivotal role in the future performance of the organization. Trust can also lead to better organizational performance through accelerated decision-making, better communication between the managers, better focus on the customer issues and greater innovation.

Thus, we arrived at third hypothesis.

Hypothesis 3: Workplace spirituality will mediate the relationship between cultural trait ‘adaptability’ and effectiveness.

Mission

Mission and Effectiveness

The mission trait defines the organization’s goals and provides the organization’s members with a sense of purpose and meaning. As such, the mission trait emphasizes stability and direction, and helps the organization to orchestrate its relationships with the external world. Organizations with a well-defined and understood clear set of values emphasizing strategic direction and intent, goals and objectives and vision are considered performing high on the mission trait (Denison et al., 2006). Based on its external focus, emphasis on stability, and its capacity to provide the organization with meaning and purpose, is seen as the strongest driver of market share, financial performance indicators and overall firm performance (Yilmaz & Ergun, 2008).

Spirituality and Mission

According to Konz and Ryan (1999), in an organization that supports spirituality, the mission statement would be the enunciated spirituality of the organization. A method for studying how well an organization had maintained its spirituality would be examined by its mission statement. If it uses terms that are not understood by the members of the organization, then the organization is having difficulty in maintaining its spirituality.

According to Poole (2009), companies who ‘stood for something’ outperformed those that did not. Here, something stands for mission of the organization. She further says that excellent companies they looked at had superordinate goals that motivated employees to believe in the company and to be motivated to further its mission. Mission is the organization’s reason for existence and Fry (2003) states that hope/faith is the source for the conviction that the organization’s mission will be fulfilled. Our fourth hypothesis is stated as below.

Hypothesis 4: Workplace spirituality will mediate the relationship between cultural trait ‘mission’ and effectiveness.

Conclusion

This article is an attempt to look at spirituality as a cultural phenomenon. It is an attempt to emphasize that organizational culture should give a place for spiritual expression, since it will result in benefits such as a better workplace, an improved quality of products and services and a satisfied workforce. The organizations with spiritual orientation are more successful, have happy employees and are more aware of their responsibilities towards other stakeholders and environment (Dhiman & Marques, 2011).

But, there are certain limitations of conceptualizing spirituality in the above form. First, article is based on cultural traits as key concept. It is inappropriate to assume that all cultural issues can be covered in these four traits. Given the lack of a well-developed theory, much research is required to reveal the exact nature of these relationships. Future investigations can focus on empirically establishing the effect of spirituality on organizational effectiveness using cultural phenomena. Another important topic would be the study of effect of spirituality on balance/imbalance of these cultural traits in organizations.

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