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Spiritual Climate of Business Organizations and Its Impact On

Customers’ Experience of Employees’ Service

Ashish Pandey, (Fellow of M.D.I., Gugaon)

Faculty, SJMSOM,Indian Institute of Technology

Mumbai, India

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Objectives of this Presentation

• To explain the process of developing the construct of

‘spiritual climate at workplace’

• Evaluation of hypothesis about positive relationship

between spiritual climate and its impact on customers

experience of employees’ service

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Flow of This DiscussionDefinition of key terms

Brief overview of literature review

Research gap, Conceptualizing Spiritual Climate, Proposed Hypotheses Theoretical evaluation,

Limitations and Contributionof the study

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Definition of Spirituality (adapted from the literature for the current

study)

Spirituality is the harmony with oneself and with natural and social environment and believe or

capacity of transcendence.

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Spiritual Climate at Workplace

Spiritually Climate at workplace is defined as the collective perception of the employees about the work place which facilitates harmony with ‘self’ through meaningful work, transcendence from the limited ‘self’ and operates in harmony with social and natural environment having a sense of interconnectedness within it.

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Employees’ Service

• Service behaviour of employees towards clients/customer

• Service Consumption Experience (in banking sector) is a function of :

Core Service, Employees’ Service and Servicescape (Grace and O’Cass, 2004)

Inspiration for the Study

• Creating meaning may be the most important managerial task of the future.

Nichols (1994)

• Performance survey of organizations managed by spiritual values shows more incidences of Organizational Citizenship Behaviors

Nur (2003)

• Best places to work are where people find a purpose to work other than their paycheques. These companies gave returns more than three times that of S&P 500 companies give between 1997 to 2003.

Fortune (2006) analysis of ‘Best Places to Work’

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Spirituality: Epistemological Divergence

• Spirituality as Intelligence Zohar and Marshall(2002), Emmons (1999)

• Spirituality as Inner Experience Caddy (1986), Dillard (2002),

• Spirituality as Higher Reaches of Developmental Lines Lovinger (1998), Kohlberg (1990)

• Spirituality is attitude of openness, care and love Wilber (2004)

Spirituality in Management: A Schematic View

Traditional VedanticThoughtsSwadharmaLoksangrah

ContemporaryThoughts

• Positive/ Humanist Psychology• Well-being Literature• Integral Psychology

Spiritualityin Management

HarmonyWith Self

Harmony inEnvironment

Transcendence

ImpactOf Spirituality

Job Behavior

• Motivation

• Learning

• Commitment

OrganizationPerformance

• Financial

• Quality Orientation

Conceptual UnderpinningOf Spirituality

Pandey, A. and Gupta, R. K. (2008). Spirituality in Management: Review of Traditional and Contemporary Literature and Agenda for Future Research, Global Business Review, Sage Pub., Vol. 9, Iss. 1, pp. 65-84,

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Major Insights from Literature

• Literature on human well-being and humanistic and

integral psychology acknowledges the spiritual aspect/s

of human self and realms of human consciousness

beyond psycho-physiological and psychosocial realms.

• Spirituality manifests at different levels and forms in

human affair.

• Possibility of synthesis of contemporary knowledge and

traditional wisdom in the field of spirituality.

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Research Gap

• Very few studies predicting relation of spirituality with organizational outcomes (except Nur, 2003, Scott, 2002)

• Most of the individual level studies in the field of spirituality in management suffer from ‘same source bias’.

• No study reported to examine the impact on customers service experience (Marques, 2005)

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Psychology

Freud Jung

Fromm Maslow

Frankl Allport

Well Being

ElementalismHumanism

Aspects of Spiritual WellnessCharlene (1996)

• Meaning and purpose in life• Intrinsic values• Transcendent beliefs /experiences• Community/relationship

Literature Review

Contemporary Thoughts about Spiritual Aspect of

human life

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Literature Review

Indian Traditional Wisdom(Vedantic Views)

Dharma

Rta

Adhyatmik

Adhidaivik Adhibhuatik

Swadharma

Loksangrah

and

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Spirituality at Workplace :A Conceptual Convergence• Harmony with self:

– Finding meaning and purpose in work (Mitroff and Denton, 1999; Ashmos and Duchon, 2000),

– Profound feeling of well being and joy (Kinjerski, 2004), – Self actualization (Ashforth and Pratt, 2003; Pfeffer, 2003)– Development of one’s full potential (Krishnkumar and Neck, 2002)

• Harmony with environment: – Community (Giacalone and Jurkiewicz, 2004, Ashmos and Duchon,

2000),– Being comfortable with the world (Morgan, 1993)– Connectedness (Ingersoll, 1998), compassion (McCormick, 1994)– Respect, Humility, Common purpose etc.(Heaton, Scmidt-Wilk and

Travis, 2004, Kinjerski, 2004) • Transcendence:

– Connection to something greater than oneself (Dehler and Welsh, 2003, Ashforth and Pratt, 2003)

– Meditative work (McCormick, 1994)

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Research Objectives

• Conceptualizing the Spiritual Climate of the business organization and development of the scale of spiritual climate

• Test the relation of spiritual climate at workplace and customers experience of employees’ service

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Theoretical Foundation of Research

Gestalt psychology (Lewin, 1955):

Perceiving the ‘whole’ to draw psychologically meaningful

references

The basis of most of organizational climate research

Linkage research (Schneider, 1989):

Climate of a business organization is perceived by its clients and

impact their experience.

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Consequent Variable in the Study: Employees’ Service

Service Consumption Experience is a function of

Core Service, Employees’ Service and Servicescape, (Grace and O’Cass, 2004)

Employees Behavior is a function of Personality and Environment (Salancik and Pfeffer, 1978; Chatman and Barsade, 1995)

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Components of Employees’ service:(Grace and O’Cass, 2004)

– Prompt service

– Willingness to help

– Understanding the customers need

– Trust

– Safety

– Politeness

– Personal attention

– Possessing and providing service related information

– Keeping promise

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Hypotheses

H1: Workplace showing higher Spiritual climate will be experienced by the customers as providing better employees’ service.

H1a: Customers will find the better employees’ service in the workplace where employees’ find their work meaningful.

H1b: Customers will find the better employees’ service in the workplace where employees experience sense of community.

H1c: Customers will find the better employees’ service in the workplace where employees are concern towards each other family.

Contd…

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H1d: Customers will find the better employees’ service in the workplace where employees experience authenticity in people’s behavior at work place.

H1e: Customers find the better employees’ service in the workplace where employees work with the feeling of Loksangrah, i.e. as if they are working for world-maintenance.

H1f: Customers find the better employees’ service in the workplace where employees experience meditative work.

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Falsification of Variables, Constructs and Proposed Relationships

Logical adequacycovariancedirection Control of other variablesEmpirical Adequacyvariance in data sources: One Bank many branches

Relationship

Construct validityConvergent validity : Supportive environment Questionnaire Discriminant validity: Items of opposite Construct

Construct

Operationally definedMeasurement issues

Face and Content validityNon continuousness of antecedent and consequentReliability : (Cronback Alpha)

Variables

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Overview of Empirical Research

Development of Spiritual Climate Scale

Phases of Empirical Research

Exploratory Factor Analysis

Validation of Spiritual Climate Scale

Hypotheses Testing

Confirmatory Factor Analysis

Technique/Test Applied

• Regression Analysis• Comparison of means• Analysis of Variance

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Scale Development Phases(with Theory Driven Approach)

1. Item Conception and writing

2. Item Analysis, i.e. internal consistency

evaluation and item selection based on face and content validity

3 Dimensionality check

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• Meaningful work

• Hopefulness

• Authenticity

• Sense of community

• Loksangrah

• Respect for diversity

• Meditative work

Harmony with self

Harmony in environment

Transcendence

Swadharma

Rta

Variables of the constructCorrelating

dimensions in

contemporary

literature

Dimensions in

Indian

traditional

literature

Spiritual Climate of Workplace:Dimensions and variables from the

literature

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• Meaningful work: Work for life not only for livelihood (Ashmos and Duchon, 2000)

• Hopefulness: Individual determination that goals can be achieved and belief that successful plans can be formulated and pathways can be identified to attain the goal (Snyder, 2000)

• Authenticity : Alignment of people’s actions and behaviors with their core, internalized values and beliefs (Pareek, 2002; Harvey, Martinko and Gardner, 2006)

Continued …

Operational Definitions of Sub-

Constructs

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• Sense of community: Experience of interconnectedness and interdependence of employees (Jurkiewicz and Giacalone, 2004)

• Loksangrah: Working for world maintenance (Radhakrishnan, 1954); Concern for social and Natural environment

• Respect for diversity: Adapting a plural way of accommodating the multiplicities and diversities of societies, markets and individuals and operates on shared opportunity and shared responsibility (Zohar, 2002)

• Meditative work: Experience of being absorbed in work, losing any sense of self, and becoming one with the activity (McCormick, 1994)

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Scale Construction Phases

Subjected to Face and Content Validity check withexperts

Pilot Test 1

Qualitative Analysis based on Cognitive interviewing with six potential respondents

Battery of 112 itemsLikert type 1-5 scale(Measuring diff.sub constructs)

78 items for pilot testing

Contd…..

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Scale Construction: Contd….

Reformulation and editing of the Questions after Pilot 1

Pilot 2Quantitative AnalysisSample Size: 76

Items related to Hopefulness, Respect for diversity showed high correlation with some other items

Dimensionality check to assess thevalidity and reliability of the instrument covering Five Sub-constructs

Pilot 3Factor AnalysisSam. Size:162

29Approx. 72%Variance Explained

0.873Reliability Coefficient

371.988 (231 degree of freedom)Chi Square test

0.775KMO Bartlett Test

(for Sampling Adequacy)

7 Factor Solution Meaningful work Sense of community (sub divided in 2 factors) Concern for Family Authenticity Loksangrah

Meditative work

Factor Structure

Non orthogonal Rotation

Summary of findings of Exploratory Factor Analysis

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A Note on Discriminant Validity of the Spiritual Climate Construct

Service Climate(Schneider 2000)

• Managerial behavioral scale

• Branch administration

Ethical Climate(Victor and

Cullen,1989)

• Caring• Law and code• Rules• Independence• Instrumental

(reverse)

Employees’ Engagement(Gallup’s Q-12)(Individual and

dyadic level construct)

• Appreciation• Role clarity• Learning

opportunity• Enablingenvironment

Spiritual Climate

• Meaningfulness• Sense of

community• Authenticity• Concern for family• Loksangrah• Meditative work

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• Unit of analysis(for antecedent) : Branch of Public Sector Bank

• Sampling method: Stratified Random

• Sample size: 31, Equal number of small

and large branches randomly selected from two regions of Delhi Zone Contd…..

Empirical Research Phase II

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• Unit of analysis (for consequent) : Branch of public sector bank• Sampling method: Stratified Random for branches Simple random sampling for customers in respective branches

• Sample size: about 15-20 customers each from the 31 branches sampled for the study

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Factor Structure

• KMO and Bartlett value: 0.821

• Reliability Coefficient: 0. 88

Five Factor Solution

(Variable Meditative Work showed cross

loading thus dropped from the further

analysis)

Spiritual Climate Scale

Confirmatory Factor Analysis

• Two Factor Solution

• KMO and Bartlett test: 0.923

• Reliability Coefficient: 0.91

Employees Service

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0.195880.1370.1690.4111.

Std. Error of the EstimateAdjusted R

Square

R SquareRModel

1.6910.0302615.2760.1691

Sig. F

Change

df2df1F

Change

R

Square

Change

Durbin-

Watson

Change StatisticsModel

Impact of Spiritual climate on Customers experience:

Summary of Regression Model

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Hypothesis Testing: H1

Spiritual Climate Scores

Employees Service Scores

3.78

3.91

3.21

3.74

t-Test

t- Statistics: 2.126P value: 0.044(Leven’s test sig.: 0.738)

H-14 L-14

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ANOVA: Average Employees’ Service Scores of 5 branches each from highest and lowest Spiritual Climate Score

Variable dropped before

hypothesis testing

H1f (Meditative Work)

Acceptable0.0033.683.98H1e (Loksangrah)

Acceptable0.063.733.94H1d (Authenticity)

Not Accepted0.43.913.97H1c (Concern for family)

Acceptable0.033.743.95H1b (Sense of

Community)

Acceptable0.0053.663.99H1a (Meaningfulness)

Conclusionp-ValueH5 L5

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Contributions to ‘Spirituality at Workplace’ and larger OB literature

• Integrating the traditional and contemporary thoughts for conceptualizing spirituality at workplace

• Answers the call of Giacalone and Jurkiewicz (2004) for an instrument that captures workplace spirituality

• The study intend to contribute to Positive OB literature

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Contributions to Service Quality literature

• Gupta (1995) suggested that quality orientation and customers service are the two modern management notions parallel to Vedantic wisdom. This study examines the conjecture and tests it empirically.

• This study answers the call of Bowen and Waldman (1999) for research that pulls different sources of data together for better understanding of requirements and consequences of employee performance in relation with customers satisfaction.

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Managerial Implication

• Meaningfulness of work and sense of contribution is

linked to employees performance

• Importance of generic climate for specific climate to be

achieve intended outcome

• Useful finding for Energized Learning (Thriving)

organization and other OD intervention

• Stepping stone towards concretizing the scheme of

organizational consciousness

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Limitations

• Person-organization fit variation is not studied

• Usual limitations of Positivist paradigm

• Specificity due to cultural difference has not been examined

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