Impact of Workplace Spirituality on Work Outcomes: The Mediating Role of Employee Engagement

Abstract

Recent decades have witnessed a rising interest in the phenomenon of workplace spirituality. The focus is gradually shifting from contemplative enquiries to empirical studies where researchers attempt to capture and analyse the concept of spirituality at work. The current study is in this direction where the primary objective is to test the claims on the benefits of workplace spirituality in an Indian non-profit context. Spirituality is considered to be an integral element of service oriented professions and the present study attempts to validate this assumption in an educational work setting. The present research attempts to analyse the impact of workplace spirituality on organisational commitment, teaching satisfaction, job involvement, and organisational citizenship behaviour among secondary school teachers of government educational institutions in the southern region of India. Additionally, employee engagement, which is another construct of recent origin, is introduced as a mediator between the workplace spirituality-outcome relationships. The conceptual model proposed indicated positive relationships between workplace spirituality and all the work outcomes with job and organisational engagement as mediators. A total of 853 secondary school teachers from state-run schools were surveyed for the research. PLS based SEM was adopted for testing the structural model. The results were generally supportive for proposed model. Workplace spirituality was found to be positively related to both forms of employee engagement. In the mediated model, mediation of job engagement was stronger for commitment, satisfaction and involvement, mediation of organisational engagement was stronger for citizenship behaviour. The one way through which workplace spirituality benefits are manifested in the organisations is through the enhancement of the engagement levels of people, which in turn is reflected in their attitudes and behaviour. The study holds important implications for the institutions functioning in the social sector. State-run schools are considered as the backbone of the educational system in the region. These are institutions at the grass root level and could exert long-term influence on the progression of the society. Hence, it is vital that the individuals associated with these institutions are able to replenish their selves, and become more dynamic, creative, and optimistic thus creating a new learning experience for the students.