This document presents research on the relationship between spiritual climate in business organizations and customers' experience of employees' service. It defines key terms like spirituality, spiritual climate, and employees' service. It reviews relevant literature and identifies gaps. The researcher conceptualizes spiritual climate and proposes hypotheses about its positive impact on customer experience. The methodology involves developing a spiritual climate scale, testing its validity and reliability, and examining the relationship through regression analysis and hypothesis testing. The study finds support for the hypotheses and contributes to literature on spirituality in workplaces and service quality. Limitations include not accounting for person-organization fit variations or cultural specificity.
1. Spiritual Climate of Business Organizations and Its Impact On Customers’ Experience of Employees’ Service AshishPandey, (Fellow of M.D.I., Gugaon) Faculty, SJMSOM, Indian Institute of Technology Mumbai, India
2. 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
3. Flow of This Discussion Definition of key terms Brief overview of literature review Research gap, Conceptualizing Spiritual Climate, Proposed Hypotheses Theoretical evaluation, Limitations and Contribution of the study
4. 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.
5. 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.
10. 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)
14. Quality OrientationTranscendence Traditional Vedantic Thoughts Swadharma Loksangrah 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,
15. 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.
16. 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)
20. 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)
21. 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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24. 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
25. 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…
26. 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.
27. Operationally defined Measurement issues Face and Content validity Non continuousness of antecedent and consequent Reliability : (Cronback Alpha) Variables Construct validity Convergent validity : Supportive environment Questionnaire Discriminant validity: Items of opposite Construct Construct Logical adequacy covariance direction Control of other variables Empirical Adequacy variance in data sources: One Bank many branches Relationship Falsification of Variables, Constructs and Proposed Relationships
31. 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
39. Operational Definitions of Sub-Constructs 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 …
40. 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)
41. Battery of 112 items Likert type 1-5 scale (Measuring diff. sub constructs) Pilot Test 1 Qualitative Analysis based on Cognitive interviewing with six potential respondents 78 items for pilot testing Scale Construction Phases Subjected to Face and Content Validity check with experts Contd…..
42. Reformulation and editing of the Questions after Pilot 1 Items related to Hopefulness, Respect for diversity showed high correlation with some other items Pilot 2 Quantitative Analysis Sample Size: 76 Dimensionality check to assess the validity and reliability of the instrument covering Five Sub-constructs Pilot 3 Factor Analysis Sam. Size:162 Scale Construction: Contd….
67. Std. Error of the Estimate Adjusted R Square R Square R Model 0.19588 0.137 0.169 0.411 1. Durbin-Watson Change Statistics Model Sig. F Change df2 df1 F Change R Square Change 1.691 0.030 26 1 5.276 0.169 1 Impact of Spiritual climate on Customers experience:Summary of Regression Model
68. Hypothesis Testing: H1 t-Test H-14 L-14 Spiritual Climate Scores Employees Service Scores 3.78 3.21 3.91 3.74 t- Statistics: 2.126 P value: 0.044 (Leven’s test sig.: 0.738)
69. Conclusion p-Value H5 L5 Acceptable 0.005 3.66 3.99 H1a (Meaningfulness) Acceptable 0.03 3.74 3.95 H1b (Sense of Community) Not Accepted 0.4 3.91 3.97 H1c (Concern for family) Acceptable 0.06 3.73 3.94 H1d (Authenticity) Acceptable 0.003 3.68 3.98 H1e (Loksangrah) Variable dropped before hypothesis testing H1f (Meditative Work) ANOVA: Average Employees’ Service Scores of 5 branches each from highest and lowest Spiritual Climate Score
70. 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
71. 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.
72. 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
73. Limitations Person-organization fit variation is not studied Usual limitations of Positivist paradigm Specificity due to cultural difference has not been examined