Spirituality In The Workplace

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Pandey et al. (2016) identified and measured four constructs of workplace spiritual climate: Swadharma, Lokasangraha, authenticity and sense of community. The authors clarified that there are two dimensions of Swadharma i.e. meaningful work and meditative work. Meaningfulness of work refers to work done for life not only for livelihood (Ashmos and Duchon, 2000). Meaningful work satisfies higher level needs and aspirations of the employees. McCormick (1994) referred to meditative work as experience of being totally absorbed in work and thus losing sense of self. Employee becomes one with the work and no separation remains between employee and work. Meditative work is a deeper aspect of spirituality that involves affective, behavioral part of…show more content…
Scholars have coined a new term for such situation as ‘engagement gap’ (Kowalski 2003; Bates 2004; Johnson 2004). Workplace spirituality has evolved as one of the effective solutions to deal with dearth of employee engagement. Many firms are engrossed in creating spiritual workplaces that connect the hearts and minds of their workers (Pfeffer 2010). Employee engagement has been associated to the human spirit at work (May et al., 2004). Employee engagement and workplace spirituality are related to feeling of wholeness and completeness. Institutionalizing spirituality at workplace helps employee to experience completeness at workplace Kumar and Neck (2002). All literary definitions of spirituality indicate a sense of wholeness (Mlliman et al. 2003). Employee engagement includes the concurrent venturing of all aspects of oneself i.e. cognitive, physical and emotional in the performance (Kahn 1990). Thus spiritual workplace may induce full involvement of the employees. Kumar and Neck (2002) asserted that spirituality is an important dimension of human personality. And spirituality at workplace ensures that employees bring their complete self to work. Spirituality at workplace provides employee an opportunity to express various facets of self and not merely physical and intellectual facets of self (Ashmos and Duchon, 2000). Thus spirituality by its inherent nature tends to engage employees. Jurkiewicz and Giacalone (2004) elaborated that spiritual workplace provides a chance for integration of personal and professional self at workplace, engaging entire self in the work process. Workplace spirituality also helps in augmentation of interconnectedness between employees and it again have positive impact on employee involvement (Kumar and Neck 2002; Milliman et al. 2003). Indian spiritual values too inspire devotees to have full devotion

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