The Mediating Effects of Job Engagement between Spirituality at Work and Performance

• Main Author: LAI, Eileen Pei Shan
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2012
• Subjects: spirituality; work performance; work engagement; mediation; Human Resources Management; Organizational Behavior and Theory
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/etd_coll/231; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1231&context=etd_coll
• Institution: Singapore Management University

This research study explores the mediating role that work engagement plays between spirituality at work and performance. Spirituality at work is measured by four dimensions of meaningful work, having a sense of community, alignment with corporate values and having an inner life. Work engagement is recognized to comprise of physical, emotional and cognitive engagement (Kahn, 1990). Performance, on the other hand, refers to in-role behaviours, organizational citizenship behaviours – individuals ("OCB – I"), organizational citizenship behaviours – organizations ("OCB – O") and employee creativity. My main contribution to the management, spirituality and religion (MSR) scholarship is the extension of the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model in the work engagement literature to include spirituality as a resource. The JD-R model was developed with only one resource - job resource. Later developments extended the model to include personal resource. And in this proposal, I would further extend the JD-R model by arguing that spirituality at work is also a resource that individuals can draw upon. My argument is mainly supported by the conservation of resources theory and the self-determination theory. Based on the responses of 300 individuals working in Singapore and across a variety of jobs and industries, results confirm that all types of work engagement (i.e. physical, emotional and cognitive) have full or partial mediating effects between all dimensions of spirituality at work (i.e. meaningful work, sense of community, alignment with corporate values and inner life) with all types of performance outcomes (i.e. in-role behaviour, OCB – I, OCB – O and creativity) except for the relationships between sense of community and inner life to in-role behaviour and between inner life to OCB – O, where no mediating effects are found.