ABSTRACT
“The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between workplace spirituality and employees’ commitment of local government areas in Rivers State. The study adopted a cross sectional survey design to solicit responses from the employees of the 23 local government areas of Rivers State using the simple random technique. After data cleaning, only data of 316 respondents were finally used for data analysis”. “Descriptive statistics and the Spearman rank order correlation were used for data analysis and hypothesis testing. Empirical findings revealed that there is a positive significant relationship between workplace spirituality and employee commitment of local government staff in Rivers State”. “Findings further revealed that faith and altruism dimensions of workplace spirituality have significant relationships with affective commitment, continuance commitment and normative commitment measures of organizational employee commitment”. “The study thus concluded that workplace spirituality bears a positive and significant influence on employee commitment and all the dimensions and measures show significant positive relationships. We recommended that local government authorities should strive to show devotion to organizational members through acts of benevolence, care and concern, in order to be assured of their high level of commitment to work”. “We further recommended that one way to substantially increase workers emotional involvement at work is to substantially enhance the stock of altruism within the organization. Virtues of unselfishness, self-sacrifice and selflessness, and philanthropy are hereby recommended”. Also our study recommends that Local Government Area authorities are encouraged to promote altruistic behaviours amongst employees.INTRODUCTION
The concept of workplace spirituality have been well articulated by researchers in the past decades. The historical origin is traced to have started in the United States of America over the recent years past and have cut across international borders owing to globalization. This concept is relatively new especially in the Local Government Service of Rivers State, Nigeria. The relevance ofthe concept of promote employees’ commitment in organizations have not been well articulated, owing to the fact that it is sometimes taught to mean religiosity at work. As such, not much of workplace spirituality has been noticeable within organizations in the level of employee commitment. Giacalone and Jurkiewicz, (2003) “conceived workplace spirituality as a framework of organizational values evidenced in the culture that promotes employees’ experience of transcendence through the work process, facilitating their sense of being connected in a way that provides feelings of compassion and joy”.Tourish & Pinnington,(2002) “posits that the increasing interest in the spiritual side of workers, is often driven by non-spiritual concerns. Studies have argued that the non-spiritual concerns are the outcomes, not antecedents, of workplace spirituality”. Maintaining spirituality at the workplace is a multipart job, it is merit the attempt given to the known benefits associated with better leadership, improved ethical behavior, increased creativity, improved productivity, superior employees efficiency and abridged absence and proceeds, and improved work presentation which reinstates the work of Mitroff & Denton, 1999 “that spirituality has been heralded as the ultimate competitive advantage”. Spirituality and commitment have made its steady entry in to management literature in the early 1920 “as a grassroots’ movement seeking to stamp the need for its individuals to express or live their faith and or spiritual values in the workplace”.
Its newness cannot be overemphasized as available in the article of William Miller “How do we put our spirituality value to work”, available in fresh Tradition in commerce courage and management in the 21stcentury. The length and breadth of the civil service has experienced a disconnect that resulted to employee’s operating without their soul in their daily assignment for lack of workplace spirituality amongst others (Adams & Bezner, 2000).
“Spirituality in the workplace means that employees find nourishment for both the vertical and horizontal dimensions of their spirituality at work. Workplace spirituality is about individuals and employees seeing work in a spiritual perspective to grow and to contribute to society in a meaningful way”.
“The spiritual perspective of workplace spirituality is about compassion and support of others, about integrity and people being true to themselves and others. It means that individuals and organizations should attempt to live to their values more fully in the work they do”. “One of the casual effects which have contributed immensely to the growing interest in the study of workplace spirituality is the dramatic change in the nature of work resulting from increasing globalization and a shift from the industrial age to the information age”. To the perception of some employee within the civil service, this shift has provided a platform for longer work hours; greater expectation for production accompanied by much expectation from employees, due to government intention to reduce expenses (Duxbury and Higgins, 2002).
Despite the background of intensive interest on workplace spirituality, some advocates of the school of thought “think that a managerial approach trivializes spirituality. They argued that, being a non – materialistic concern, workplace spirituality is marginalized and misrepresented when people focus on the material gains that can be reaped by integrating it in organizational life”. ..........
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Reference code: MG014
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Reference code: MG014
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