Intrapersonal Spirituality Constructs In A Workplace

Interest in workplace spirituality has increased steadily over the last decade of the twentieth century and into the new millennium. Moreover, Burbach, et al. (2003) states that work life reaches and touches into the very soul and spirit of all employees at work. Those at work are constantly seeking ways to improve themselves and a sense of contribution to their work life. Workplace unity creates stronger organization, one that can withstand uncertainties in this dynamic business environment.

Spiritual beliefs help individuals make sense of suffering. Every person has the ‘will’ to seek meaning in life or to achieve purpose in life. The expression of spirituality at work involves the assumption that each person has his/her own inner motivations and truths and desires to be involved in activities that gives greater meaning to his/her life and into the lives of others. Additionally, the perception of spirituality are about things such as searching for deeper meaning and purpose, living one’s dream, expressing one’s inner life needs by seeking meaningful work and contributing to others. Workplace spirituality recognizes the inner life which nourishes and is nourished by meaningful work that occurs in context of community.

Marques (2005) defined spirituality as an experience of interconnectedness and trust among those involved in a work process, engendered by individual goodwill; leading to the collective creation of a motivational organizational culture, epitomized by reciprocity and solidarity; and resulting in enhanced overall performance which is ultimately translated in lasting organizational excellence.

Job satisfaction relates to important determinant of life satisfaction for working population. In-role job performance, Steele-Johnson et al. (2000), defined actions as specified and required by an employee’s job description and thus mandated, appraised, and rewarded by the employing organization. These sets of rules and procedure make work behavior predictable so that basic organizational tasks can be coordinated. However, a performance goal reflects the desire to demonstrate superior competence to others. As such, employees with performance orientations tend to perceive in-role job requirements as competitive standards that motivate them to exert effort in order to outperform others and to attain favorable competence, judgments from their organization’s appraisal and reward systems. An organization has to find the right balance between using rules and procedures to make work performance predictable and giving employees the freedom to spontaneously innovate to adapt to problems, opportunities, and unusual situations. Moreover, innovate job performance concerns the development and application of something new for which the knowledge and strategies are necessary to be learned. Lee and Ahmad (2009) found that job satisfaction affects levels of job dissatisfaction, absenteeism, grievance expression, tardiness, low morale, high turnover, quality improvement and participation in decision-making. These in turn affect the overall performance of the organization Mayer et al., (2000) Emotions play an equally important role as intelligence in enhancing personal and professional success. It is mentioned by Malhi (2004) that emotional quotient as EQ or emotional intelligence as EI, in term of being able to monitor and regulate self-owned feeling and others, and used that feelings to a guidance in thinking and acting. According to Wilding (2007) that emotional quotient or EQ is very important to human being as one solution to success. It is because emotional quotient or EQ contents of high quality of soft skills. Furthermore, Petrides and Furnham (2003) proposed emotional quotient as a constellation of emotion-related self-perceptions located at the lower levels of personality. It includes number of multi facets like adaptability, assertiveness, emotion perception, emotion expression. Emotional quotient is all about using emotions intelligently in daily life. Different authors discussed about emotional quotient and the present study has reviewed, the definition supported by the subsequent models developed by famous authors like Goleman (2001) Personality Model. It is a mixed model in terms of performance, integrating an individual’s abilities and personality and applying the corresponding that affects the performance in the workplace. Organizational with job satisfaction found to be positively related. In relating spirituality with job satisfaction, McGeachy (2001) personal fulfillment led to outstanding performance of spirituality was confirmed which resulted into organizational financial success. In determining the association of relational dynamics of spirituality with organizational commitment and job satisfaction, it is mainly found out that intrapersonal spiritual dimension of office workers such self-determination and self-enrichment, and its interpersonal dimensions such as small group and organizational modes had positive impact on the organizational commitment of the office workers. Interestingly, self-control, being one of components of the intrapersonal spirituality constructs, and transactional and transformational mode as the dimensions of spirituality construct, negatively affects office workers commitment with organizations.