معنویت کارکنان و عملکرد شغلی: نقش انگیزه درونی و ایجاد فرصت های شغلی Does employees’ spirituality enhance job performance? The mediating roles of intrinsic motivation and job crafting

Introduction In recent years, there has been a growing interest in understanding spirituality in the workplace and its effects on employees’ psychological outcomes and job performance (Duchon and Plowman 2005; Fry 2003; Mitroff and Denton 1999; Pawar 2009). Despite the lack of a widely accepted definition of spirituality – there are more than 70 definitions of spirituality at work (Karakas 2010; Kinjerski and Skrypnek 2004) – there is a consensus that spirituality is a multifaceted construct which is associated with seeking meaningfulness and purpose from work, and living according to one’s deeply held values, which may include a relationship with a higher power, the sacred, God, or the divine (Dehler and Welsh 2003; Milliman et al. 2003; Mitroff and Denton 1999). The current study draws upon the conceptualization developed by Liu and Robertson (2011) who recognize three dimensions: Binterconnection with a higher power^, Binterconnection with human beings^, and Binterconnection with nature and all living things^. We utilize this framework, according to which spirituality in the workplace is defined as the basic feeling amongst employees of being connected with a higher power, feeling interconnected with other human beings, and experiencing an interconnection with nature and all living things (Liu and Robertson 2011). Spirituality in the workplace is manifested at both an individual and the organizational level (Garcia-Zamor 2003). At the individual level, employees express their spiritual selves in terms of the cognitive and affective experience of believing in a spiritual connection to the job and the workplace. At the organizational level, the organization’s spirituality is reflected through spiritual value that is part of the organization’s climate and culture, manifested within employees’ attitudes and behavior, decision-making, and resource allocation (Kolodinsky et al. 2008; Pawar 2008). Although many studies have examined the relationship between spirituality and individual and organizational outcomes (e.g., Duchon and Plowman 2005; Kinjerski and Skrypnek 2004; Markow and Klenke 2005; Mitroff and Denton 1999), several researchers have stressed the need to clarify the links between spirituality and employees’ job performance (Beekun and Westerman 2012; Duchon and Plowman 2005; Giacalone and Jurkiewicz 2003a; Sheep 2006). Thus, the fundamental objective of this research is to explore how an employee’s spirituality affects his or her job performance, and specifically to identify the precise mechanism through which an employee’s spirituality may enhance his or her job performance. Although there has been an increasing interest in spirituality in the workplace, few studies have empirically examined how employees’ spirituality influences job performance via mediating mechanisms. This study contributes to the extant spirituality literature by developing an understanding of the underlying mechanism through which employees’ spirituality may positively affect job performance based on the Job Demands-Resources (JDR) model (Schaufeli and Bakker 2004).