WORKPLACE SPIRITUALITY AND PSYCHOLOGICAL CONTRACT AS DETERMINANTS OF EMPLOYEE COMMITMENT

Abstract

The present study is aimed at examining the impact of workplace spirituality (WPS) and psychological contract on employee commitment. It is an attempt to assess the relationship of key dimensions of WPS (compassion, mindfulness, meaningful work and transcendence), and psychological contract (transactional, relational and balanced contract) with employee commitment. Additionally, this study examines the path analysis between WPS and employee commitment through the mediating effect of psychological contract. Moreover, the current study also investigates the role of demographics such as age, gender, hierarchical level and organization type, on the selected variables of the study. In order to fulfill the research objectives based on the identified research gaps, primary responses were collected from 355 employees (junior, middle & senior) working in the Indian manufacturing organizations. The selected organizations were from the different parts of India. These organizations belonged to the ‘heavy machines manufacturing, gas & power and steel manufacturing’ sector. The minimum criterion for these organizations to get shortlisted was a minimum market capitalization of INR 10,000 crores and above. A mixed-mode method was adopted for the data collection. It involved data collection with the help of paper, pen and online resources via the internet. The collected primary data was analyzed with the help of SPSS and AMOS 23 version statistical software. Specifically, statistical techniques namely independent t-test, one-way ANOVA, multiple hierarchical regression and conditional PROCESS Macro analysis were used to test the proposed hypotheses. Since the study is multivariate in nature, a screening process was employed to check for the missing values, normality and reliability of the data. After the initial completion of data screening process, the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was applied to obtain the factor structure of the selected variables of the present study. In the next step, the demographics effect was analyzed using independent t-test and one-way ANOVA. Subsequently, multiple hierarchical regression was used to examine the impact of WPS and psychological contract along with their respective dimensions on employee commitment. In the final section of analysis, conditional PROCESS macro analysis was employed to test the mediation effect of psychological contract on the relationship of WPS and employee commitment. ii The major findings of the present study showed that female employees are found more likely to be compassionate and mindful than male employees. Specifically, the employees at the lower level are also found to be more compassionate than middle and senior level employees. The results also revealed that senior level employees showed high relational contract but employees at the lower level are found to show more transactional contract. More specifically, findings suggested that psychological contract partially mediated the relationship between WPS and employee commitment. The results of the study suggest some theoretically and managerial implications. This study tried to fill the void as highlighted by the previous researchers in the area of positive employees’ attitude by discussing commitment issues in the Indian manufacturing sector. The present study findings enhanced the literature related to WPS in the Indian context and is one of the novel effort to discuss the role of WPS in determining the employer - employee relationship as form of psychological contract. The current study suggested some strategies for the HR practitioners as well to promote WPS in the form of improving compassion, mindfulness, meaningful work and transcendence in the Indian manufacturing sector. The results report that balanced contract and relational contract are the most important factors than transactional contract to influence employee commitment. HR practitioners can devise their policies to focus on the balanced contract as well as relational contract so that the employment relationship between employee and employer can be improved, which can ultimately boost employee commitment. HR practitioners should focus on hiring more female employees in the manufacturing sector as this study found female employees to be more mindful and compassionate than male employees. More number of female employees in the manufacturing organizations may result into highly committed workforce which will eventually help these organizations to perform better and sustain in the global market for a long period. The dataset of this study are the employees of the Indian manufacturing sector, which represents the collectivist culture. Managers of the same sector working in other countries, resembling the collectivist approach, can take cue from this study.