Religiousness, Spirituality and Work

Values : Implications for Coaching

Programs
-preliminary results-

Mone Ionu-Sergiu
Cardo Roxana


Introduction
Growing interest in the manner in which people`s
spirituality and religiousness influence the way they
attribute meaning to their work (Duffy, 2010).

Lack of research on the relationship between
religiousness, spirituality and work meaning is
suprising .

Religion is an important source of meaning and
purpose in people`s lives (Baumeister, 1991).

Many employees conceptualize their
work in spiritual terms (Child, 1995; Sullivan, 2006).


Two types of religiousness :
Intrinsic Religousness
Extrinsic Religiousness
Extrinsic Personal
Extrinsic Social


Spirituality as perception of the transcendent in one`s
daily life (Underwood & Teresi, 2002).

What`s the difference?
How do religiousness and spirituality
influence work meaning??

Values can be defined as the belief that certain ways
of acting or discrete ways of being are personally or
socially desirable over other ways of acting or being
(Lewis & Hardin, 2002).

Work related values are defined as what an individual
expects out of work in general, and what components
of a job are important for his work satisfaction
(Dawis, 2001).

Three types of work values related to three categories
of work outcomes (Elizur, Borg, Hunt, & Beck,
1991):
Instrumental Work Values
Affective Work Values
Cognitive Work Values

Individuals with an intrinsic religious orientation are
less preoccupied with material aspects like prestige,
money, and power while individuals

Individuals with an extrinsic religious orientation are
preoccupied with material aspects and social prestige.
(Spilka, 1977)
Spirituality moderately and positively correlates with
valuing influence, service and meaning as work
values in the case of undergraduate students.

Intrinsic religiousness weakly correlates with valuing
influence. (Duffy, 2010).
The present exploratory study`s aim is to investigate
the relationship between religiousness, spirituality
and work values in a romanian sample.


Our research questions are:
What is the relationship between intrinsic
religiousness and work values?
What is the relationship between extrinsic
religiousness and work values?
What is the relationship between spirituality and
work values?

Methodology and Results
Cross-sectional correlational design
One hundred and twenty two (N=122) participants
were recruited online through advertisments on
socialization websites.
The mean age of our participants was 23.94
(SD=4.91), ranging from 18 to 59 years . 28.7% of
our sample was male and 71.3 % of our sample was
female.
Instruments
Demographic Questionnaire
The Intrinsic/Extrinsic-Revised Scale Gorsuch &
McPherson (1989).
Cronbachs alphas for this study were as follows: Intrinsic,
.76; Extrinsic personal, .81; Extrinsic social, .77;
The Daily Spiritual Experiences Scale (K. Birtalan, A.
Mustea, & L. Underwood, 2012)
Cronbachs alphas for this study was 0.915.
Work Values Questionnaire (Elizur, Borg, Hunt, & Beck,
1991)
Cronbachs alphas for this study was 0.73 for the
Instrumental Work Values Subscale; 0.81 for the Affective
Work Values Subscale and 0.89 for the Cognitive Work
values Subscale.


Results
We performed Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro-
Wilk tests on our variables and all were significant at
p<.01

Our variables were not normally distributed so we
decided to perform spearman rho correlations.


Variables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Intrinsic
Religiousness
1
Extrinsic
Personal
.484
**
1
Extrinsic
Social
.443
**
484
**
1
Spirituality -.737
**
-.625
**
-.405
**
1
Instrumental
Work Values
.078 -.222
**
-.020 -.023 1
Cognitive
Work Values
.204
*
-.114 .088 .009 .437
**
1
Affective
Work Values
.025 -.251
**
-.044 .144 .440
**
.609
**
1
Gender
.086 .283
**
-.043 -.264
**
-.264
**
-.252
**
-.320
**
1
Age
-.090 -.136 .120 .098 .095 .021 0.45 -.113 1
Table 1. Spearman rho correlations
*p<0.05, **p<0.01

Taking in considerance that gender correlated
significantly with most of our study variables we
decided to use a nonparametric partial correlation
(http://www01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=s
wg21474822. )
The nonparametric partial correlation was
implemented in SPSS through syntax.
Intrinsic Religiousness was positively correlated with
Cognitive Work Values ( r
s
= .234, p<.001).
Extrinsic Personal Religiousness correlated
negatively with Instrumental Work Values (r
s
= -.154,
p<.05).
Extrinisic Personal Religiousness correlated
negatively with Affective Work Values (r
s
= -.177,
p<.05).

Conclusions
Understanding the relationship between
religiousness, spirituality and work values helps us to
better understand how religiousness and spirituality
inform career related decisions and job satisfaction.

People who have a personal commitment to religion,
regardless of the benefits or rewards that come with it
seem to also value cognitive work outcomes of an
intrinsic nature.




Extrinsic Personal Religiousness correlated
negatively with instrumental work values and
affective work values.
Spirituality wasn`t associated with any work related
values.
Hence religiousness, but not spirituality, is a possible
influence on the way people attribute meaning to
work, on their career choices and job satisfaction.


Finding out if there is indeed a relationship between
people`s work values, religiousness and spirituality
helps us to better design coaching and career
counseling programs that are suited for the very
diverse 21
st
century workforce.

Limitations
Convenience sample which was also relatively small.
Low work experience of the participants (low mean
age).
We didn`t consider the religion of the participants.
We didn`t analyze the relationship between
religiousness, spirituality and specific work values.

Selective bibliography
Baumeister, R. F. (1991). Meanings of life. Guilford Press.
Dawis, R. V. (2001). 1999 Leona Tyler award: Rene V. Dawis.
Counseling Psychologist, 29, 458-465.
Duffy, R. D. (2010). SPIRITUALITY, RELIGION, AND WORK
VALUES. Journal of Psychology & Theology, 38(1).
Elizur, D., Borg, I., Hunt, R., & Beck, I. M. (1991). The structure of work
values: A cross cultural comparison. Journal of Organizational
Behavior, 12(1), 21-38.
Lewis, M. M., & Hardin, S. I. (2002). Relations among and between career
values and Christian religious values. Counseling and Values, 46(2), 96-107.
Underwood, L.G., & Teresi, J.A. (2002). The Daily Spiritual Experience Scale:
Development, theoretical description, reliability, exploratory factor analysis,
and preliminary construct validity using health related data. Annals of
Behavioral Medicine, 24, 22-33.