Spiritual resources as antecedents of work engagement among Australian religious workers

Abstract

Work engagement has generated much interest in both academic and practitioner domains as an antipode to the negative work state of burnout. Engaged employees feel enthusiastically devoted to their work tasks, are energetic and proactive, and seem happily engrossed and fully concentrated at work. Empirical research into occupational well-being among religious workers has also increased over the past two decades. However, it remains biased towards burnout. Further, extant research has tended to ignore religious/spiritual dimensions that not only make this population and their work distinct, but may provide additional resources that contribute to personal and occupational well-being. The purpose of the present research was to explore the relationships between work engagement and selected dimensions of spirituality (secure relationship/attachment to God, collaborative religious coping, sacred calling to the work) conceptualised as spiritual resources among Australian religious workers (clergy, chaplains, cross-cultural missionaries, youth workers, etc). The job demands-resources model and the conservation of resources theory have served as leading theoretical frameworks guiding work engagement research. A consideration of spiritual resources as a category of personal resources within these theoretical perspectives provided a heuristic within which multiple hypotheses were tested. Findings from a series of three related studies are presented utilising both cross-sectional and full panel longitudinal research designs. Cross-sectional structural equation modelling analyses demonstrated a positive direct relationship between spiritual resources and work engagement, a negative direct relationship between spiritual resources and exhaustion, a negative indirect relationship between spiritual resources and turnover intentions via work engagement, and a negative indirect relationship between spiritual resources and emotional ill-health via exhaustion. These relationships were significant when controlling for the effects of job demands, job resources, age, gender, job tenure, personality dimensions, and a common method factor. Three-wave longitudinal analyses confirmed that spiritual resources had a positive cross-lagged effect on work engagement, and that work engagement mediated the relationship between spiritual resources and subsequent (low) turnover intentions. However, longitudinal analyses failed to support the hypothesis of a positive reciprocal relationship between spiritual resources and work engagement. Rather, work engagement was found to have a negative indirect effect on spiritual resources over time, mediated by job resources. There appears to be a new dark side of work engagement for this cohort. Spiritual resources are diminished over time by work engagement and job resources. Spiritual resources emerge as an important category of resources for work engagement among religious workers, and the present investigation indicates theneed for energy to be invested in the ongoing development of spiritual resources to maintain work engagement. Practical applications, study limitations, and future research directions are discussed.

Date of Award	2013
Original language	English