Workplace spirituality as a mediator between ethical climate and workplace deviant

behavior

Jurnal - Workplace spirituality as mediator between ethical climate and workplace deviant
behavior
1. Introduction (fikri)
2. Literatur review and hypotheses development
- 2.1 (fikri)
- 2.2 (fikri)
- 2.3 (Bahbry)
- 2.4 (Bahbry)
3. Methods (alfian)
4. Results (alfian)
5. Discussions and academic implications (Naomi)
6. Practical impications (Naomi)
7. Limitations, future research and conclusion (BahbrY

Workplace spirituality as a mediator

between ethical climate and workplace
deviant behavior
Kavitha Haldorai; Woo Gon Kim; Howook Chang et al.
2020

Summary
Introduction
Workplace spirituality has gained prominence because it promotes a positive psychological
environment for employees. Organizations are facing higher levels of job dissatisfaction and stress,
leading to mental exhaustion, workplace aggression, and incivility behavior. These issues have led to
the emergence of a new management practice called workplace spirituality that helps in balancing
different aspects of employees’ lives and the organization. Most of the previous research on
workplace spirituality was carried out in hospital settings and accounting firms and focused on the
outcomes of workplace spirituality, including organizational performance and job satisfaction
(Belwalkar et al, 2018), employee engagement (Tepper, 2003), and organizational citizenship
behavior (Rego et al, 2010). The aim is to empirically test organizational justice and ethical climate as
the antecedents of workplace spirituality and the mediating effects of spirituality in the workplace
on deviant workplace behavior and organizational citizenship behavior among hotel employees.

2. Literatur review and hypotheses development

2.1. Organizational justice, workplace spirituality and deviant behavior

2.1.1 Organizational justice and workplace deviant behavior
Organizational justice is the perceived fairness in the workplace that can provide long-term benefits,
such as cognitive, emotional, attitudinal, and behavioral outcomes for employees (Thornton and
Rupp, 2016). By applying social exchange theory, one may consider workplace deviance as the
consequence of an unfair treatment or unfavorable social exchange between employees and their
organization. When employees believe their workplace is unfair, negative attitudes, such as
dissatisfaction, mistrust, and stress, are developed. These negative attitudes lead to deviant
behaviors in the workplace affecting both individuals and the organization.

Other studies that explored the impact of organizational justice on deviant behavior have
documented similar results (Demir, 2011; Thornton and Rupp, 2016). From these discussions, one
can conclude that organizational justice is a strong negative predictor of workplace deviant behavior.

H1 Organizational justice is negatively related to workplace deviant behavior

2.1.2 Organizational justice and workplace spirituality

Workplace spirituality is a multidimensional phenomenon (Petch Awang and Duchon, 2009). This
study focuses on meaningful work, sense of community, and alignment with organization’s values
(Milliman et al, 2003) as they surface often in workplace spirituality literature and has a close
relationship with employee work outcomes included in this study.

Sense of community involves relationship and connectedness with others, and alignment with
organizational value indicates the extent to which individuals believe their personal values are
aligned with an organization’s purpose. In his conceptual paper, Pawar (2009) suggested procedural
justice can facilitate workplace spirituality.

H2 organizational justice is positively related to workplace spirituality

2.1.3 Workplace spirituality and workplace deviant behavior

In a study conducted for police personnel, Adebayo et al. contended that workplace spirituality was
negatively related to cynicism. Researchers have shown that organizational cynicism leads to
workplace deviant behaviors, suggesting possible links between workplace spirituality and workplace
deviant behavior. Ahmad and Omar (2014) suggested that workplace spirituality can assist
employees in gauging their workplace behavior since it has the capability to act as a personal
control. Hence, workplace spirituality can attenuate workplace deviant behavior. Weitz et al (2012)
also found that there was a negative association between workplace spirituality and organizational
misbehavior. addition, Sulaiman and Bhatti (2013) revealed in their qualitative study that workplace
spirituality would help to promote positive behavior and an environment that is deviant free in an
organization

H3. Workplace spirituality is negatively related to deviant behavior

2.1.4 Workplace spirituality as a mediator between organizational justice and

workplace deviant behavior
Workplace spirituality can act as a potential mediator between organizational justice and deviant
behavior. According to Gomam et al (2017), workplace spirituality as a mediator may redefine the
condition under which justice would predict workplace deviant behavior, they suggested that when
employees perceive their job to be meaningful and sacred, they tend to experience psychological
ownership of their work and may not react negatively to the unfair practice at work, thereby
resulting in lower involvement in deviant behavior. The authors assume workplace spirituality can
act as a potential mediator between organizational justice and workplace deviant behavior. When
employees perceive justice in their workplace, it enhances their psychological well-being and
encourages spirituality in the workplace, which leads to improved ethical behavior, and thereby
lowers involvement in deviant behavior acts.

H4 Workplace spirituality mediates the relationship between organizational justice and workplace
deviant behavior

2.2. Ethical climate, workplace spirituality and organizational citizenship

behavior

2.2.1 Ethical climate and organizational citizenship behavior

Ethical climate is a subset of organizational climate that refers to the moral work environment.
Victor and Cullen (1988) proposed nine theoretical ethical climates using a 3 × 3 matrix based on
ethical criteria and locus of analysis. An ethical climate is one of the prime predictors of positive
organizational outcomes. Wimbush and Shepard (1994) suggested that different types of ethical
climates are related to different behaviors among employees.

Rosenblatt and Peled (2002) identified benevolence and principle ethical climate as the most
powerful and valid predictors of organization outcomes. An ethical climate promotes pro-social
behavior and increases the presence of organizational citizenship behavior (Baker et al, 2006;
Turnipseed, 2002). Leung (2008) conducted a study among employees from a Hong Kong based
trading company and found that ethical climate was positively related to employees’ citizenship
behavior. In a study among 223 CEOs and 6021 employees, Shin (2012) found that ethical climate
was positively associated with organizational citizenship behavior.

H5 Ethical climate is positively related to organizational citizenship behavior

2.2.2 Ethical climate and workplace spirituality

Parboteeah and Cullen (2003) and Novalien (2017) studied the relationship between ethical climate
and workplace spirituality. Parboteeah and Cullen (2003) proposed that benevolent and principle
ethical climates are ‘the most conducive to foster the development of workplace spirituality’ (2003,
p. 149). Egoistic ethical climate would be the least desirable climate that facilitates the development
of workplace spirituality since it stresses on gains at the expense of others. They further argued that
egoistic climate will create a barrier to enhancing a sense of community. Employees help each other,
and this environment makes them feel more valuable and connected to their work. This connection
further increases their self-efficacy, encouraging them to find deeper meaning from their work.
Principle ethical climate encourages employees to apply their personal ethics during ethical
predicaments This climate helps employees earn mutual trust and respect for each other that
develop a sense of community.

H6 Ethical climate is positively related to workplace spirituality

2.2.3 Workplace spirituality and organizational citizenship behavior

The impact of spirituality in the workplace on positive organizational outcomes, organizational
citizenship behavior, has been theoretically and empirically well-documented in previous research
(Rego et al, 2010; Pawar, 2009). In a study conducted by Kazemipour and Amin (2012) on 305
nurses, the authors found a positive relationship between spirituality in the workplace and
citizenship behavior. They concluded that employees who are spiritual at work find meaning and
purpose at work and, exhibit higher levels of citizenship behavior. Kutcher et al (2010) found similar
results, establishing the positive relationship between workplace spirituality and organizational
citizenship behavior.

H7 Workplace spirituality is positively related to organizational citizenship behavior

2.2.4 Workplace spirituality as a mediator between ethical climate and

organizational citizenship behavior
The authors propose that ethical climate can directly impact citizenship behavior or can be mediated
by other factors, such as workplace spirituality. Golestanipour (2016) found organizational
spirituality mediated the relationship between ethical climate and civic virtue. When employees
perceive the climate to be benevolent, they value the well-being of all employees, encouraging a
sense of community that may manifest in the form of helping others, showing courtesy, leading to
altruism and extra-role behavior.

Another basis of this premise is based on the following logic: Parboteeah and Cullen (2003)
demonstrated that ethical climate is positively related to spirituality in the workplace, while
Golestanipour (2016) and Pawar (2009) confirmed that workplace spirituality is related to citizenship
behavior.

H8. Workplace spirituality mediates the positive relationship between ethical climate and
organizational citizenship behavior

2.3 Organizational justice and organizational citizenship behavior

The relationship between perceptions of fairness and organizational citizenship behavior stemmed
from Blau’s (1964) definition of social exchange. He purported that employees signify their
relationship with an organization as a social exchange. Moorman (1991) examined the relationship
between three sub dimensions of organizational justice and five sub dimensions of organizational
citizenship behavior among employees from two medium-sized firms in the United States. His
findings suggest that there exists a strong positive relationship between organizational justice and
extra-role behavior.

H9 Organizational justice will be positively related to organizational citizenship behavior

2.4 Ethical climate and workplace deviant behavior
The relationship between ethical climate and workplace deviant behavior can be understood using
Blau’s (1964) social exchange framework, which explains that social exchange is based on
interpersonal behavior exchange. Scholars consider ethical climate to have a significant impact on
employee behavior (Turnipseed, 2002). Peterson (2002) found ethical climate was a negative
predictor of deviant behavior. Aryati et al (2018) further confirmed the negative relationship
between ethical climate and deviant workplace behavior among civil servants. Ethical climate is
negatively related to workplace deviant behavior. Ethical climate is positively related to workplace
spirituality, and workplace spirituality is negatively related to deviant behavior. Workplace
spirituality mediates the relationship between organizational justice and organizational citizenship
behavior.

H10 workplace spirituality is negatively related to deviant behavior.

Hence, the following is deduced:

H11. Workplace spirituality mediates the relationship between organizational justice and
organizational citizenship behavior.

H12. Workplace spirituality mediates the relationship between ethical climate and deviant behavior

Data collection and participants

In order to test the hypotheses, the authors collected data from various classes of hotels, ranging
from economy to luxury in Coimbatore, India.

Eligible respondents included full-time hotel employees with a minimum of 1-year working
experience in Coimbatore, India. According to STR, there are 51 hotels ranging from economy to
luxury in Coimbatore. Due to varying employee numbers in the participant hotels, the authors
distributed a higher number of questionnaires to luxury and upscale hotels compared to economy
and midscale hotels to ensure there was adequate representation from all the hotels. The authors
eliminated 31 questionnaires due to missing information on key variables of the study they removed
39 surveys since those respondents did not meet the criteria of full-time employed with a minimum
of one-year experience. They retained 641 surveys for further analysis, yielding a response rate of
42.73%

Survey structure and measures

The first section focused on workplace spirituality, organizational justice, and organizational
citizenship behavior.

The authors assessed workplace spirituality (WS) using items from Ashmos and Duchon (2000) and
Milliman et al (2003). The authors measured workplace deviant behavior (WDB) using a 19-item
scale from Bennett and Robinson (2000). They anticipated that this scale would make a difference
between deviant behavior directed against the organization (WDB-O), measured using 12 items, and
deviant behavior against individuals at work (WDB-I), measured using seven items. Higher scores
reflect higher levels of WDB They measured organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) using 16 items
from Lee and Allen (2002).

Data analysis
Data analysis for this study included descriptive statistics, an assessment of the measurement, and
structural model.
SmartPLS version 2 (Ringle et al, 2005) was used to analyze the data because the model has both
reflective and formative constructs, and the data violated the assumption of multivariate normality.
The authors adopted repeated measure indicator approach to assess the model. Using this
approach, the second-order construct was constructed by including all the items of its lower-order
construct.

The main advantage of adopting this approach in this study is that instead of estimating the second-
order and first-order constructs separately, all the latent variables are estimated simultaneously
(Becker et al, 2012)

Sample characteristics and descriptive statistics

Out of 641 participants, 73.8% were male, and 26.2% were female respondents. In India, the
percentage of women employees in the hospitality industry is less compared to other service
industries, such as education. Gupta (2015) reported that in terms of gender diversity in the
hospitality sector, women made up 9.1% of the workforce and men 90.9%. The average age of the
respondents was 33.3 years: the minimum was 19, and the maximum was 56. 9.4% of the
respondents were below 24 years, and 73.9% were 25–41 years of age.16.7% of the respondents
were above 42 years of age. The age wise distribution of the respondents matches well with the
projected Asian workforce distribution.

The average years of experience in the current hotel organization were 3.25 years, the maximum 18
years. The participants had on average eight years of experience in the hotel industry, and the
maximum was 32 years. The remaining 25.6% of the respondents were post graduates.

Regarding their affiliated departments, 40.7% of the respondents were from F&B service
department, while 18.3% were from kitchen operations.

The descriptive statistics for the constructs were organizational justice (4.101, 0.648), ethical climate
(3.303, 0.873), workplace spirituality (3.589, 0.383), deviant work behavior (1.789, 0.270), and
organizational citizenship behavior (3.701, 0.638)

Common method bias testing

Common method bias (CMB) might affect the results of this study since the authors collected data
using self-reported questionnaires (Podsakoff et al, 2003).The authors used both the procedural
remedy and statistical techniques to test CMB. The cumulative loading was 62.49%, and the first
factor loading was 19.31% These results suggest that no serious method bias exists (Podsakoff et al,
2003).

None of the correlations were substantially large, r > 0.9 (Bagozzi et al, 1991), further confirming
CMB was not a serious concern in the current study

Assessment of measurement model

The psychometric properties of the questionnaire were assessed by testing for its reliability and
validity. Composite reliability scores and Cronbach’s alpha was used to assess the internal
consistency (Hair et al, 2010).

Factor loadings were used to assess the indicator reliability.

To assess the formative second-order constructs, the authors examined issues of collinearity by
employing the threshold value of the variance inflation factor (VIF) values as less than five (Hair et al,
2010). Collinearity was not an issue since the value of the VIF for all the constructs was less than five
(Hair et al, 2010).

In order to assess the significance of the weights of the formative constructs, the bootstrapping
procedure of 1000 resamples was used. Andreev et al (2009) recommended that greater than 0.1
weights for an indicator is significant.

Hypotheses testing
WS did not mediate the relationship between OJ and WDB since the indirect effect straddled zero
between the lower limit confidence interval (Boot LLCI) and the upper limit confidence interval (Boot
ULCI).

Note: The square roots of AVE are the diagonal elements highlighted in bold.

Ethical climate (EC) had a significant and positive relationship with organizational citizenship
behavior (OCB), with path coefficient β = 0.247 (p < .05), supporting H5.

WS did not mediate the positive relationship between EC and OCB since the indirect effect straddled
a zero between Boot LLCI and Boot ULCI.

WS mediated the relationship between OJ and OCB since the indirect effect did not straddle zero
between LLCI (0.016) and ULCI (0.109).

WS mediated the relationship between EC and WDB since the indirect effect did not straddle zero
between LLCI (−0.192) and ULCI (−0.082).

Discussions and academic implications

The authors developed the proposed model to investigate the impact of organizational justice and
ethical climate on workplace deviant behavior and organizational citizenship behavior mediated
through the workplace spirituality of hotel employees. The results indicate that the employees have
a good understanding of the ethical climate prevailing in their firms, and they put more effort into
positive work behaviors as evidenced by higher levels of citizenship behavior. Workplace spirituality
positively relates to organizational citizenship behavior This significant relationship indicates that the
hospitality employees do not consider their work merely a means to an end. The direct relationships
were significant, workplace spirituality did not mediate the relationship between ethical climate and
organizational citizenship behavior.

Organizational justice positively relates to citizenship behavior, and workplace spirituality mediates
this relationship.

Ethical climate negatively relates to workplace deviant behavior, and workplace spirituality mediated
this relationship.

Practical implications
The hospitality industry often faces strained relationships among employees and with customers and
has a high turnover, leaving employees demoralized. The hospitality industry should give attention
to workplace spirituality, the formation of an ethical climate, and demonstrate justice to enhance
the quality of life of employees. Hospitality HR managers may adopt ethical approaches that focus
on benevolence and creating a principal climate to encourage employees to positively engage in
their work. They can conduct regular workshops to reinforce ethical behaviors among employees.
Hospitality managers may cultivate workplace spirituality to create a win-win situation for
employees by adopting a humanistic work environment. This change will enhance innovation,
teamwork, and employee commitment (Daniel, 2010). The outcomes of the study are helpful to
organizational development (OD) practitioners and hospitality HR professionals in creating a work
culture that focuses on ethics, justice, and spirituality

Limitations, future research and conclusion

This study is geographically limited to Coimbatore, India; the results may not be generalized.

The authors conducted the study in India with Indian subjects, and Indians are conditioned by
several spiritual traditions that might affect their workplace spirituality.

This limitation calls for further examination to test the prepositions in different cultural settings since
cultural settings play a significant role in understanding human behavior.

This study advances the underexplored relationship between workplace spirituality and its
antecedents and its few consequences.

It stresses the importance of workplace spirituality, ethical climate, and justice because of their
positive organizational outcomes.

A person’s work is an extension of the individual; the job must enhance both the personal and
spiritual aspect of a person

The study is limited to Coimbatore, India, and emphasizes the need for further research in different
cultural settings to explore the relationship between workplace spirituality, ethical climate, and
justice and their positive impact on organizational outcomes, recognizing the influence of Indian
spiritual traditions on the study's results.