Workplace spirituality as a source for competitive advantage: an empirical study

Purpose: This paper aims to theorize and empirically examines the role of perceived spirituality in developing organization competitiveness.

Design/methodology/approach: The paper adopts a quantitative approach, where the structural equation modeling approached was applied to analyze a unique dataset collected from 550 health-care staff in two international hospitals in Iran.

Findings: The results show that although the workplace spirituality (WS) can indirectly enhance the development of competitive advantages by affecting the level of organizational commitment; however, the direct relationship of WS and competitive advantage has a higher path coefficient than its indirect one. Also, interestingly, it is found that, although WS affects the three dimensions of organizational commitment (affective, continuance and normative commitment), but only WS by mediating role of affective commitment can affect the competitive advantage at understudied hospitals.

Originality/value: This study makes important theoretical contributions by conceptualizing and validating the effect of WS on the development of organization competitive advantage. As such, the authors explicate the commitment-related paths through which WS can affect organization overall performance.