Spirituality in the Workplace: Theory and Measurement

To integrate existing literature on spirituality in different disciplines and move it forward, the authors propose a new theoretical conceptualization of spirituality, based on which they develop a new scale of spirituality. Using structural equation modeling, the authors conduct confirmatory factor analysis on survey data collected from 2,230 individuals to test and cross-validate the spirituality scale. The authors find the construct of spirituality is best captured by three correlated, yet distinct, factors: interconnection with a higher power, interconnection with human beings, and interconnection with nature and all living things. Results show that the spirituality scale demonstrates content validity, face validity, discriminant validity, convergent validity, and structural reliability. In addition, the authors theoretically argue and empirically validate that the notion of spirituality incorporates and transcends religiousness.