Humanomics

The impact of workplace spirituality on organizational commitment: A case study

of Takaful agents in Malaysia
Fares Djafri, Kamaruzaman Noordin,
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commitment: A case study of Takaful agents in Malaysia", Humanomics, Vol. 33 Issue: 3, pp.384-396,
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H
33,3 The impact of
workplace spirituality on
organizational commitment
384 A case study of Takaful agents in Malaysia
Fares Djafri and Kamaruzaman Noordin
Department of Shariah and Management, University of Malaya,
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Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Abstract
Purpose – Despite extensive studies on predictors and antecedents of organizational commitment, empirical
research studies on the impact of workplace spirituality on organizational commitment remain scarce. This
study aims to examine the impact of the dimensions of workplace spirituality on agents’ organizational
commitment in Islamic insurance (Takaful) industry in Malaysia.
Design/methodology/approach – This study used a positivist research approach, comprising a
quantitative basis of enquiry, and gathered data via survey questionnaires. In total, 600 questionnaires were
distributed and finally 395 usable cases were selected for analysis. Pearson’s correlation and stepwise
multiple regressions analyses were used to analyze the data.
Findings – The findings indicated that spirituality in the workplace has a positive and significant effect on
organizational commitment. The relationship between each and every component of workplace spirituality
and organizational commitment was found to be substantial, positive and significant. The study findings will
enable Islamic insurance companies to understand the importance of spirituality in the workplace and will
further improve their function and performance by way of enhancing employees’ spirituality in the
workplace. This study suggests developing more spiritual training, workshops, lectures and seminars on
spirituality at the workplace which will help employees of takaful operators and agencies cope effectively with
life problems, reduce stress, boost loyalty and enhance organizational commitment.
Originality/value – This study raises awareness on the importance of spirituality in the workplace and
investigates the influence of its components to enhance organizational commitment, which will ultimately
contribute to improving and sustaining human well-being and organizational performance.

Keywords Takaful, Organizational commitment, Well-being, Islamic insurance,

Spirituality in the workplace
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
In the sector of insurance and Islamic insurance (Takaful), marketing systems for the sale of
life insurance have improved immensely over time. As a consequence, conventional
approaches for selling insurance have noticeably changed and new marketing models and
systems have arisen (Rejda, 2003). Thus, an effective marketing system is necessary to an
insurance company’s survival. Some insurers use new marketing systems and methods
such as direct mail and broadcast advertising or use the internet to sell their products.
Humanomics
However, agents seem to be the driving force for most companies (Dubinsky et al., 1988).
Vol. 33 No. 3, 2017
pp. 384-396
Similar to conventional insurance products, takaful products are actively sold with the
© Emerald Publishing Limited salesman initiating contact. In other words, only a few customers voluntarily initiate contact
0828-8666
DOI 10.1108/H-02-2017-0018 with takaful operators to subscribe to a takaful policy. Therefore, takaful companies have to
 depend on proactive agents who are willing to consult, explain and persuade the customer Impact of
about takaful products (Abdul Hamid et al., 2010). Gupta et al. (2014) stated that insurance workplace
business is completely people-oriented, with its human resources are in charge for the
business vision and philosophy of providing quality information and advice to clients and
spirituality
selling a company’s products.
The statistic shows that, the number of family takaful agents increase from 44,222 in
2008 to 68,009 in 2012. However, the takaful penetration for family takaful in Malaysia is still
relatively low compared to the conventional insurance industry with 11 per cent penetration 385
rate for family takaful compared with 43 per cent penetration rate for conventional life
insurance (Mohd Irwan, 2013). Moreover, the conventional insurance in Malaysia continues
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to yield higher returns than takaful industry. For instance, return on equity of conventional
insurance recorded 17 per cent growth compared to 4 per cent in takaful industry. Similarly,
the investment return for the takaful industry reached only 6 per cent, while conventional
insurance yielded double at 12 per cent (The World Takaful Report, 2012). This shows that
there are factors that should be addressed by takaful operators and agency force to fully
realize this enormous potential for family takaful and to reach out the untapped potential
market.
To remain in this very competitive environment and to be a strong peer to conventional
insurance, takaful companies need to depend on their agents as intermediaries between
customers and insurers to achieve a high profit margin and a large market share. Because of
this, employees are pressured to work overtime and to take fewer holiday and breaks. As
such, employees might get stressed at work, which reduces performance. This leads to an
uncommitted attitude toward their organization; exacerbates the rate of absenteeism; and
increases employee turnover resulting from burnout. Ultimately, agents who are disinclined
to improve their knowledge and skills often cannot convince the customers about the
importance of takaful insurance policies. As a consequence, this leads to a reduction in sales
productivity and ultimately the agent will leave the industry. Hence, a key concern of takaful
operators should be how to attain positive attitude from their employees and motivate them
to be more committed, productive and effective within their organization.
Karakas (2009, p. 90) claimed that organizations and managers have been discovering
and experimenting with new methods that intend to be mind-enriching, heart-fulfilling and
spirit-growing, and called this as a “spirituality movement”. This new spirituality
dimension provides employees with a search for simplicity meaning, sense of meaning and
purpose and sense of community and connectedness (Karakas, 2009; Marques et al., 2007).
Relevant literature supports the claim that spirituality exercises a significant impact on
personal attitudes and behaviors and can play a major role in overcoming the problems that
may face organizations such as lack of job satisfaction, poor work performance and lack of
organizational commitment (Ahmadi et al., 2014; Emmons, 1999; Gupta et al., 2014). The
practice of spirituality already exists in the business sector. For instance, companies like
IBM and Microsoft use various training programs including spiritual lectures sessions, as
previously employees felt a lack of spirituality (Gupta et al., 2014). Rego and Pina e Cunha
(2008) mentioned that when employee feels involved within a richly spiritual organizational
climate, they become more effectively attached and loyal to their organizations and act in a
more engaged and collaboration manner. Thus, employees develop a psychological
attachment to the organizations and become more committed and productive within their
organization. Moreover, several studies have been conducted on the concept of spirituality
within the workplace and these extol the benefits of workplace spirituality within
organizations citing a positive outcome and increase in employees’ performance levels.
These studies proved that companies respecting spirituality in the workplace tend to
 H exemplify commitment and productivity amongst employees (Ashmos and Duchon, 2000;
33,3 Giacalone and Jurkiewicz, 2003; Gupta et al., 2014; Harrington et al., 2001; Lee et al., 2003;
Milliman et al., 2003; Rego and Pina e Cunha, 2008).
It is in this regard that this study seeks to explore the relationship between workplace
spirituality and organizational commitment, and to further determine the impact of the three
components of workplace spirituality on organizational commitment of takaful agents. The
386 other segments of this paper are organized as follows: the second section presents a review
of the literature of spirituality in the workplace, organizational commitment and its
definitions. The third section focuses on relationships among constructs and hypotheses.
The fourth section presents the method along with sample, data collection and data analysis.
The result and discussion are presented in the fifth and sixth sections, respectively.
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Limitations and future directions are presented in the seventh section, followed by
conclusion in the eighth section.

Review of literature
Spirituality in the workplace
Given the number of studies on spirituality, a review of this literature determines there was
no widely accepted definition of spirituality at work. Markow and Klenke (2005) mentioned
that there were more than 70 definitions of spirituality. However, most of these definitions
acknowledge that spirituality at work involves a sense of wholeness and connectedness at
work and ascribes deeper values. Karakas (2009) stated that “spirituality” comes from the
Latin word “spiritus” or “spiritualis” that means breathing, breath, air or wind (Merriam-
Webster). Spirit is also defined as “an animating or vital principle held to give life to
physical organisms” (Merriam-Webster). Mitroff and Denton (1999) define spirituality in the
workplace as the desire to find one’s ultimate purpose in life, develop a strong connection
with either coworkers or other people associated with work, and be consistent with one’s
core beliefs and the values of their organization. Furthermore, spirituality has been also
defined as: “the relationship of the human person to something or someone who transcends
themselves” (Bullis, 1996, p. 2), “the human search for purpose and meaning of life
experiences” (Sheridan and Hemert, 1999, p. 129), “a relationship to force greater than
oneself” (Netting et al., 1990), “[. . .] the recognition that employees have an inner life that
nourishes and is nourished by meaningful work that takes place in the context of
community” (Ashmos and Duchon, 2000, p. 137). In these definitions, it can be viewed that it
is difficult to clearly define a common definition of spirituality at the workplace (Karakas,
2009). In other words, the review of literature, produced by researchers in this field,
determines that there is no single agreed-upon definition of the term spirituality. However,
the common grounded definition of spirituality among the different definitions is that
spirituality is about living in connection with others and experience with supreme power
(Tischler et al., 2002).
Milliman et al. (2003) affirmed that meaningful work is a fundamental aspect of
spirituality at work and requires that employees be involved in activities that give meaning
to their lives. It describes how individuals with their day-to-day work at the individual level
own inner motivations and truths and desires to be involved in work that give greater
meaning to their life and the lives of others (Ashmos and Duchon, 2000; Milliman et al.,
2003). Spirituality at the workplace is also an inter-relation ethical concept which is about
living in connection, or having a relationship with, other human beings (Ashmos and
Duchon, 2000; Milliman et al., 2003). It occurs at the group level of human behaviour and
concerns interaction between employees and their coworkers at work (Milliman et al., 2003).
In essence, “it involves a deeper sense of connection among people, including support,
 freedom of expression and genuine caring” (Milliman et al., 2003, p. 429). Nasurdin et al. Impact of
(2013) asserted that when employees possess a deep sense of meaning and purpose in their workplace
work, a sense of community and connectedness with others and a sense of being in
alignment with their personal values and organization values, they are bound to become
spirituality
more satisfied, more creative and more committed to the organization, and ultimately,
influence individual’s well-being and organizational performance.

Organizational commitment
387
Organizational commitment is one of the most widely examined variables in the literature.
This broad interest is perhaps owing to the effect of organizational commitment on attitudes
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and behaviors such as: intention to leave, turnover, organizational citizenship behaviors
(OCBs), attitudes toward organizational changes and maintaining high level of performance
in organization (Allen and Meyer, 1996, 2000; Meyer and Herscovitch, 2001).
The concept of organizational commitment has been defined in many ways. Mowday
et al. (1979) defined organizational commitment as the relative strength of an individual’s
identification and involvement within an organization. Organizational commitment is the
extent to which the employee’s goals and values are in alignment with the organization’s
values and norms (Mowday et al., 1979; Sanders III et al., 2005). According to Bielby (1992,
p. 284), commitment is:
[. . .] an attachment that is initiated and sustained by the extent to which an individual’s
identification with a role, behavior, value, or institution is considered to be central among
alternatives as a source of identity.
Organizational commitment is an individual’s psychological attachment to an organization
that decreases the likelihood that the employees will leave the organization (Meyer and
Allen, 1991).
Meyer and Allen (1991) developed one of the most quoted models of organizational
commitment. This model has been conceptualized into three general components: affective,
continuance and normative commitment. Meyer and Herscovitch (2001) stated that the
component of commitment is different from one to another and the key differences were in
the mindset presumed to characterize the commitment. In other words, each one of these
components of organization commitment contributes to an increase in the probability that
the employee will continue in the organization, but the nature of each person’s mindset
varies (Rego and Pina e Cunha, 2008).

Relationships among the constructs

Despite the mushrooming research studies on organizational commitment predictors and
antecedents, the role of spirituality in the workplace on organizational commitment has yet
to be determined. The research relating to spirituality in the workplace is now starting to
move from a conceptual phase to an empirical phase (Gupta et al., 2014). A number of
studies investigate the relationship between workplace spirituality and employee
satisfaction, organizational performance and organizational commitment (Ashmos and
Duchon, 2000; Milliman et al., 2003; Tischler et al., 2002). Rego and Pina e Cunha (2008)
explored the impact of spirituality in the workplace and organizational commitment of
employees. Their findings suggest that, when employees feel a stronger presence of
spirituality in the organization, they apparently display and develop higher and stronger
effective and normative commitment compared to continuance commitment. In addition,
when employees experience a sense of belonging to a community with their colleagues and
feel engaged in spiritual organizational climates, they become more effectively attached to
 H their organizations, experience a sense of loyalty and act in a more engaged and
33,3 collaboration manner. Thus, employee develops psychological attachment to the
organizations and become more committed and productive to their organization. Milliman
et al. (2003) explored the relationship between workplace spirituality and employee work
attitude. The study found that the spirituality dimensions of: meaningful work (t-values =
4.86, p < 0.001), sense of community (t-values = 4.36, p < 0.001) and alignment of values
388 (t-values = 5.83, p < 0.001) were significant and positively related to the organizational
commitment of the individuals. The study indicates that the high level of spirituality in
workplace practiced by employees will lead to a positive impact on employee work attitudes
and ultimately the effectiveness of organization.
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Another study by Mat Desa and Koh Pin Pin (2011) examined the impact of workplace
spirituality on affective commitment. The study shows that employees who possess a sense
of enjoyment and joy at work will naturally be affective and committed to the organization.
Moreover, the authors suggest that organization and employers should pay extra attention
to their employee’s spiritual feelings and encourage them to engage in the corporate’s
activities such as corporate social responsibilities and green projects that will enhance and
develop their inner life and sense of community. In the same way, Chawla and Guda (2010)
examined the relationship between spirituality in the workplace, organizational
commitment, job satisfaction and a propensity to leave. The result alluded to a positive
association between workplace spirituality, organizational commitment and job satisfaction.
Suleiman et al. (2012) examined the impact of workplace spiritually on academicians’
organizational commitment, particularly normative commitment. The study reported that
all five dimensions of spirituality in the workplace were found to be significantly and
positively associated with normative commitment. Therefore, academicians who practice
and value spirituality in their workplace are more likely to exhibit positive normative
commitment. Gupta et al. (2014) examined the effect of workplace spirituality on job
satisfaction. The result showed a positive relationship between the two variables.
Kazemipour and Mohd Amin (2012) surveyed 305 nurses to examine the relationships
between workplace spirituality, OCB and affective commitment. This study enquires that
affective commitment play the role of mediating between workplace spirituality and OCB.
The study found that nurses who had spirituality in their workplace tended to perform more
acts of OCB and felt greater emotional attachment to their organizations. Pawar (2009)
investigated the influence of workplace spirituality and individual spirituality on three work
attitudes, namely, job satisfaction, job commitment and job involvement. His finding shows
significant positive correlations between spirituality in the workplace and the three work
attitudes, whereas an insignificant relationship was found between individual spirituality
and work attitudes.
In Malaysia, studies related to factors affecting employee performance of takaful
companies have been examined by many researchers (Daud et al., 2013; Remli et al., 2013;
Salleh and Kamaruddin, 2011). However, most of these studies focused on market
orientation, innovation and personality attributes in determining job performance of takaful
operator. For instance, Abdul Hamid et al. (2012) conducted a study to examine the
leadership behavior among takaful agents on the performance of takaful operators in
Malaysia; they found that leadership behaviors have significant relationship with takaful
performance. Another study was conducted by Abdul Hamid and NikAbRahman (2011) on
takaful agents to investigate the association between commitment, motivation, attitude and
takaful operators’ performance. The results revealed a positive relationship between all
variables.
 Based on a review of current literature pertaining to this subject, it is obvious that a Impact of
number of studies have explored the relationship between workplace spirituality, work workplace
attitudes and how spirituality in the workplace can be beneficial to individuals and
ultimately their organizations. However, empirical research conducted on organizational
spirituality
commitment, whereby spirituality in the workplace is fully explored and considered remains
scant. Therefore, this study investigates the influence of spirituality’s components on
enhancing the organizational commitment of agents in Malaysian Islamic insurance
companies. The following hypotheses are proposed:
389
H1. Meaningful work has a significant and positive effect on the organizational
commitment of employees.
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H2. A sense of community in the workplace has a positive effect on the organizational
commitment of employees.
H3. Alignment with organizational values has a positive effect on the organizational
commitment of employees

Methods
This section describes the methods with details on the sample, data collection and data
analysis techniques.

Research design and sampling

This study uses a positivist research approach, comprising a quantitative basis of inquiry,
and gathered data via survey questionnaires. The target population for this study
comprised employees working in takaful agencies operating in Malaysia. A cross-sectional
survey design was used in this study, whereby the collection of data was done once at a
given period. Besides, this study used the stratified random sampling technique to collect
data from the employees of takaful agencies who voluntarily agree to participate in the
study.

Data collection
The data collected from the research instrument were subjected to quantitative analyses
through both the descriptive and inferential methods using SPSS software packages.
Overall, out of the total 600 distributed questionnaires, 465 were received and 395 were
usable, with a response rate of 65.83 per cent. As shown in Table I, over 53 per cent of the
respondents were male, between the ages of 26 and 35 years, and held bachelor degrees
(approximately 45 per cent). In addition, the respondents have worked at their current
company for an average of five years (68.1 per cent), and most of the respondents are
working full time (89.6 per cent).

Data analysis
Before conducting the main data analysis, the research instrument was tested for reliability
using Cronbach’s coefficient, as reported in Table II. The Cronbach’s alpha values for the
total score of workplace spirituality and organizational commitment were 0.965 and 0.934,
respectively, exceeding the minimum of 0.6 (Hair et al., 2006), thus the constructs measures
were deemed reliable. After that, Pearson’s correlation coefficient (r) and regression analysis
were used to determine the relationship among all the components of spirituality in the
workplace and organization commitment. Different authors suggest different
 H Demographic information Frequency (%)
33,3
Gender
Male 210 53.2
Female 185 46.8
Age (years)
390 18-25 75 19.0
26-35 191 48.4
36-45 97 24.6
46-55 28 7.0
56 and above 4 1.0
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Education
School certificate 65 16.5
Diploma 132 33.4
Bachelor 177 44.8
Master and above 21 5.3
Experience at this organization (years)
1-5 269 68.1
6-10 73 18.5
11-15 28 7.1
16-20 23 5.8
21 and above 2 0.5
Employee status
Full-time 354 89.6
Part-time 41 10.4
Position
Administrative 45 11.4
Ordinary agent 124 31.4
Junior agent 132 33.4
Senior agent 70 17.7
Unit manager 15 3.8
Group agency manager 3 0.8
Others 6 1.5
Table I.
Frequency statistics Source: Developed by the authors

Scale name No. of items Coefficient alpha values Mean SD

Meaningful work 6 0.920 4.06 0.61

Sense of community 7 0.907 4.08 0.55
Alignment with organizational values 8 0.942 4.03 0.61
Table II. Workplace spirituality total score 21 0.965 4.04 0.54
Descriptive statistics Organizational commitment total score 18 0.934 3.80 0.58
along with reliability
analysis Source: Developed by the authors

interpretations of the correlation coefficient; however, this study followed the guidelines of
Davis (1971): 0.70 or high (very strong relationship); 0.50 to 0.69 (substantial relationship);
0.30 to 0.49 (moderator relationship); 0.10 to 0.29 (low relationship); and < 0.09 (negligible
relationship).
 Measures Impact of
Spirituality in the workplace. This variable was measured by three components represented workplace
by 21 items adopted from Milliman et al. (2003). These three components consisted of
meaningful work (six items – example: “I experience joy in work”); sense of community
spirituality
(seven items – example: “working cooperatively with others is valued”); and alignment with
organization’s values (eight items – example: I feel positive about the values of the
organization’). The three components were rated on a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1
“strongly disagree” to 5 “strongly agree”. The coefficient alpha was 0.965. 391
Organizational commitment. This variable consists of 18 items designed by Meyer and
Allen (1991). Examples of items include “I would very happy to spend the rest of my career
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with this organization”; “I feel a strong sense of belonging to my organization”; and “I feel
my loyalty to this organization is deserved”. All items are rated on a five-point Likert scale
ranging from 1 “strongly disagree” to 5 “strongly agree”. To measure organizational
commitment, results were summed and divided by the number of items to get the total scale
scores of organizational commitment. The coefficient alpha was 0.934.
Survey translation process. This study relied on previously developed and validated scales.
The original version of the two instruments, workplace spirituality and organizational
commitment, was translated from English to Malay following the translation approach of
Brislin (1970) (forward and backward translation, i.e. translation and translation back). This
method was used to confirm that both versions were similar. After the final back-translation
step, the Malay version of the questionnaire was shown to a few other professional translator
and experts. The conclusion of the translators’ panel was that the final version of the
instrument has “linguistic congruence and cultural relevancy”. (Yu et al., 2004, p. 310).
Prior to data collection, a pilot test was conducted with a convenience sample of 87
employees to examine the appropriateness, instrument adequacy, and the reliability of the
translated instruments. Results of pilot study showed that the instruments of the study have
good reliabilities, indicating that the main study data collection can proceed.

Results
To determine the relationship between all the dimensions of spirituality in the workplace and
organization commitment, the Pearson product moment correlation analysis along with
stepwise multiple regressions analysis were used. As presented in Table III, the Pearson
correlation coefficient values between the total workplace spirituality scores and total
organizational commitment scores were found to be statistically significant (r = 0.674, p =
0.000). This correlation would be classified as a substantial positive relationship, signifying
that employees who experience and have high level of spirituality in the workplace tend to have
higher levels of organization commitment. When the dimensions of spirituality in the
workplace were correlated with organizational commitment, the dimension which was mostly
highly related was alignment with organization’s values (r = 0.624, p = 0.000), followed by
meaningful work (r = 0.619, p = 0.000) and sense of community (r = 0.619, p = 0.000). All these
correlations were statistically significant and classified as a substantial positive relationship.
Stepwise regression analysis was also used to examine the impact of the three dimensions of
spirituality in the workplace on organizational commitment of takaful agents. As shown in
Table V, the components of alignment with organizational values were statistically significant
and correlated to organizational commitment (b = 0.624, t = 15.814, p = 0.000), and this explains
approximately 39 per cent of the variance in organizational commitment (see Table IV).
Alignment with organization ( b = 0.376, t = 7.376, p = 0.000) and meaningful work ( b =
0.361, t = 7.086, p = 0.000) were statistically significant and related to organizational
commitment. Together, these variables accounted for 45.8 per cent of the variation in
 H Total score of
33,3 Scale name Pearson correlation organizational commitment

Workplace spirituality total score Pearson correlation (0.674**)

Significance level (0.000)
Meaningful work Pearson correlation (0.619**)
Significance level (0.000)
392 Sense of community Pearson correlation (0.619**)
Significance level (0.000)
Alignment with organizational values Pearson correlation (0.624**)
Table III. Significance level (0.000)
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Pearson correlation
analysis Note: **Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (two-tailed)

Table IV. Model R R2 Adjusted R2 SE DR2 DF P Durbin–Watson

Impact of workplace 1 0.624 0.389 0.387 0.457 0.389 250.075 0.000
spirituality on 2 0.677 0.458 0.456 0.431 0.069 50.212 0.000 1.729
organizational
commitment Note: Predictors: 1 (Alignment with organizational values [AOV]); 2 (AOV and meaningful work [MW])

Table V.
Model Standardized beta t-value P
Standardized beta
weight coefficients AOV 0.624 15.814 0.000
for the components of AOV 0.376 7.376 0.000
spirituality MW 0.361 7.086 0.000

organizational commitment (Table IV). Thus, H1 and H3 were supported. However, sense of
community was found statistically insignificant and did not contribute to the regression
model. Therefore, H2 was not supported.

Discussion
Studies that examined spirituality in the workplace are very limited and are still in their
formative stage (Pawar, 2009). Despite the claims that workplace spirituality can be useful to
individuals and ultimately the organization, empirical studies in this area remain scarce
(Krishnakumar and Neck, 2002). As such, the purpose of this study was to examine the role and
effect of spirituality components on enhancing organizational commitment of agents in
Malaysian Islamic insurance companies. The results of this study indicated that employees of
takaful agencies in Malaysia possess a substantial level of spirituality in the workplace. To
elaborate, the result of Pearson correlation coefficient showed that there were significant yet
positive correlations between the dimension of workplace spirituality and organizational
commitment. For example, alignment with organization’s values was the most highly correlated
to organizational commitment with r = 0.624, followed by meaningful work and sense of
community with r = 0.619. Therefore, this large significant and positive relationship implies that
the components of spirituality in the workplace affects employees’ organizational commitment.
Moreover, the study also aimed to examine the impact of the three components of
spirituality in the workplace on the organizational commitment of employees. Using stepwise
 regression analyses, the result revealed that alignment with organization’s values (b = 0.624, t Impact of
= 15.814, p = 0.000) and meaningful work ( b = 0.361, t = 7.086, p = 0.000) had a significant and workplace
strong positive influence on agents’ commitment. This result suggests that as the alignment of
an employee’s personal values with the organizational values increases, the organizational
spirituality
commitment of individuals increases. Similarly, the more the experience of personal purpose
and meaning in an employee work, the greater is the organizational commitment of individuals.
Moreover, the component of alignment with organization’s values explained 38.9 per cent of the
variance in organizational commitment and suggested that organizational values such as 393
respect and appreciation of individuals, engaging in decision-making process, respect for
everybody’s suggestions and opening the line of communication between supervisors and
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employees can predict almost 39 per cent of the variation in organizational commitment. The
second components, alignment with organization’s values and meaningful work explained 45.8
per cent in organization commitment of agents of takaful operators. The third component, the
sense of community, did not contribute to the regression model and did not have any influence
on organizational commitment. As such, it is obvious that the dimensions of workplace
spirituality which are meaningful work and alignment with organization’s values have a very
significant effect on organizational commitment. Therefore, organizations need to understand
that spirituality at work is about finding an opportunity to express many aspects of one’s
being, respecting individual values and acknowledging that employees have both inner and
outer lives. By understanding all these factors, companies will boost loyalty, improve and
sustain human well-being and enhance organizational commitment, which will ultimately
contribute to an increase in employee organizational performance. Moreover, organizations
need to look to their employees from different angles and to consider them to be more than just
a cost for the organization (Ashmos and Duchon, 2000). Ashmos and Duchon (2000) mentioned
that organizations where spirituality is respected employees experience joy, meaning in work,
become more productive and effective compared to organizations where spirituality is ignored.

Limitations and future directions

It is worth mentioning that this study has limitations. First, this study used cross-sectional
study, whereby the collection of data was done once at a given period. Thus, future studies are
encouraged to undertake experimental and longitudinal research to avoid the issue of
causation, improve the authenticity of the constructs and to provide a better understanding of
the dynamic relationships between variables. Second, this study focuses on only one single
dependent variable which is organizational commitment. As such, future research should
include other variables such as intention to leave, organizational citizenship behavior and
turnover intention. Despite the limitations, this study contributes to the literature by providing
empirical evidence and extends our understanding of how spirituality in the workplace can
enhance organizational commitment. The findings of this study would also help practitioners
and international researchers have a clear picture of the status of the Islamic insurance system
in Malaysia with regards to the practice of spirituality in the workplace and how it may impact
the commitment of agents in takaful companies. In addition, the development occurring in both
the Islamic financial and insurance sectors makes Malaysia an appropriate setting to examine
the relationship between spirituality in the workplace and organizational commitment. Thus,
examining the potential relationship between these variables will contribute to the knowledge
development of established constructs in a broader international level.

Conclusions
This study has provided some empirical evidence concerning workplace spirituality and its
impact on employees’ organizational commitment of Islamic insurance in Malaysia. The results
 H of this study have shown a strong positive association between the dimensions of workplace
33,3 spirituality and organizational commitment. This can suggest that applying spiritual practices
in the workplace might lead to improving and sustaining human well-being which will
ultimately lead to maintain high level of organizational commitment. Therefore, the findings of
this study have implications for policymakers and top management in the human resources
development of service organization sector in general and takaful industry in particular.
394 Policymakers and top management can use the empirical findings of this research as a valuable
input to justify their efforts in developing and implementing appropriate learning and
performance improvement interventions. Besides, corporate professionals and executives
should support spirituality in the workplace and emphasize on spiritual practices such as
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lecturers and seminar on spirituality, training workshops, forming voluntary prayer groups at
workplace; which will help employees of takaful operators and agencies to cope effectively with
life problems, reduce stress, boost loyalty, enhance organizational commitment and increase
employee organizational performance.

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Further reading
Milliman, J., Ferguson, J., Trickett, D. and Condemi, B. (1999), “Spirit and community at southwest
airlines: an investigation of a spiritual values-based model”, Journal of Organizational Change
Management, Vol. 12 No. 3, pp. 221-233.

Corresponding author
Fares Djafri can be contacted at fares@um.edu.my

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