Investigating the relationship between spirituality in the work environment and social capital in the government offices of Natanz city

Dissertation for Master's degree (M.A)

Trend: Information Systems Management

Abstract

One of the important business and management trends in the 21st century, which has been seriously discussed since the mid-90s, is focusing on the spirituality of employees in organizations. Adherence of public sector servants to ethics and the crystallization of this commitment in their behavior leads to the development of social capital; That is, managers who apply ethical principles in organizational functions and decisions create social capital by developing relationships based on ethics. Therefore, in this research, he intends to test the relationship between spirituality in the workplace and social capital in the government offices of Natanz city. For this purpose, the number of 250 employees of the aforementioned departments were selected by simple random. The required data was collected through a questionnaire. In order to check the relationship between research variables, Spearman's correlation test was first used, and if there was a significant relationship, the causal relationship between them was tested through regression. The findings show that there is a positive and meaningful relationship between spirituality in the work environment and social capital and three dimensions (structural, relational and cognitive).

Chapter 1

Generalities of the research

Introduction

In the traditional perspectives of management, economic, physical, and human resources played the most important role in development;  For development in this era, we need more social capital than economic, physical and human capital. Because without this capital, optimal use of other capitals is not possible. In universities that lack sufficient social capital, other capitals are likely to be wasted. This is why the subject of social capital is considered the main axis of management in organizations and managers are considered successful who can achieve more social capital production and development in relation to society. In the past, social capital was not clearly taken into account, but currently, rapid environmental changes, information technology, growing needs for information and training, growing needs for innovation and creativity, and the necessity of continuous progress of the organization, require that the leaders of organizations consider social capital as a valuable resource. pay attention to the organization (Rahmanpour, 2012, 80). In this chapter, the generalities of the research, including the statement of the problem, the necessity and importance of the research, the propositions of the research, the conceptual model of research and society, and the statistical sample, the research method, and such things are given.

Statement of the research problem

C

The problem of our age is not only how to increase productivity and make organizations more efficient; Rather, against the increasing and increasing importance of instrumental reasoning and the increasing attention to material efficiency, substantive reasoning should also be considered; in such a way that justice, freedom and human dignity are safe from the sting and threat of effective organizations; Humans and their relationships are considered in organizations and social systems are organized in such a way that the spirit of trust and confidence permeates their structure and creates valuable resources for the development of their social capital; At the same time, public sector managers' adherence to ethics and the crystallization of this commitment in their behavior leads to the development of social capital; That is, managers who apply ethical principles in organizational actions and decisions create social capital by developing relationships based on ethics. Social capital is usually acquired by a person over many years and cannot be created instantly. Senior managers will find few people with high degrees of social capital. Therefore, people with high social capital are considered scarce resources, because people with higher social capital have more problem-solving abilities.  Therefore, according to the discussed topics, the importance of employees with high social capital is very important for organizations; Therefore, the factors that can be related to the increase in social capital of employees should be determined.

One of the important business and management trends in the 21st century, which has been seriously discussed since the mid-90s, is focusing on the spirituality of employees in organizations. (Shellenbarger, 2000)

The importance and number of researches in this field are increasing. Workplace spirituality has been the subject of many management magazines and even appeared on the cover of magazines such as Business Week [1] (Conlin, 1999) and Fortune [2] (Gunther, 2001).Workplace spirituality has been the subject of many management magazines and has even made it to the cover of magazines such as Business Week [1] (Conlin, 1999) and Fortune [2] (Gunther, 2001). Also, many books have been written in this field.

Furthermore, in 1999, the Academy of Management[3] formed its last specialized group under the title of "Spirituality, Religion and Work"[4].

The reason for organizations' interest in workplace spirituality is to increase organizational effectiveness. Empirical evidence shows a positive relationship between workplace spirituality and creativity (Freshman, 1999), honesty and trust within the organization (Wanger-Marsh and Conely, 1999), increased sense of personal success (Burack, 1999), organizational commitment (Dellbecq, 1999), job attitudes such as job satisfaction, job involvement, reduced desire to leave, and organization-based self-esteem (Milliman et al., 2003).

Therefore, in the current research, the researcher tries to test the relationship between spirituality in the work environment and social capital and its dimensions. In this regard, the main question of the research is whether there is a meaningful relationship between spirituality in the work environment and social capital or not?

Research objectives

Investigation of the relationship between spirituality in the work environment and social capital

Survey of the state of social capital in government offices of Natanz city

Survey of the state of spirituality in the work environment of government offices of Natanz city

Investigation of the relationship between spirituality in The work environment and the three dimensions of social capital (structural, relational and cognitive)

The importance of the research topic and the motivation to choose it

In today's era, for development, managers need social capital more than they need physical and human capital. Managers and those who can develop the organization's social capital pave the way for occupational and organizational success. Today, organizations often hire leaders who believe in social capital and have this capital themselves. The number of employees in organizations that have social capital is low and the demand of the organization to hire them is high. Their high value makes organizations look for brains, and on this basis, managers who want the growth and survival of companies try to increase the invisible wealth of their organization by attracting employees with high social capital (Tymon & Stumpf, 2003). Also, the life and consistency of any social system depends on the existence of a strong link between its constituent elements. This link is influenced by the degree of justice. Therefore, justice is considered as the factor of life and survival of social systems. Because justice unites social elements together, while injustice causes the separation of formative elements (Pour Ezzat, 82). Considering the importance of social capital in an organization and taking into account the fact that the managers of the organization will find few people who have high levels of social capital, therefore the factors that can have a positive and meaningful relationship with the increase of the individual's social capital in the organization are of great importance.

Vilanova and Josa[5] (2003) considered social capital as a management phenomenon and determined various characteristics for it, including trust (norms), values and common behaviors, communication, cooperation, mutual commitment, mutual recognition and networks. These two researchers believe that social capital as a managerial phenomenon with the aforementioned characteristics leads to the achievement of mutual benefits that increase the value of intangible assets (conceptual capital) (Vilanova & Josa, 2003).

The role of social capital, as a powerful factor to explain the relative success of agents, has been proven in the following areas:

Social capital helps employees helps to find jobs, and creates a rich source of new forces for the organization.

Social capital facilitates the exchange of resources among units and creates innovation.

Also, Nahapit and Ghoshal [6] believe that social capital helped to create conceptual capital, and Rozendal [7] believes that it is effective and useful for the effectiveness of cross-task teams.

Social capital has reduced the rate of leaving the service and the rate of organizational disintegration; Facilitates entrepreneurship and helps to form new companies. Social capital strengthens relationships with suppliers and regional production networks and is an effective factor in facilitating organizational learning (Adler & Kwon, 2002).