The relationship of workplace spirituality with job satisfaction and organizational commitment: A research on teachers working in imam-hatip high schools in Istanbul

This study aims to reveal the relation workplace spirituality job satisfaction and organisational commitment. Workplace spirituality is defined as finding the individual's ultimate goals in life, developing a strong connection with his colleagues and other people related to work and the efforts for compromising his beliefs and workplace values. Workplace spirituality enables employees to experience their own internality without being alienated, ridiculous and criticized in their work environment and sets human soul free by removing the obstacles between work and spirituality and provides employees the sense of integrity with their own self. In this study, workplace spirituality, which has only recently drawn attention from the academia, was selected since it has still not been studied sufficiently. Workplace spirituality has been discussed theoretically in details.Imam-Hatip High Schools, which have always been a focal point in religious, spiritual education, have been selected in our study as it is their workplace from the perspective of teachers. The correlation between the level of workplace spirituality and job satisfaction, and organizational commitment has been addressed in these educational institutions where spiritual, religious values are taught and aimed at turning into a lifestyle. The scope of our research comprises of 9330 teachers in total who are employed approximately in 200 Imam-Hatip High Schools in 39 districts of Istanbul, where these schools are found the most. In our field study, we have achieved to obtain 507 samples from different districts of Istanbul in order to determine three separate teacher attitudes which are workplace spirituality, job satisfaction and organizational commitment and examine their relationship between one another. In this research, a survey with four sections has been used as a means of data collection. In the first section of our survey, the demographic information part includes information on teachers's age, gender, marital status, number of children, education level, number of working years in the teaching profession, number of working years in their present schools, previous schools they have worked before, teaching fields, high school education type, reason for working in Imam-Hatip High Schools, and their positions at the workplace. Other sections of the survey consist of Workplace Spirituality Scale by Kinjerski and Skrypnek(2006), Minnesota Job Satisfaction Scale by Weiss et al. (1967) and Organizational Commitment Scale by Meyer at al. (1993) As a result of the research, a positive and significant correlation has been found between workplace spirituality scale grades and intrinsic, extrinsic satisfaction and job satisfaction total grades. Also, a positive, significant correlation has been determined between workplace spirituality scale grades and emotional commitment, attendance commitment, normative commitment and organizational commitment total grades. It has also been concluded that the dimensions of workplace spirituality explains approximately 22% of the change in job satisfaction and in reference to the obtained findings, the dimensions with the most significant effects on job satisfaction are sense of community and mysterious mystical experience respectively.Besides, it has been revealed that the dimensions of workplace spirituality explains 27% of the change in organizational commitment and in reference to the obtained findings, the dimensions with the most significant effects on organizational commitment are sense of community, job commitment and mysterious mystic experience respectively. Key words: Workplace Spirituality, Job Satisfaction, Organisational Commitment.