Unwavering Hope and Workers' Commitment in the Nigerian Manufacturing Industry: A Study in Workplace Spirituality

Abstract This study examines association between 'hope' as an element emerging theme of 'workplace spirituality', and 'workers' commitment' Nigerian manufacturing industry. The cross sectional survey design was adopted and 235 middle and senior level members constituted study sample. The foundational philosophical stance of study was 'critical realism', whereby 'concurrent paradigm triangulation' was adopted. The results of data analyses show that there is a positive and significant association between 'hope' and measures of workers' commitment, namely: affective commitment, continuance commitment and normative commitment. The study found that workers' 'unwavering hope' Nigerian manufacturing industry leads to high workers' affective and normative commitment, as well as low workers' continuance commitment. Thus, as members' conviction that their organizations' vision, purpose and mission will be fulfilled increase, they substantially develop a sense of obligation and loyalty towards organization. The study therefore recommends that Nigerian manufacturing organizations should strive to inspire unwavering hope members order to be assured of their high level of commitment at work. Introduction Workers' commitment has been observed to be of prime importance to managers and researchers (Suliman and Iles, 2000), and is acknowledged to be a crucial factor achieving success. Consequently, Rego and Cunha (2007 p. 4) argue that in management discourse, commitment is a central variable, given that more committed people tend to devote higher efforts to work, thus contributing to performance. Kinjerski and Skrypnek (2006) are therefore of view that order for organizations to be successful, employees need to be committed to, and be passionate about their work. Accordingly Gbadamosi (2003 p.274) posits that organizational commitment continues to be a topical issue management research and continues to engage attention of practicing managers. Recognizing sources of commitment has therefore become an increasingly significant priority for organizations and Overberghe et al (2003) argue that over thirty years of research has been done to investigate how commitment influences life. This view is corroborated by Liu (2000, p.1) who argues that organizational commitment (OC) has been seen as one of most important variables study of management and behavior last three decades. Accordingly, Karim and Noor (2006, p.1) acknowledge that the topic of commitment has been subject of much theoretical and empirical effort field of behavior, human resource management and industrial/organizational psychology. In face of obvious importance of workers' commitment practice, there is now a growing need for emergence of a theory that encapsulates full panoply of contributive forces which lead to workers' commitment. For, x-raying research literature on commitment (Yang et al, 2004; Overberghe et al, 2003; Noordin and Zainuddin, 2001), we identify incompleteness of assumptions about sources of workers' commitment. For instance, Oliveira (2002, p. 17) argues that little attention has been paid literature to investigation of spirituality as a cultural phenomenon that might influence behavior and induce change. Thus, while research that examines relationship between processes and commitment is well developed (Kwon, 2002), there is a dearth of theory to elucidate impact of critical facets of workplace spirituality on workers behavior, and one of these critical facets, as identified by Fry and Matherly (2006), is 'hope'. Campbell (2007) argues that members, being humans, apart from their physical component, are made-up of spirituality, cognition and emotion; none of which should be ignored studies. …