Attachment to God, religious tradition, and firm attributes in workplace commitment

ABSTRACT

Research on organizational commitment suggests there is an association between American theists’ emotional attachment to God and their emotional commitment to the workplace. A sense of divine calling has been shown to partially mediate this association but, beyond that, little is known. The purpose of this study is to shed further light on the relationship between secure attachment to God and affective organizational commitment. I do so by testing whether the employee’s religious tradition is associated with affective organizational commitment and whether the employee’s firm attributes moderate the relationship between attachment to God and organizational commitment. Results suggest that: 1) Catholics evince higher levels of organizational commitment than Evangelicals, and 2) firm size significantly moderates the relationship between attachment to God and organizational commitment across religious affiliations.

KEYWORDS:

• Affective organizational commitment
• attachment theory
• attachment to God
• work

Notes

1. There is a dearth of work-related research specific to Mainline Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Latter Day Saints, and others. My data also limit the ability to compare groups because of insufficient numbers in many of these categories.

2. Mainline Protestants and non-affiliates are also included for reference, but prior research does not suggest that either should exhibit unusually high levels of AC.

3. It would have been ideal to include atheists within the RELTRAD system in regression models, but atheists are appropriately instructed to skip attachment to God items in BRS3. On affective commitment, however, atheists do not differ significantly from theists (t = –.61, p = .54, g = .08).

4. It is uncertain how much is gained by including the anxiety dimension in a study of security and avoidance. Henderson and Kent (2015) suggest the secure/avoidant spectrum is actually curvilinear, with anxious attachers represented at the center of that distribution. Secondary analyses, including the anxiety measure, were modeled but produced no meaningful change to outcomes.

5. For denominational classifications of these groups, see the appendix in Steensland et al. (2000).

6. The other religion category includes Buddhist, Hindu, Jehovah’s Witness, Latter-Day Saint, Muslim, Orthodox Christian, Seventh-Day Adventist, and Unitarian Universalist respondents. I retain all seven groups in regression analyses since auxiliary analyses demonstrate that highly attached individuals tend to look somewhat similar regardless of religious affiliation (i.e., they tend to take Scripture more literally, attend church frequently, and pray frequently).

7. Rotation of the contrast category does not produce any other significant differences between religious traditions.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Blake Victor Kent

Blake Victor Kent is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at Baylor University. His interests involve social determinants of health, including cultural and religious boundaries and practices, as well as social and organizational outcomes of attachment orientations.