The Relationship between the Integration of Faith and Work with Life and Job Outcomes

Gallup surveys consistently show that nine in 10 Americans express a belief in God (Nash, Business, religion, and spirituality: A new synthesis, 2003), while more than 45 % claim to have some awareness of God on the job (Nash and McLellan, Church on Sunday, Work on Monday: The Challenges of Fusing Christian Values with Business Life, 2001). Recently, Lynn et al. (Journal of Business Ethics 85:227–243, 2009) argued that the ability to integrate the specific beliefs and practices of one’s faith with the work one does represent an important although neglected area of research. As such, they developed and demonstrated convergent validity for the faith at work scale, designed to measure the extent to which individuals believe they are able to integrate their Judaeo-Christian beliefs and practices and their work. In a subsequent study, Lynn et al. (Human Relations 64:675–701, 2010) demonstrated that the faith at work scale was related to faith maturity, church attendance, age, and denominational strictness, and negatively associated with organizational size. No research, however, has examined the possible positive benefits of integrating faith and work. I therefore developed and tested hypotheses concerning the relationship between the faith at work scale and seven important life and work outcomes (satisfaction with life, intent to leave one’s job, self-rated job performance, job satisfaction, and three forms of organizational commitment). In all, four of seven hypotheses were confirmed.