This chapter reviewed the literatures regarding Mergers and Acquisition (M&A), workplace spirituality, job involvement, and perceived organizational support. Also, the research hypotheses were proposed base on the theories and the literatures.
Mergers and Acquisition (M&A)
M&As are a series of activities to integrate two firms into one or the smaller firm that has been absorb to the larger firm. It is a complex event in the organization life for companies to lead the business into next totally different level. M&A has also been classified with a five-fold category system according to Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The system was designed based on the primary economic relationship established between the parent firm and the target firm. The five categories as followed behind.
1. Horizontal. When the companies produce one or more than one of the same, similar or related products in the same geographic market, the acquisition is horizontal.
2. Vertical. At the period of time when the two companies involved had a potential buy-seller relationship before the action to merge.
3. Product extension. The type of acquisition has to be classified as product extension when the purchasing and the companies being purchased are functionally related in production and/or supplement but sell the products that do not directly compete with one another. An example of a product extension merger can be tile manufacture purchasing bowl and plate manufacture.
4. Market extension. The type of market extension of acquisition is that when the purchasing and the companies being purchased happened to manufacture the same products, but they sell them in different geographic market. For example, a market extension merger can be an automobile manufacture in Taiwan purchasing an automobile manufacture in Korea.
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5. Unrelated. In this category it includes the partnership of two essentially unrelated firms.
An example can be an air craft manufacture buying a flower supplier. Statistical Report on Mergers and Acquisitions, 1978 (1980: 108-109).
Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) is an important business phenomenon, proven by the large and increasing amount of M&A activities over the years. The number of M&A deals in the US started picking up in the mid-1990s (Yu, 2013) and in the early 20th century in Taiwan (Wu, 2008). Reasons to adopt M&A operation are because the company wants to improve overall performance (Lubatkin, 1983) to gain more competitive advantages compares to other firms (Appelbaum, Gandell, Yortis, Proper, & Jobin, 2000).
The studies based on M&A are varied. For instance, studies found that in the post-acquisition process, employees who developed higher commitment to the organization lead to better job performance (Riketta, 2002; Wright & Bonett, 2002). Some studies focus more on the financial performance. The improvement in cost efficiency appeared to be transferred to the bank clients under the M&A operations has been proven (Beccalli & Frantz, 2009). Hence, the employees who has been experienced the M&A situation are chosen as the target sample in this study.
Workplace Spirituality
The concept of spirituality in the workplace appeared in the 19th century and become a popular issue in the business world (Greenleaf & Center, 1973). Two main streams of business development generated the interest of workplace spirituality which are
“economic-technological imperative” and “people centered management” (Burack, 1999).
While the organization went through a downsizing and re-engineering process, under the similar technological driven environment, people were still confronted with decreasing economic problems. Hence, researchers indicated that people is the key element to make a difference (Burack, 1993). According to Maslow hierarchy, when the lower order needs
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(physical, safety and belonging ) are satisfied , people seek for higher achievements such as self-esteem or self-actualization (Burack, 1999; Maslow & Lowry, 1968). In the downsizing era of the 1990s, people who have been helped to develop transferable skills and did not get cut out of the organization have received the need of security. As long as the basic needs are satisfied, the person desire for higher order needs which happened to be selflessness, loyalty, and public-spiritedness (Burack, 1999).The ultimate individual need in the workplace reflected on the sense of spirituality at work from person’s own being (Fox, 1994).
The definitions of workplace spirituality were various with different researchers making different statements. It was first considered as religion related (Emblen, 1992; Helminiak, 2006). Some people believe that spirituality at work does not only involve a religious implication (Neck & Milliman, 1994). For instance, there are questions such as ‘What is the meaning of my work?’ and ‘Why am I doing this work?’ that, while not necessarily referring to any specific religious significance, speak to a rather large spiritual significance behind employees’ work (Krishnakumar & Neck, 2002). The researchers used this to develop more interest on religion based spirituality. However with the working environment forever evolving, workplace spirituality does not involve much connection with religious values, but rather individual ones (Cavanagh, 1999; Denton & Mitroff, 1999).
Nowadays, there has been an increasing studies showed that workplace spirituality was not only be limited to the connection with various religions, but can be based solely on one’s personal belief and particular philosophy. These workers could be considered as independent spirits who are seeking for both meaning and purpose in their work, building the linkage with their coworkers and workplace community and expecting to enrich their enthusiasm at work (Ashmos & Duchon, 2000; Harrington, Preziosi, & Gooden, 2001; Milliman et al., 2003;
Mitroff, Mitroff, & Denton, 1999). These brought out the existing connection between individuals and their workplace.
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The meaning of workplace spirituality is a highly personal and philosophical construct, which nearly all the academics defined as that of spirituality consisting of a sense of completeness, close connection with the workplace community and deeper personal values (Gibbons, 2000; Krishnan, 2008). Workers seek the ultimate purpose in life, eager to develop a connection with people they work with, or have consistency between their core values and organizational value (Denton & Mitroff, 1999). According to that, workplace spirituality can be define as “the recognition that employees have an inner life that nourishes and is nourished by meaningful work that takes place in the context of community”(Ashmos &
Duchon, 2000, p.137).
The survey of workplace spirituality was developed by Ashmos and Duchon (2000) with eleven dimensions and the component factors analysis are also being conducted. In this study, three dimensions which are meaningful work, sense of community and alignment with organization values is chosen due to the representation of job involvement in previous studies at three levels of workplace spirituality (Milliman et al., 2003; Milliman, Ferguson, Trickett,
& Condemi, 1999; Mitroff et al., 1999; Neal & Bennett, 2000; Pawar, 2009). The elements of each dimensions are shown in Figure 2.1.. The reason those three dimensions have been chosen was because, as for meaningful work, it represents how employees dealing with their day-to-day work not only found the work interesting and challenging but also saw how they can live with their goal by seeking deeper meaning and purpose in their work, moreover, contribute to others (Ashmos & Duchon, 2000; Fox, 1994; Milliman et al., 2003). The sense of community represents how employees see themselves connecting with co-workers with the shared purpose. And the value of alignment with organization measures whether the employees acknowledge the strong sense of alignment between their personal values and the organization’s mission and value (Milliman et al., 2003; Rego & Cunha, 2008).
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Figure 2.1. Conceptualizing spirituality in the workplace: individual, group, and organization levels of interaction. Adapted from “Workplace spirituality and employee work attitudes: An exploratory empirical assessment ,”by Milliman, J., Czaplewski, A. J., & Ferguson, J., 2003.
Journal of Organizational Change Management, 16(4), p.428. Copyright 2003 by MCB UP Ltd.
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Job Involvement
One of the distinguished employees’ work attitudes is Job involvement. It represents the degree to which a particular employee was identified as psychologically engaged within the workplace or also the importance of work in his or her total self-image. It was also being defined as how much and how deeply a person put him or herself into their work. A person who puts more of his or herself into a particular job sees his/her work as a very significant aspect of his/her life. They devote themselves deeply to their specific work situation, which includes but is not limited to: the work itself, the colleagues the employee interacts with, and the organization at large (Moynihan & Pandey, 2007). In contrast, the non-job-involved workers do not put work at the center of their life. They keep their interests and work life in entirely separate spheres. But this attitude does not directly or greatly affect their job performance (Lodahl & Kejnar, 1965). One of the most distinguished measurements was developed by Lodahl and Kejnar (1965). The items included two issues which were the psychological identification of a person in their job and the intrinsic motivation to the person at work for fulfilling self-esteem needs.
The meanings of job involvement were various and could be identified in four different ways. First, the controversial issue was about the intrinsic motivation on the job and job involvement (Gorn & Kanungo, 1980; Kanungo, 1981). Second, there were the concerns of identification of the state of job involvement and its following effects when dealing with the construct (Kanungo, 1979). Third, the description of job involvement can be considered as a cognitive and positive emotional state of the individual (Lodahl & Kejnar, 1965). Finally, there are two different contexts that individual shows their personal involvement, the two contexts were (a) specific or particular job context and (b) generalized work context (Kanungo, 1981). When in the specific or particular job context, it showed the degree of how much the job could satisfy one’s need .In another way, when the involvement was with the
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work in general, it is more about the value of the work in one’s life and the socialization (Kanungo, 1982).
Bowen and Lawler (1994) noted that job involvement is connected with complex service organizations and it requires employees to share their job roles and responsibilities through teamwork supervisors, instead of giving demands by playing as a supportive role in the organization. They believed employees would find the work meaningful, engaging, and significant in this way (Bowen & Lawler, 1994; Eccles, 1993).
The literature addressed that if and when employees recognize the possibilities for satisfying their psychological needs in the workplace; they engage themselves deeply and dedicate more time and effort in the organization to create greater profit for the organization (Brown, 1996; Kahn, 1990; Pfeffer, 1994; Zhang, Zheng, & Wei, 2009). Accordingly, this type of dedication helps to bring down absenteeism, numbers of turnover rate, and negative psychological reactions that could potentially occur within the organization.
Workplace Spirituality and Job Involvement
Workplace spirituality represent as a spiritual well-being of an individual in working condition that include different factors which influence the satisfaction of an individual toward his or her life or job (Altaf & Awan, 2011). It helps to create an unique working environment that assists employees to foster their capacities (Daniel, 2010). Job involvement has been considered as a cognitive or belief of psychological identification toward one’s job concern about the degree to how actively they participate in their job and moreover consider their work performance to be important to their self-esteem. It also implied that the fulfillment of employees needs has been considered as an antecedent of job involvement (Blau, 1986; Kanungo, 1982). Studies has also been proposed that the organizations who has an environment that respond to their employees’ need and value rapidly will motive them engage in their work more (Catlette & Hadden, 2001; Hawley & Hawley, 1993). Employees
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have been found to be more supportive to their organization and feel more involved in their work when they are strongly identify with their organization (Cable & DeRue, 2002; Smidts, Pruyn, & Van Riel, 2001)
Those work attitudes were reflected in the workplace. However there are controversial discussions on the relationship between workplace spirituality and work attitudes. Komala and Ganesh (2007) and Neck and Milliman (1994) proposed that employees’ work attitudes are related to workplace spirituality. When it met one’s personal inner goals, it enhances the teamwork and helps the employees to be more committed to their organization. Additionally, Pawar (2009) pointed out individual spirituality only had marginal association with work attitudes and suggested to include workplace spirituality when examining whether individual spirituality has an effect on work attitudes or not. These findings aroused the motivation to examine the relationship between work attitude and workplace spirituality on the specific target sample, which are the employees who experienced M&A situation. And one particular work attitude that will focus on in this study is that of job involvement (O'Driscoll, O'Driscoll,
& Randall, 1999).
The dimensions that have been chosen for this study focus on fulfilling employees’
spiritual needs (Ashmos & Duchon, 2000; Fry, 2003, 2005; Fry, Vitucci, & Cedillo, 2005).
Therefore, those dimensions should be positively associated with job involvement since they affect employees’ need fulfillment. Moreover, the greater engagement of employees at work will be created due to the intrinsic motivation that provided by workplace spirituality (Fry, 2003; Pawar, 2009). The relationship of one of the dimensions, meaningful work, has been examined to be positive related to job involvement (Milliman et al., 2003). And Milliman et al. (1999) purposed a positive organizational value can provide greater emotional engagement to employees. Thus, workplace spirituality should have a positive relationship with employees’ job involvement. It is important to note that in this study we would assess
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these dimensions at the individual level of analysis empirically. The hypothesis is proposed as below.
Hypothesis 1. Workplace spirituality has a positive effect on job involvement.
Perceived Organizational Support
According to organizational support theory the development of perceived organizational support is encouraged by the tendency of employees to personify an organization as though it were with human-like characteristics (Eisenberger et al., 1990). It also addressed the consequences of perceived organizational support: some psychological reactions came along.
For instance, perceived organizational support should provide the feeling of obligation, concern about the organization’s welfare and assisting the organization to achieve their objectives, based on the reciprocity norm. Also, perceived organizational support built up the employees’ expectation on organization performance-reward policy. These processes would have positive outcomes for both employees (e.g., enhance job involvement and strengthen positive working attitudes) and organization (e.g., increased affective commitment and performance, reduced turnover) (Pathak, 2012; Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002).
Organizational theorists and researchers indicated employment can be understood as the trade of the effort and loyalty for both impersonal benefits and socio-emotional benefits such as pay, fringe benefits, esteem and approval (Angle & Perry, 1983; Mowday, Porter, & Steers, 1982). Based on social exchange theory, any exchange activities can be viewed as a social behavior that may result in both economic and social outcomes (Lambe, Wittmann, &
Spekman, 2001). It was developed to provide the possible conceptual basis for understanding the initiation, strengthening, and continued maintenance of interpersonal relationships between employees and their organization and given the norm of reciprocity that required
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people to respond positively to the favorable treatments they received from others (Blau, 1964; Gouldner, 1960).
Perceived organizational support was defined as the degree to which employees perceive that the organization cares about their well-being and that their contributions are valued by their organization (Eisenberger et al., 1990; Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002). And it is an important source that could help to reinforce employees’ confidence in their ability to cope with role demands (Lazarus, 1991). Perceived organizational support is considered to be developed through various interactions between the employees and their employers and to which degree that reflects by the employees perceived their organization is committed to them (Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002)
Moderating role of Perceived Organizational Support
Studies have pointed out perceived organizational support was consistently related to the favorable outcomes to the organization (Pathak, 2012). For instance, perceived organizational support was positively correlated to organizational commitment (Shore & Wayne, 1993), in-role performance (Eisenberger et al., 1990), organizational citizenship behavior (Moorman, Blakely, & Niehoff, 1998), long-term obligations, organizational identification among employees, loyalty (Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002) , job satisfaction, intention to remain in the organization (Stamper & Johlke, 2003) ,and trust in organizations (Chen, Aryee, & Lee, 2005). Also, perceived organizational support has been purposed it was negatively correlated to absenteeism (e.g., Eisenberger et al., 1986) and intention to leave (Allen, Shore, & Griffeth, 2003).
In a recent study, there are three major categories which are fairness, supervisory support and organizational rewards, and favorable job conditions have been indicated to associate with perceived organizational support (Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002). According to that, perceived organizational support has been pointed out to be related to those positive
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outcomes for employees (e.g., job satisfaction, positive mood) and for organization (e.g., affective commitment, performance, and less withdrawal behavior) (Pathak, 2012; Rhoades
& Eisenberger, 2002). Therefore, perceived organizational support was expected to bring better performance to the organization by increasing employees’ obligation to their organization, and more involved in their work (Jain et al., 2013).
Moreover, perceived organizational support has been found a significant negative moderating impact on the relationship between prosocial behavior and unethical attitudes when unethical attitudes increased, reported frequency of prosocial behavior decreased (Adebayo, 2005). Prosocial behavior reflects to a human concern for others and organization, it include the behaviors such as helping others and volunteering in an organization which workplace spirituality share the similar concept in one of the dimensions, sense of community (Brief & Motowidlo, 1986; Milliman et al., 2003).
Also, in Jain et al. (2013) perceived organizational support had been examined to have negative moderating impact on OCB and organizational stressors. It also noted that out of 56 significant interactions only one was significantly positive which is the individual initiative dimension of OCB was positively influenced by the interaction effect of the Job Security dimension of organizational stressors on perceived organizational support. Individual initiative refers to employees engage themselves in task related behaviors at a level that go beyond what an organization required or generally expected which job involvement also perform the similar concept (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Paine, & Bachrach, 2000). According to the findings above, in this study the significant moderating impact of perceived organizational support between workplace spirituality and job involvement will be proposed.
The hypothesis is shown below.
Hypothesis 2. The relationship between workplace spirituality and job involvement is moderated by perceived organizational support.
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