Religiosity is a combination of piety (veneration of a Supreme Being), practice (following the commandments of the religion), and participation (engaging in religious ceremonies). Religiosity embodies traits such as trust, leadership, courage, empathy, and commitment. The researchers of this study theorise that these traits that constitute religiosity lead to employee engagement, and improved employee job performance in the workplace, by creating a model that envisions the direct and mediated effect of religiosity on job performance.
We employed a unique sample of Sri Lanka Navy officers, as research into the religious views of military personnel is unknown. Sri Lanka is a religious country with diverse religions, including Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Catholicism, and Protestantism, with active religious participation infestivals, visits to shrines, and pilgrimages.
Sri Lanka Navy is actively participating and giving their support to the religious events in the country. For example, the Sri Lanka Navy facilitates a successful annual feast at St. Anthony’s Church in Kachchativu. Kachchativu is an islet belonging to Sri Lanka, located close to the International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL) of Sri Lanka and India. It is evident in conjunction with the centenary celebrations of the Roman Catholic Marian Shrine in Mannar, the sacred statue of Our Lady of Madhu was brought to Jaffna.
Allowing devotees to pay their obeisance to the statue, the Sri Lanka Navy on 21st April 2024 provided sea transportation to deliver the sacred statue to the churches in the island sector, Jaffna. Usually after assuming the duties as Commander of the Navy, every commander of the Navy has a practice of paying homage to the Sacred Tooth Relic at the Temple of the Tooth in Kandygiven receiving blessings for future endeavors of the Navy. Usually Sri Lanka Navy organises a series of multi-religious programs to invoke blessings on its Anniversary every year. Accordingly, the Kanchuka Puja at Ruwanwelisaya and the Flag Blessing ceremony at sacred Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi are conducted. All-night Pirith Chanting and Alms Giving for the members of Ven. Maha Sangha is also a usual practice in the Welisara Naval Complex. Joint Christian Commemoration and Thanksgiving Services were also conducted. Special Pooja of Hindu tradition is organised to invoke blessings on the anniversaries. The Islamic prayer session was also conducted by Mawlawis.
Sri Lanka is a religious country with diverse religions, including Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Catholicism, and Protestantism, with active religious participation in festivals, visits to shrines, and pilgrimages. As a newly industrialising middle-income developing country, Sri Lanka needs to develop human capital for the nation to continue on the path to achieving economic development. We believe that religiosity can act as a source of morality, which in turn, promotes pro-social organisational behaviour.
We subscribe to the definition of religiosity set forth by developing country scholars, Adeyemo and Adeleye (2008), followed by Iddagoda and Opatha (2017) to preserve congruence between definitions of religiosity in research design and that used by study participants. Both sets of authors viewed religiosity as reverence for a deity (piety), participating in activities of the faithful, such as regularly attending services (practice), and participating in social activities with the community (participation). Items in parentheses reflect the Iddagoda and Opatha (2017) conceptualisation.
We extract traits from this definition of religiosity that support employee engagement, and organisational performance. We chose a Sri Lankan sample, as Sri Lanka is a very religious country, with a diversity of religions. Gallup (2010) found that 99% of Sri Lankan respondents found religion to be important to their lives.
Each village has a shrine. Wayside shrines abound, as do statues of Buddha, Jesus, Catholic saints, and Hindu deities, all of which are open to the public. Most of the Sri Lankans venture on annual pilgrimages to sacred locations. Religious attendance is high among all faiths, as is praise for religious personages, and the use of the Internet to access religious programs from other countries (Berkwitz, 2003).
Employee engagement is the employee’s head, heart and hand involvement in their job as well as their organisation. Engaged employees are creative, innovative and customer-oriented. They are very good team players. They are loyal to the organisation. Usually, when we deal with the people we have mismatches with the ideas because the people are different. The beauty of engaged employees they do not spread the negativity of the organisation to strangers.
They try to solve the issues within the organisation. Engaged employees also make extra effort to achieve the organisational goals. Employee job performance is a consequence of employee engagement. Employee job performance is conceptualised into the dimensions of task performance, citizenship behaviour, and counterproductive performance.in other words, Job performance assesses whether a person performs a job well.
The restriction of the sample to Sri Lanka Navy officers was due to their proficiency in business management and social science knowledge, which facilitated comprehension of the survey. Ages ranged from young officers at 21 years – to seasoned officers at 35 years. The gender was all male. Five levels of religiosity were identified. Very highly religious individuals have strong faith, attending religious services both on regular days of religious significance, and other days. Highly religious individuals also have strong faith, but only attend services on full moon Poya days (not regular Poya days) for Buddhists, or Sundays for Christians.
Moderately religious persons participate at a moderate level, only visiting religious institutions on the holiest days, such as Vesak Poya for Buddhists (the most important full moon Poya day), or Good Friday for Christians. Low religiosity is characterised by sparse attendance at religious services, while very low religiosity is akin to agnosticism.
As the sample consisted of 70% Buddhist respondents, religiosity about Buddhist beliefs may dominate in our results. We have found that religiosity influenced job performance in the military, indirectly, by first increasing employee engagement, which in turn, improved job performance. In our model, we theorised that traits such as trust, commitment, courage, and leadership, were enhanced by the practice of religion and participation in religious activities.
Such traits were viewed as increasing employee engagement, and in turn, job performance. The traits were embedded in the religiosity scale. For example, the Religiosity Scale’s statement, “ I practice what the founder of my religion preached,” indicates trust in the leader and commitment to following the tenets of the religion. “I am more concerned about practising what the religious books prescribe and engage wholeheartedly,” suggests respect for rules. Finally, “I participate in social activities which have a religious significance. Examples include pirith chanting ceremonies, church feasts, religious processions, etc.,” requires the religious individual to demonstrate leadership in social settings.
Trust and commitment to religious institutions, respect for the rules of religious practice, courage to take the moral high ground in the face of opposition from others, and leadership in religious ceremonies, may spill over to the workplace, increasing employee trust, commitment, and leadership in the implementation of the task, described as the conscious desire to participate in a task—the emotional involvement dimension of employee engagement. Engaged employees are superior performers, suggesting that religiosity increases employee engagement with the job, resulting in increased dedication in task completion, and in turn, superior job performance.
Authors
Dr. Anuradha Iddagoda
Dr. Anuradha Iddagoda is a Senior Lecturer of the Management Science Unit, Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Applied Sciences, University of Sri Jayewardenepura. She also served as a guest lecturer at the University of Rzeszów Poland in the years 2022, 2023 and 2024.
Rear Admiral Rohitha Abeysinghe
Rear Admiral Rohitha Abeysinghe counts more than thirty years in the Navy and has held many key appointments as an Executive branch officer. He was also appointed as the Director of General Training at Navy Headquarters. Currently, he is the Commander Northern Naval Area.
