Public Managers' Religiosity: Impacts on Work Attitudes and Perceptions of Co-Workers

Abstract

Do public managers' religious beliefs and behaviors affect their work and their work-related attitudes? Perhaps due to the sensitive nature of this question, there is almost no empirical work on the topic. Our study uses questionnaire data (n ¼ 765) from the National Administrative Studies Project-III to test hypotheses about the impacts of U.S. public managers' religiosity, as well as their political activity, on work attitudes. Religiosity is defined by public managers' responses about attending religious services. Political behavior is defined in terms of membership in political organizations and election groups. An application of ordinary least squares regression shows that religious public managers tend to have a stronger orientation toward job security and a more favorable view of their organization and fellow employees. Public managers are no more or less oriented to security than other respondents in the sample, but they have more negative views about their organization and fellow employees. These findings do not change when obvious controls are introduced into the model.

Revisiting organizational age, inertia, and adaptability

“…In addition, in the literature, the three concepts represent different dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation and they are mutually correlated (Green et al, 2008;Jantunen et al, 2005). These three items included in this study have been used in various organization studies (Bozeman and Murdock, 2007;Chen, 2012;Chen and Bozeman, 2012). Due to the concern for statistical parsimony, I combined the three items by first using a principal component factor analysis (Eigenvalue ¼ 1.97, factor scores ¼ 0.81, 0.79, and 0.83 respectively) and subsequently saving the factor score.…”

A Grounded Theory of Christian Public Administrators’ Integration of Faith and Work

“…Bednarczuk (2019) finds religiosity to predict higher job satisfaction among government workers. Bozeman and Murdock (2007) find religious public managers to have a more positive view of their agencies and coworkers than nonreligious managers. Buszka and Ewest (2020, p. 225-226) apply Miller and Ewest's (2013, p. 405-411) theory of faith-work integration to briefly hypothesize that public sector employees tend to integrate their faith and work in three ways: (1) by viewing their work as a religious calling, requiring excellence and positive interpersonal relationships at work (the "process/activity orientation"); (2) by viewing their work as honoring God through service to society (the "outcome orientation"); and (3) by viewing their work as pursuing religiously formed ethical priorities that affect their organizations and the public (the "community orientation").…”

“…These eligibility criteria limit the study to a somewhat narrow, management-and governmentoriented definition of "public administrator" (following Denhardt, 1999) rather than broader definitions that might include people working in public service-related roles in the private nonprofit and for-profit sectors or government employees in frontline roles, such as case managers, teachers, or police officers. The religious criteria combine orthodox Christian belief, as represented by Christian creeds and statements of faith affirmed by Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox Christians, and religiosity, as defined by regular church attendance (following Bozeman & Murdock, 2007;Brotheridge & Lee, 2007). While broader definitions of "public administration" and "committed Christian" could have been used, these narrower definitions are intended to permit a focus on participants' perceptions of the relationship between maximally distinctive public administration work and maximally distinctive Christian faith.…”

Inspiring workplace happiness: religiosity and organizational trust in the academic context

“…There are some authors (e.g. Bozeman and Murdock, 2007) who address the relationship between religion and some work-related practices such as job satisfaction, involvement and motivation. Hofstede (1980) indicates that religion is associated constantly with leadership practices, whereas Earley (1993) highlights that religious beliefs have a strong effect on both individual and organizational performance.…”