Research co-authored by Barjinder Singh examines the relationship between spirituality and religion on management of work-family conflict.
By Erin Manchuso '19
Barjinder Singh, assista nt professor of management, co-authored the paper “Job-spouse demands and work-family conflict: Role of religiosity and spirituality,” which was published by the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality.
Singh co-authored this paper with Donna Stringer, lecturer of management at University of Houston, Clear Lake, and Selvarajan Thirumalai Thattai, associate professor of management at Cal State East Bay.
The paper’s abstract reads:
“Current research examines the role of religiosity and spirituality in coping with demands of work–family lives. Based on the job demands-resources model, we hypothesize that religiosity and spirituality positively moderate the relationship between work and family demands and work–family conflict. Based on evidence from extant literature, we propose that although spirituality has positive influence, religiosity can have either positive or negative influence on work–family conflict. Therefore, testing parallel hypotheses for the moderating role of religiosity, results of our study, based on a national sample of employees, indicate that religiosity and spirituality moderate the relationship between spousal demands and family-to-work conflict (FWC), such that the highly religious and spiritual employees experience less FWC. In the work domain, however, high level of religiosity further exacerbates the job demand and work-to-family conflict relationship; whereas spirituality does not moderate the relationship. Implications for theory and practice are also discussed.”
Singh was a tenured professor at the University of Houston before joining Elon University’s faculty in the fall of 2017. He was the 2018 recipient of the Love School of Business’s Summer Research Fellowship, during which he revised and completed research for this publication.
Psychology of Religion and Spirituality publishes peer-reviewed, original articles related to the psychological aspects of religion and spirituality, which employ experimental and correlational methods, qualitative analyses, and critical reviews of literature.