Sense of calling in the workplace: The moderating effect of supportive organizational climate in Taiwanese organizations

Abstract

Abstract The sense of calling has emerged as a burgeoning research interest for the past decade due to its close connection to the meaningfulness of work. However, the effects of a sense of calling and how it functions in the workplace remain unclear. This study aims at enhancing the concept of calling and understanding its application in organizations. Therefore, a cross-level model was proposed according to data collected from 24 organizations in Taiwan. As a result, our study demonstrated that sense of calling is positively related to individual performance, and the supportive organizational climate also plays an important role in the relationship between sense of calling and contextual performance. Consequently, by incorporating factors at both the organizational and individual levels into the mechanism of calling, a valuable insight into and application of an individual’s sense of calling in the work context has been established, and management implications were also provided.