Spiritual mentoring and work meaningfulness:The mediating role of calling

Abstract

Given the significance of work meaningfulness, it is crucial for organizations to understand how to foster and enhance it. This paper focuses on one particular avenue to bolster work meaningfulness: the spiritual dimension of work, specifically spiritual mentoring. Despite the importance of understanding the effects of spiritual mentoring on work meaningfulness, research in this area remains limited. Thus, we attempt to provide an understanding of the spiritual mentoring process that increases the work meaningfulness of protégés. Our sample data was collected from employees across a diverse range of organizations in China. We received complete responses from 152 participants, and the data was analyzed using the structural equation modeling method. Our results confirmed that a protégé's sense of calling mediated the relationship between the mentor’s spiritual mentoring and work meaningfulness. We make several important contributions to the relevant literature by introducing a new perspective, drawing a connection between mentoring and spirituality within the work environment. We investigate the relationship between spiritual mentoring and the meaningfulness of work for protégés, thus broadening the scope of mentoring literature to include spiritual mentoring. Additionally, this study delves into the mechanism linking spiritual mentoring and the work meaningfulness of protégés.