Study of Relationship between 360 Degree Feedback and Spirituality at work among Employees in the Organization

 

Uttam Kumar Das, Jayakrushna Panda*

P.G. Department of Business Administration, Utkal University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India

 

ABSTRACT:

360 degree feedback system is a popular development and assessment tool, especially for organizational leaders. Raters from different organizational levels such as subordinates, bosses, peers and self rate the leaders’ performance. However, there is seldom strong agreement across rater-groups. The 360 degree feedback is a useful tool and helps employees to be more efficient in their current roles besides to help them know what areas they have to concentrate for improvement. The use of 360 degree feedback is being tremendously in organizations. It is claimed that this programme offers a more rounded diagnosis of development needs resulting in more effective development plans for individual level, group level and organizational level. Our research focuses on extensive efforts on soliciting spirituality at the work place in organization. This study tests the compound correlation between 360 degree feedback and spirituality at work place among employees in the organization. A sample of 88 employees occupying various positions of senior level managers, middle level managers and entry level managers in power sector organizations in Bhubaneswar contributes to this research. The results were analyzed using SPSS software package. The results highlight the existence of a meaningful relation between 360 degree feedback and spirituality at work place among employees in the organization.

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION:

the 360 degree feedback or multi-source, multi-rater feedback, as it is sometimes referred to solicits the views of several colleagues at senior, peer and junior levels in the work place. It is reported that nearly 500 Fortune companies are now using 360 degree feedback for development and/or appraisal system (London and Smither, 1995). The current literature is reasonably supportive of 360 degree feedback as a potential aid to individual and organizational development.

 

Indeed, precautionary measures are taken to avoid bias in feedback, idiosyncratic rating errors and poor reliability/validity of the instrument itself (Fletcher et al, 1998), and provided there is sufficient development resource, social support and time made available to the individual (Maurer and Tarulli, 1996). It has been claimed (Alimo-Metcalfe, 1998: 43) that 360 degree feedback could represent a major organizational transformation towards greater empowerment of staff. It is with reference to the perceptions of managers experiencing a 360 degree feedback programme that we wish to investigate this claim. Typically, raters are grouped by the level of organization including subordinates, bosses, peers, and the individual leader being assessed. Individuals in workgroups are likely to influence each other through shared observations, perceptions, and social contagion (Lord and Maher, 1991; Meindl, 1995). The 360 feedback is a useful tool and helps employees to be more efficient in their current roles besides to help them know what areas they have to concentrate for improvement. The feedback from all sides of employees, seniors, peers, subordinates, providers, customers for an individual that person will likewise rate himself and afterwards coordinates the execution of others evaluations. The outcomes indicated that an overall positive effect has been largely  reported by 360 Degree feedback on management skills and leadership development (Das and Panda, December 2016).360 degree feedback  appraisal systems have multiple purposes and help organizations in setting performance goals, basing rewards on performance, setting clear expectations, and supporting employees' selfesteem (Palaiologos, Papazekos, and Panayotopoulou, 2011).The primary study found  that every senior academician has complete knowledge about the performance appraisal system. The traditional performance appraisal is not helpful to the employees in the educational institutions. Thus senior academicians agreed to appraise superiors, Peers, and Subordinates. They have agreed that 360-degree feedback is a good modern assessment system and it is an essential technique for educational institutions. The 360 degree feedback gives a clear picture of the employees and also helps to know strength and weakness, which is useful for growth and development of employees (Das and Panda, 2015).

 

Spirituality at work:

Today, more people find inspiration and fulfillment in their jobs by bringing their spirituality at the work place. Spirituality at work place in that in recent years is a new concept. Business management literature in this field has emerged in the west and it is known as a new model. In recent years, spirituality from the perspective of firms’ dealing with employees, customers and community is of great importance as far as career management organization such as the Academy of Management and the Academy of International Business degree in 2001is concerned. First, be sure that there exists difference between spirituality and morality expressed in the work place. Spirituality at work, an employee intends to individual aspects of spirituality in the work place, it refers to organizational aspects. Despite the term used to describe a profession or job that a person accomplishes it but the work to a place called that person had done at their work (Klenke, 2013). This separation is important because that can lead to individual and organizational spirituality. About levels of spirituality in organizations of different views, some are believed to surface for spirituality in organizations and in their view spirituality at a particular classification level without the organization can be comprehensive. Others argue for spirituality in the organization into two levels: the individual level and the organization level and finally a group of spirituality in the three levels considered: individual level, group level and organizational level (Rastegar, 2003). In analyzing the levels of spirituality in organization seems that the levels offered by Milliam et al. (2003). This article tries to answer this question as follows: Is there a relationship between 360 degree feedback and spiritually in the work place.

 

Table 1: The concept of spirituality in the organization (Milliam et al. 2003)

Individual level	Group level	Solidarity group
Meaningful work	Solidarity group	Alignment with the organization’s values
Enjoy working	A sense of connection and solidarity with colleagues	Asense of connection and correlation with organizational goals
Strength and energy work	Support staff from each purpose to people	Identify the organization’s mission and values
Work gives meaning and results	Linking with  a common goal	Its support for the employee of each other

 

 

Fig. 1: Flow chart of spirituality at work

 

Hypothesis:

There is a relationship between the 360degree feedback and spirituality at work.

H1: There is a significant positive relationship between 360degree feedback and meaningful work.

 

H2: There is a significant positive relationship between 360degree feedback and unanimity group.

 

H3: There is a significant positive relationship between 360degree feedback and alignment with organizational values.

 

METHODOLOGY:

Research design and data collection:

Firms in the power sector employees of Bhubaneswar completed a questionnaire survey which provided the data. The HR departments of the two largest firms received invitations to participate in the research. Two firms have implemented 360 degree appraisal system and agreed to participate. Participants were 88 senior level managers, middle level manager and entry level managers from power sector corporations who have been working in their current organizations and with job experience between 0-5years, 6-10years and more than 10 years in their present positions. The participants were 70% men and 30% women employees’ sex wise.

 

Procedures:

In this study data were collected from the respondents through a direct questionnaire survey. Respondents rated, on a 5-point Likert scale (1=strongly disagree, 2=disagree, 3=neither disagree nor agree, 4=agree, 5=strongly agree), thirteen items were used to measure 360 degree feedback (Q1–Q13) and eighteen items were used to measure spiritually at work place(Q14–Q31), and further spirituality at work place divided into three subgroups; meaningful work (Q14-Q19), unanimity group (Q20-Q25) and alignment with organizational values (Q26-31).

 

Table2: Factor Matrix, Cronbach'sα, Composite reliability, and eigenvalues by variable blocks with component-analysis extraction method

 

Table-1 shows that the cronbach alpha value of each factor is higher than 0.7 that confirms the reliability of the questionnaires.

 

First hypothesis:

There is a significant positive relationship between 360degree feedback and meaningful work.

H₀: There is no correlation between 360 degree feedback and meaningful work.

H₁: There is a correlation between 360 degree feedback and meaningful work.

 

As can be seen in the table below the P-value (0.003) is less than the significance level (0.05), Hence reject the null hypothesis and H₁ accepted and confirmed that there is a linear correlation between 360 degree feedback and meaningful work. Histograms are plotted below the regression model, the hypothesis has confirmed the normality of remaining and therefore the remaining linear regression model is acceptable (Fig. 2-3).

Table -3: Significant regression test

Factors	Values
Test statistic (F)	40.32
Significance level (Sig.)	0.003

 

Fig. 2

 

Fig. 3

 

Second Hypothesis:

There is a significant positive relationship between 360degree feedback and unanimity group.

H₀: There is no correlation between 360 degree feedback and unanimity group.

H₁: There is a correlation between 360 degree feedback and unanimity group.

 

As can be seen in the table below the P-value (0.004) is less than the significance level (0.05), Hence reject the null hypothesis and H₁ accepted and confirmed there is a correlation between 360 degree feedback and unanimity of group. Histograms are plotted below the regression model, the hypothesis has confirmed the normality of remaining and therefore the remaining linear regression model is acceptable (Fig. 4-5).

 

Table-4:Significant regression test

Factors	Values
Test statistic (F)	37.37
Significance level (Sig.)	0.004

 

 

Fig. 4

 

Fig. 5

Third Hypothesis:

There is a significant positive relationship between 360degree feedback and alignment with organizational values.

H₀: There is no correlation between 360 degree feedback and alignment with organizational values.

H₁: There is a correlation between 360 degree feedback and alignment with organizational values.

 

As can be seen in the table below the P-value (0.011) is less than the significance level (0.05), Hence reject the null hypothesis and H₁ accepted and confirmed there is a correlation between 360 degree feedback and alignment with organizational values. Histograms are plotted below the regression model, the hypothesis has confirmed the normality of remaining and therefore the remaining linear regression model is acceptable (Fig. 6-7).

 

Table-5: Significant regression test

Factors	Values
Test statistic (F)	20.55
Significance level (Sig.)	0.011

 

 

 

Fig. 6

 

Fig. 7

Table-6 : Summary of regression analysis to test hypotheses

Hypothesis	R	R2	F	Sig.	Beta	t-values	Results
Hypothesis 1	0.954	0.910	40.32	0.003	0.450	6.351	It has relationship
Hypothesis 2	0.950	0.903	37.37	0.004	0.719	6.113	It has a relationship
Hypothesis 3	0.915	0.837	20.55	0.011	0.347	4.534	It has relationship

 

Table7:Correlation  matrix between 360 degree feedback, meaningful work, unanimity group and alignment with organizational values

	360 degree feedback	Meaningful work	Unanimity group	Alignment with organizational values
360 degree feedback	-
Meaningful work	0.954**
Unanimity group	0.950**	0.921**
Alignment with organizational values	0.915*	0.907*	0.770	-

Notes- *p<.05, **p<.01

 

Table 6 shows that a high degree of positive significantly correlated between 360 degree feedback and meaningful work, unanimity group and moderate degree of positive significantly correlated between 360 degree feedback and alignment with organizational values.

 

Research Model:

 

Fig.8 :Research model helps to understand correlation between the factors.

 

CONCLUSION:

An attempt has been made in this study to contribute to the relationships between 360 degree feedback and spirituality at work place in the organization. In order to analyze research questions, correlation analysis and Bivariate correlations were used. Correlation analysis showed a high degree of positive correlation between 360 degree feedback and all three variables of spirituality at work place. The first test of hypothesis, regression analysis shows that 360 degree feedback is a  predictor of meaningful work and the value F observed significant (F=40.32 and Sig. 0.003<0.05) and according to test statistic the independent variable 360 degree feedback is completely related with meaningful work of employees. In the second test hypothesis, regression analysis shows that 360 degree feedback is the predictor of unanimity group and the F value observed significant (F=37.37 and Sig.0.004 <0.05) and according to test statistic, the independent variable 360 degree feedback is linked with unanimity group of employees. The third test hypothesis, regression analysis show that 360 degree feedback is a predictor of alignment with organizational values and the observed F statistic significant (F=20.55 and Sig.0.011 <0.05) and according to test statistic the independent variable 360 degree feedback is also completely related with the organizational values. Ultimately, we can conclude that following the three hypotheses of this research are linear significant and concluded that there is a very strong positive correlation between 360 degree feedback and spirituality at work place in the organization. Plagarism report-100% unique

 

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Accepted on 22.05.2017          © A&V Publications all right reserved