Assistant Professor The University of Southern Mississippi
Abstract: Human resource development scholarship rarely examines local, faith-based communities in pursuit of answering questions about faith-based subcultures in the workplace. Furthermore, connections between an individual’s participation in a faith-based community and its impact on workplace resilience has not been studied. In the academic literature, we know that emotional intelligence has been applied to workplace resilience (Schneider et al., 2013, Bande et al., 2015, and Magnano et al., 2016). We also know that faith-based communities have an impact on a person’s resilience (Alawiyah et al., 2011, Miller Hesed et al. 2020, and Muller et al., 2014). Finally, we have limited research on faith-based communities. Religious communities have been studied and revealed collectivist rather than individualistic visions of community (Cohen, 2007 & 2016). Taken together, our project aims to bridge the gap in the research between faith-based communities, emotional intelligence, and workplace resilience.
This project is in progress and aims to answer a fundamental question to support community and workforce development needs, “How does membership in a faith-based community impact workforce resilience?” Through a mixed-methods approach and a review of supporting literature in the fields of management, psychology, and human resource development, we seek to understand the relationship between a faith-based community member’s sense of collectivism as it relates to their emotional intelligence as a predictor of workplace resilience. We see our project emerging in three distinct phases.
First, we will survey individual members in faith-based communities along the Mississippi Gulf Coast to determine their community identity (collectivist identity versus an individualist identity). A major contribution this research project seeks to make is the investigation of collectivism amongst faith-based members who are living in an individualist, American society. The collectivist versus individualists’ identity investigation provides the research project an exciting opportunity to explore collectivism as a mechanism by which resilience is strengthened. Understanding a person’s faith-based identity as collectivist provides a framework for beginning to understand their own resilience practices. To collect the data, the researchers used Qualtrics to administer an individualism and collectivism scale.
Second, our project aims to survey our participants’ emotional intelligence, which, when layered upon the collectivist framework, can begin to answer questions about the quality of participation in the local community and in workplace. Emotional intelligence scales collect data which is compared to the collectivism data to overlay emotional intelligence and faith-based community collectivism.
Finally, we will design a model for collectivist faith-based identities as they correlate with emotional intelligence as a predictor of workplace resilience. The relationship between collectivism, emotional intelligence, and workplace resilience provides rich data from which the researchers can take the quantitative data sets and design qualitative interviews and focus groups whereby those faith-based community members articulate workplace resilience (already having collected a collectivism score and an emotional intelligence score). From this preliminary model, the researchers plan to test the model outside of the original research participant pool. Additionally, the research will expand to include the areas of workplace communication, perseverance, and organizational commitment.
In this study, we anticipate finding a strong relationship between a collectivist, faith-based community member, a high emotional intelligence score, and the individual’s workplace resilience. Understanding how faith-based identities relate to workplace resilience will provide a framework for understanding why individuals remain connected to a workplace or a community over long periods of time.
Through our research of faith-based communities along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, local employers, local government agencies, and local community members will benefit from understanding how significant faith-based membership is to an economy and as a predictor for future growth. We intend to expand this beyond the current Gulf Coast context after this initial study concludes.
Presenting our research at a poster session at AHRD is an invaluable way to truly advance the objectives of the project.
