DEVELOPMENT OF A ‘KARMA-YOGA’ INSTRUMENT, THE CORE OF THE HINDU WORK ETHIC

Dominant paradigms of inquiry in organisational research overwhelmingly value rational and material aspects of reality over transcendental and spiritual aspects. In fact, religion and spirituality are often considered to be irrelevant for the workplace. However, scholarly interest in the expression of spiritual and religious traditions at work has been on the rise in recent years. Encouragingly, spirituality at the workplace has been associated with positive employee work attitudes. Researchers have subjected work-related aspects of many belief systems to academic inquiry. The scholarly discourse on workplace spirituality is largely dominated by the Judeo-Christian belief system. Work related aspects of Islam, Buddhism and Confucianism have also been subjected to academic inquiry.  However, the Hindu treatise on work is conspicuous by its absence from the workplace spirituality discourse despite its metaphysical, demographic, and economic significance. In this study, we operationalise Karma-Yoga, the core of the Hindu work ethic. We present a conceptual and methodological critique of extant operationalisations. Thereafter, we develop and validate an instrument of Karma-Yoga in accordance with Rastogi and Pati’s (2015) conceptualisation as “a persistent positive state of mind that is characterised by absorption and service consciousness”. We report results from three studies using distinct samples. Preliminary evidence on convergent validity, discriminant validity, nomological validity, and internal consistency of the proposed instrument is provided.