Workplace characteristics, career/vocation satisfaction, and existential well-being in Episcopal clergy

This article was downloaded by: [Loyola Notre Dame], [Joseph A. Stewart-Sicking]On: 02 November 2011, At: 07:24Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Mental Health, Religion & CulturePublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cmhr20

Workplace characteristics, career/vocation satisfaction, and existentialwell-being in Episcopal clergyJoseph A. Stewart-Sicking a , Joseph W. Ciarrocchi a , Elaine C.Hollensbe b & Mathew L. Sheep ca Department of Pastoral Counseling, Loyola University Maryland,8890 McGaw Rd., Columbia, 21045, MD, USAb Department of Management, University of Cincinnati,Cincinnati, OH, USAc Department of Management and Quantitative Methods, IllinoisState University, Normal, IL, USA

Available online: 24 Jun 2011

To cite this article: Joseph A. Stewart-Sicking, Joseph W. Ciarrocchi, Elaine C. Hollensbe & MathewL. Sheep (2011): Workplace characteristics, career/vocation satisfaction, and existential well-beingin Episcopal clergy, Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 14:7, 715-730

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13674676.2010.516428

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.

The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representationthat the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of anyinstructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primarysources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings,demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly orindirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

Mental Health, Religion & CultureVol. 14, No. 7, September 2011, 715–730

Workplace characteristics, career/vocation satisfaction, and existential

well-being in Episcopal clergy

Joseph A. Stewart-Sickinga*, Joseph W. Ciarrocchia, Elaine C. Hollensbeb

and Mathew L. Sheepc

aDepartment of Pastoral Counseling, Loyola University Maryland, 8890 McGaw Rd.,Columbia, 21045, MD, USA; bDepartment of Management, University of Cincinnati,

Cincinnati, OH, USA; cDepartment of Management and QuantitativeMethods, Illinois State University, Normal, IL, USA

(Received 27 May 2010; final version received 15 August 2010)

This study considers the association of workplace conditions with the well-beingof individuals in a profession that is highly imbued with the sacred – ordainedministry. Data from 1202 Episcopal clergy were collected on measures ofworkplace conditions (meaningfulness; safety; and cognitive, emotional, andphysical availability) along with well-being (career/vocation satisfaction, andspiritual well-being). Hierarchical OLS regression analyses indicated that work-place conditions were strong predictors of well-being. Men reported slightlyhigher career/vocation satisfaction, and gender also moderated the relationshipsbetween workplace conditions and well-being. The results suggest that perceivedworkplace conditions, such as meaningfulness, safety, and resource availabilitycan have strong links with career satisfaction and existential well-being, especiallyin those occupations where work and spirit are intertwined.

Keywords: clergy; spiritual well-being; workplace engagement; gender;meaningfulness; safety; resources

Increasingly, clinicians and vocational psychologists are recognising that people engage inwork for reasons beyond its extrinsic benefits. For example, the degree to which workerssee their jobs as possessing sacred qualities has been shown to predict unique variance intheir satisfaction, commitment, and intent to leave (Walker, Jones, Wuensch, Aziz, &Cope, 2008). Work elicits strong emotional, cognitive, behavioural, and motivationalresponses as workers seek to preserve a sense of significance and meaningfulness in jobsthat consume the bulk of their time. Furthermore, work that is unfulfilling andemotionally draining can have deleterious effects on well-being (e.g. Cropanzano, Weiss,& Elias, 2004). This is particularly true for workers, whose work is – by design – sacred,such as those in religious or caring professions (Brotheridge & Grandey, 2002).

The purpose of this study is to add to the understanding of how workplacecharacteristics are linked to well-being by examining their relationship among individualsin a highly sanctified profession – Episcopal clergy – a population who view their work asholy and spiritual. While there are well-established links between workplace conditions

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

ISSN 1367–4676 print/ISSN 1469–9737 online

� 2011 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/13674676.2010.516428

http://www.informaworld.com

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Loy

ola

Not

re D

ame]

, [Jo

seph

A. S

tew

art-

Sick

ing]

at 0

7:24

02

Nov

embe

r 20

11

and well-being (e.g., Warr, 1999), what happens when the stakes are raised in anoccupation saturated by spirituality? In what ways are the conditions in a spirituallysignificant job related to well-being? And how extensive is the effect on well-being?Exploring these questions will allow mental health professionals to work moreeffectively with clients – both individual and institutional – in which work and spirit areintertwined – a context that can potentially extend to a diverse array of occupations andprofessions in which a spiritual approach to work and a spiritual climate/culture in theworkplace are accommodated or nurtured (Ashforth & Pratt, 2003; Dehler & Welsh, 2003;Sheep, 2006).

Workplace characteristics and well-being

The impact of workplace characteristics on well-being has been well documented in avariety of studies. For example, Warr (1999) identified several characteristics of workplacefactors that influence subjective well-being (satisfaction with life, positive affect, andnegative effect). According to Warr, healthy workplaces are those in which there areopportunities for personal control, interpersonal contact, and using one’s skills; variety;clear and reasonable goals; physical safety; supportive supervision; and adequate rewardsfor work, including status, pay, and meaningfulness.

In service or ‘‘people work’’ professions, a common approach to workplace well-beingcomes from studies of burnout, an outcome characterised by emotional exhaustion whichleads to cynicism about one’s work and is accompanied by decreased achievement(Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter, 2001). Several studies have identified workplacecharacteristics that are risk factors for burnout (e.g., Maslach & Leiter, 2008; Maslachet al., 2001), including: too high a workload, a lack of control over one’s work anddecisions, role conflict and ambiguity, insufficient reward, lack of co-worker andsupervisor support, a perceived lack of fairness, values mismatch, and a perceivedincongruity between the worker and the job.

While the construct of burnout has great value, it is also important to consider theways in which the workplace can foster positive emotions. Schaufeli and his associates(Bakker, Schaufeli, Leiter, & Taris, 2008; Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004) have proposed theconstruct of engagement, a separate phenomenon from burnout that is marked by two keydimensions: energy and identifying with one’s work in one’s life. Similar to burnout,engagement is highly associated with workplace characteristics such as the availabilityof job resources (Bakker et al., 2008).

A more detailed perspective on engagement derives from Kahn’s (1990) ethnographicwork at a summer camp and an architectural firm. In this study, engagement was definedas ‘‘the harnessing of organization members’ selves to their work roles; in engagement,people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during roleperformances’’ (Kahn, 1990, p. 694). In this study, three psychological conditions forengagement emerged, which had the force of unspoken contracts. The first condition wasmeaningfulness, a ‘‘sense of return on investments of self in role performances’’ (Kahn,1990, p. 705). Meaningful work led one to feel valued and was linked with a challengingvariety of clearly delineated tasks involving autonomy, formal roles providing anattractive identity, and positive interactions. The second condition was psychologicalsafety, a ‘‘sense of being able to show and employ one’s self without fear of negativeconsequences to self-image, status, or career’’ (Kahn, 1990, p. 705). Safe workplaces weretrustworthy, secure, and predictable, with relationships of support, trust, openness,

716 J.A. Stewart-Sicking et al.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Loy

ola

Not

re D

ame]

, [Jo

seph

A. S

tew

art-

Sick

ing]

at 0

7:24

02

Nov

embe

r 20

11

flexibility, and lack of threat. The final condition was availability, a ‘‘sense of possessingthe physical, emotional, and psychological resources necessary for investing one’s self inrole performances’’ (Kahn, 1990, p. 705). Under this condition, workers felt sufficientresources were available for them to feel capable of applying their abilities towards roleperformance. This qualitative model was validated in a quantitative study by May, Gilson,and Harter (2004), who operationalised Kahn’s three psychological conditions ofengagement and found that three reliable factors emerged that partially mediated theeffects of other workplace conditions on engagement.

The three dimensions of Kahn’s model encompass several of the workplace factorsidentified elsewhere (Maslach & Leiter, 2008; Maslach et al., 2001; Warr, 1999) asinfluencing well-being. For example, meaningfulness relates to variety, control over one’swork, rewards, fairness, and values congruence (Hackman & Oldham, 1980); psychologicalsafety relates to physical safety, role ambiguity, and supervisor and co-worker support;and availability relates to reasonable goals, workload, role conflict, and person-job fit.As such, Kahn’s three factors may constitute a more parsimonious re-statement of factorsseen elsewhere, while introducing nuances not seen elsewhere, specifically in the dimensionof psychological safety. In our study, we investigate Kahn’s model to understand better avariety of workplace conditions that may be related to clergy well-being.

Clergy occupational well-being

To understand how the workplace is related to well-being when one sees one’s job as holyand spiritual, this study will examine the experience of clergy in the US-based EpiscopalChurch. As a group, Episcopal clergy provide an interesting combination of distinctiveand typical work. Certainly, some facets of the job are unusual: in the Episcopal Church,there is no clear boss (Faeth, 2004); clergy work alongside church boards whocontrol some aspects of the congregation (e.g. disbursements), but cannot makepersonnel decisions. The clergy workplace is also not a single place; it is in the office,in the library, in the field, and (quite literally) onstage. Perhaps most importantlyfor this study, the occupation of being a clergyperson is intrinsically sanctified.Using the framework of Pargament and Mahoney’s (2005) sanctification theory, nearlyeverything in the clergy work environment is capable of being ‘‘perceived as having divinecharacter and significance’’ (p. 183). Thus, the stakes are raised for clergy people; workproblems can become spiritual problems, and the experience of the clergy can beinstructive for building theory about workers more generally by throwing the issuesinto clear relief.

While clergy are distinct, many of these distinctions (including sanctification) arematters of degree, not substance. In fact, the clergy are similar to other service professions;they have become increasingly professionalised (Carroll, 2006), and also increasinglyfeminised (Nesbitt, 1997), with all the attendant consequences on prestige, pay, andmarginalisation. Unlike Roman Catholic priests, Episcopal clergy may marry, producing acontext for complex work-home boundary issues. Finally, much of the day-to-day work ofthe clergy is spent engaging in typical managerial roles (Kreiner, Hollensbe, & Sheep,2006), allowing for a degree of generalisability.

The occupational well-being of clergy has been studied most frequently from theperspective of burnout. For example, in a study of clergy coping, Pargament,Tarakeshwar, Ellison, and Wulff (2001) found that clergy reported more stress andproblems at work than members of the congregation. Similarly, Francis, Kaldor, Robbins,

Mental Health, Religion & Culture 717

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Loy

ola

Not

re D

ame]

, [Jo

seph

A. S

tew

art-

Sick

ing]

at 0

7:24

02

Nov

embe

r 20

11

and Castle (2005) found high reports of burnout among a large clergy sample, though this

sample simultaneously reported high levels of satisfaction. This combination of high

satisfaction and high burnout is consonant with findings of Nesbitt, Price, and Stewart-

Sicking (2009) which showed that Episcopal clergy report both significantly higher positive

effect and significantly higher negative affect than the general population. It is also

consistent with findings of the simultaneous presence of both significant positive and

negative affect in persons coping well following highly stressful events.When the clergy workplace has been the subject of study, the focus has tended to be on

issues of boundaries, intrusiveness, and conflict. For instance, a content analysis of open

responses by United Reformed Church clergy in England (Charlton, Rolph, Francis, &

Rolph, 2009) found that clergy who reflected on their own experience of stress described

time and boundary pressures as the key facets of this experience. These pressures were

triggered by the many demands on them: balancing time demands/roles, difficult people,

and administrative worries about limited resources, loneliness, and theological concerns.An important additional factor to consider is gender. As is the case in other

professions, there are gender differences in how the workplace is related to well-being

among the clergy. Clergy women tend to report higher job satisfaction than men, despite

serving on average in less prestigious jobs (McDuff & Mueller, 2002), a phenomenon

referred to as the ‘‘gender work paradox.’’ In a study of two American Mainline Protestant

denominations, McDuff (2001) explored five common explanations for this difference and

found that the best supported was that women and men value different aspects of their

work conditions.As seen in the review of the literature above, studies of the occupational well-being of

the clergy have tended to focus first on personal factors and only second on environmental

factors. When the workplace itself has been the subject of study, it has tended to be

approached through an ad hoc theoretical framework that limits its application to other

groups. The present study hopes to move beyond some of these limitations.

Goals of the study

In this study, we seek to provide further insight into the ways in which the workplace

relates to clergy well-being and more generally, to understand the power of a sanctified

workplace to affect well-being. To explore these issues, this study will take for its point of

departure Kahn’s (1990) formulation of the psychological conditions leading to workplace

engagement. This theoretical frame is especially apt for studying the clergy, whose work

involves a constant series of roles into which they must invest themselves. Moreover, it

explicitly considers factors that have gone relatively unexplored in studies of the clergy,

viz., psychological safety and meaningfulness.While there are a variety of well-being variables that have been studied among the

clergy, we have chosen to focus on two domains: overall career/vocation satisfaction and

spiritual well-being. These two contrasting variables will allow us to consider whether the

relationship between the workplace and well-being is primarily through one domain of life,

the vocational, or whether the conditions experienced in a highly sanctified work

environment such as the church can penetrate to the core of one’s well-being through

pathways beyond this domain.Finally, since gender has been shown to be a key determinant of occupational

outcomes among clergy, we examined its impact directly in our analysis.

718 J.A. Stewart-Sicking et al.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Loy

ola

Not

re D

ame]

, [Jo

seph

A. S

tew

art-

Sick

ing]

at 0

7:24

02

Nov

embe

r 20

11

Hypotheses

(1) Clergy women and clergy men will differ in the amount of work-related well-beingthey report.

(2) All three psychological conditions associated with engagement, (meaningfulness,safety, and availability) will be both statistically and practicallysignificant predictors of well-being, career/vocation satisfaction, and existentialwell-being.

(3) Gender will moderate the association between the engagement conditions andturnover intention, career/vocation satisfaction, and spiritual well-being.

(4) Career/vocation satisfaction will partially mediate the relationships between eachof the workplace conditions (meaningfulness, safety, and psychological avail-ability) and existential well-being.

Method

Participants

Data were collected between 2003 and 2006 as part of the program evaluation for CREDOInstitute, Inc., an institute providing support and wellness training for clergy, in partthrough eight-day-intensive conference-retreats. CREDO conferences are a benefit offeredto all clergy and lay employees through the (US) Episcopal Church Pension Fund.Conferences are grouped by age, and invitations are sent to a random sample of persons inthat age group in the Pension Group database. Participation is voluntary and on a first-come, first-served basis. Over the three-year period during which these data were collected,the response rate to CREDO Institute, Inc. invitations was 39% (including enrollment,wait list, and deferral).

Data for this study were collected through an anonymous web-based questionnaire aspart of CREDO’s mandatory pre-conference preparation work (ensuring the indepen-dence of responses), which also provided consent to use the data for program evaluationand research. In accordance with the Institutional Review Board of the principalinvestigator, the data had no personally identifying information attached to them; an IDcode was retained corresponding to a key in the Pension Fund database to allow futurearchival research.

The final sample size for the study was 1202 (1292 surveys were completed, but 90 weredropped due to incomplete data). While CREDO issues invitations randomly, there is noguarantee that a random sample of clergy accepts them. The study sample was 58.16%male, and 96.5% priests (with 2.1% vocational deacons and 1.4% bishops). There was agood range of experience in ministry represented: from 2 to 45 years. Fifty per cent ofparticipants had fewer than 14 years in ordained ministry; one quarter had fewer than sixyears. The age range of participants was also broad: from 28 to 72 years; however, 50%were aged 56 and older. Sixty-one per cent of participants were ordained after age 33,indicating that the ministry was likely a second career for them, since they would have hadto start the three years of seminary after age 30. Two and three-tenths per cent ofparticipants were attendees at CREDO conferences for Latino ministry. No other data onethnicity were collected.

Compared to population data from the national church database (provided byM. Price, personal communication, August 24, 2009) in which women comprise 31%,women were highly overrepresented in this sample of CREDO attendees, �2(1)¼ 72.30,

Mental Health, Religion & Culture 719

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Loy

ola

Not

re D

ame]

, [Jo

seph

A. S

tew

art-

Sick

ing]

at 0

7:24

02

Nov

embe

r 20

11

p5 0.001. While the mean age of the sample was slightly higher than the population ofEpiscopal clergy (53.8 years), t(1201)¼ 3.61, p5 0.001, Cohen’s d¼ 0.10, there was nosignificant difference in number of years ordained.

Measures

All measures were self reported, and respondents were asked to assess how well itemsdescribed them, using a 7-point Likert-like scale which ranged from 1 (disagree strongly) to7 (agree strongly). Each of the measures is discussed below, and sample items are provided.Internal scale reliability for each scale was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha, andreliabilities are reported in Table 1.

Dependent variables

Career/vocation satisfaction

Career/vocation satisfaction was measured with five items based on Greenhaus,Parasuraman, and Wormley’s (1990) Career Satisfaction Scale. We adapted the originalmeasure to include ‘‘vocation’’ rather than ‘‘career’’ to represent more accurately clergy’sview of their occupation as a vocation or calling. Items assessed respondents’ satisfactionwith their success and progress in meeting goals for their vocation, income, skills anddevelopment broadly, for example, ‘‘I am satisfied with the progress that I have madetoward meeting my overall vocational goals.’’ Others using the Greenhaus et al. (1990)scale have reported high Cronbach internal reliabilities, for example, Wolff andMoser (2009).

Spiritual Well-Being Scale

Developed by Ellison (1983), this 20-item scale has been widely used in well-being research.It consists of two 10-item dimensions: an explicitly theistic religious well-being dimension(RWB) and a non-theistic existential well-being dimension (EWB) focused on purpose andmeaning in life. The SWBS has shown test–retest reliabilities above 0.85 and Cronbach �reliabilities above 0.84; it also has demonstrated construct validity across a number ofstudies, including explicitly religious ones (Bufford, Paloutzian, & Ellison, 1991).

Table 1. Correlations, means, standard deviations, and coefficient alpha reliabilities.

Variable 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

1. Career/vocation satisfaction –2. Existential well-being 0.522 –3. Age ns 0.107 –4. Years ordained 0.107 ns 0.515 –5. Meaningfulness 0.337 0.470 ns ns –6. Safety 0.408 0.480 ns ns 0.299 –7. Cognitive, emotional, andphysical availability

0.361 0.489 ns 0.114 0.352 0.542 –

M 26.86 58.40 54.72 16.34 38.30 51.17 52.20SD 5.03 6.74 8.63 11.31 3.40 7.31 5.48� 0.80 0.81 1.00 1.00 0.91 0.83 0.82

Note: N¼ 1202 for each correlation; only correlations significant at p5 0.001 are listed.

720 J.A. Stewart-Sicking et al.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Loy

ola

Not

re D

ame]

, [Jo

seph

A. S

tew

art-

Sick

ing]

at 0

7:24

02

Nov

embe

r 20

11

As expected, the RWB dimension exhibited marked ceiling effects among the highlyreligious participants in this study (cf. Bufford et al., 1991), and is likely confounded withsocial desirability. Therefore, only the EWB dimension was used in the analysis.

Independent variables

Psychological conditions for engagement

Three different conditions fostering work-related engagement were measured in the study:meaningfulness, safety and psychological availability. Meaningfulness, the extent to whichrespondents experience their work as personally worthwhile, valuable and significant, wasmeasured using six items drawn from Spreitzer (1995), May (2003), and May et al. (2004),for instance, ‘‘My work activities are personally meaningful to me.’’ Safety, or the degreeto which respondents felt comfortable at work expressing opinions, being themselves, andmaking mistakes without fear of threat, was measured using nine items based on Kahn’s(1990) work and reported in May et al. (2004), for instance, ‘‘I am able to bring upproblems at work without negative consequences.’’ Finally, psychological availability wasmeasured with nine items assessing respondents’ confidence in their ability to becognitively, physically, and emotionally available for work, a measure also reported inMay et al. (2004), for instance, ‘‘I am confident that I have enough energy to last all day atwork.’’ Note that this variable sums cognitive, physical, and emotional items into a singlecomposite.

Results

Correlations, descriptive statistics, and gender differences

As seen in Table 1, there were several significant correlations of moderate to large size.The dependent variables (career/vocation satisfaction and existential well-being) allshowed moderate to strong associations, and the engagement variables were all at leastmoderately related to these outcomes. The engagement variables were also moderatelycorrelated with one another, with safety and availability most strongly related. Genderdifferences in association were left for exploring through regression analyses.

A series of t-tests were conducted to look for gender differences and exploratoryanalysis Hypothesis 1. To control for type I error, these were tested at the �¼ 0.001 level.Only two gender differences were found: First, women were ordained on average11.1 years, compared to 20.5 for men. This was statistically and practically significant,t(1201)¼ 15.88, p5 0.001, Hedges g¼ 0.92. Second, women also had a lower level ofcareer/vocation satisfaction (26.2) compared to men (27.4), with, t(1201)¼ 4.29, p5 0.001Hedges g¼ 0.24. There were no statistically significant differences by gender on EWB oron any of the three psychological conditions for engagement. There were also nostatistically significant differences by whether one was a first- or second-careerclergyperson on any of the variables in the study. Scale reliabilities were similar betweengenders. These results provide partial support for Hypothesis 1.

Regression analyses

Career/vocation satisfaction

To examine Hypothesis 2, concerning the relative size of the relationship between theworkplace factors and clergy well-being, hierarchical OLS regressions were conducted for

Mental Health, Religion & Culture 721

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Loy

ola

Not

re D

ame]

, [Jo

seph

A. S

tew

art-

Sick

ing]

at 0

7:24

02

Nov

embe

r 20

11

the dependent variables of career/vocation satisfaction and existential well-being, with thepsychological conditions of engagement entered as a block in accord with Kahn’s (1990)theory. Separate regressions were run for men and women in order to examine the genderwork paradox. The results of these regressions are seen in Tables 2–3.

For the models predicting career/vocation satisfaction, the first step was to control foryears ordained, a potential confound as it was associated with both gender and thedependent variable. This variable was significant for men, but not women, and predictedonly a minimal amount of the variation. The block of engagement conditions addedconsiderable explanatory power in both groups, accounting for 21% of the variation forwomen and 25% for men.

To investigate Hypothesis 3, z tests were conducted using the formula found inPaternoster, Brame, Mazerolle, and Piquero (1998) to examine whether there was evidencethat a given regression coefficient differed by gender. To control for accumulated type Ierror, these tests were conducted at the �¼ 0.01 level. While years ordained was significantfor men and not women, there was no statistically significant difference between thecoefficients in these groups. However, there was a difference in the importance ofpsychological safety, with this coefficient significantly larger for women than men.Similarly, there was a difference in the importance of availability, which was a significantand moderately important coefficient in the equation for men, but was not significant forwomen.

Existential well-being

Here there was no confounding variable to be controlled for, so the first step in thehierarchical regression contained the engagement conditions (testing Hypothesis 2). Thesevariables explained even more variation than was the case for career/vocation satisfaction,with adjusted R2 values of 0.30 for women and 0.46 for men. This is not surprising giventhe close conceptual relationship between meaningful work and existential well-being. Aswith the first dependent variable, the engagement variables accounted for more variationin men’s scores than those of women.

Career/vocation satisfaction was entered into the equation to test Hypothesis 4,whether the relationship among these factors is partially mediated by career/vocationsatisfaction, that is, whether the primary relationship between workplace and EWBis through the satisfaction one derives from one’s career. Following Baron and Kenny’s(1986) recommendation for testing mediation, we found a significant zero-ordercorrelation between career/vocation satisfaction and EWB as well as between eachof the engagement variables and EWB (see Table 1). Accounting for career/vocationsatisfaction increased R2 by 0.09 for women and 0.04 for men and was a moderatelystrong predictor, similar in size to meaningfulness. Including career/vocationsatisfaction did reduce the magnitude of the coefficients of the engagement conditionsfor both men and women, providing some support for the hypothesis that it partiallymediates the effect of these variables on existential well-being, but this conclusionis intended to be modest.

The z test was used to look for significant differences in the magnitude of coefficientsbetween genders (Hypothesis 3), and showed that availability was significantly moreimportant to predicting EWB in men than in women. Moreover, the constant in theequation for men was nearly 15 scale points less than that of women, though the source ofthis difference is difficult to state with any certainty.

722 J.A. Stewart-Sicking et al.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Loy

ola

Not

re D

ame]

, [Jo

seph

A. S

tew

art-

Sick

ing]

at 0

7:24

02

Nov

embe

r 20

11

Table

2.Hierarchicallinearregressionsforcareer/vocationsatisfactionbygender.

Women

(n¼538)

Men

(n¼747)

Predictorvariables

BSEB

�DR2

Adj.R2

BSEB

�DR2

Adj.R2

Step1:Years

ordained

�0.007

0.031�0.010

0.00

0.00

0.041*

0.015

0.103

0.01*

0.01

Step2:Engagem

entconditions

0.21**

0.21

0.26**

0.26

Constant

1.168

2.544

�3.551

2.100

Years

ordained

�0.005

0.027�0.008

0.032

0.013

0.080

Meaningfulness

0.290**

0.062

0.193

0.352**

0.052

0.244

Safety

0.222**

0.030

0.335

0.139**

0.029

0.198

Cognitive,

emotional,andphysicalavailability

0.051

0.043

0.055

0.185**

0.038

0.203

Note:Bold

denotesthatztest

forequivalence

ofsignificantregressioncoefficients

issignificantatp5

0.01;*p5

0.01;**p5

0.001.

Mental Health, Religion & Culture 723

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Loy

ola

Not

re D

ame]

, [Jo

seph

A. S

tew

art-

Sick

ing]

at 0

7:24

02

Nov

embe

r 20

11

Table

3.Hierarchicallinearregressionmodelsforexistentialwell-beingbygender.

Women

(n¼538)

Men

(n¼747)

Predictorvariables

BSEB

�DR2

Adj.R2

BSEB

�DR2

Adj.R2

Step1:Engagem

entconditions

0.30**

0.30

0.46**

0.46

Constant

15.064**

3.008

0.107

2.436

Meaningfulness

0.550**

0.074

0.287

0.707**

0.061

0.342

Safety

0.232**

0.036

0.275

0.237**

0.033

0.240

Cognitive,

emotional,andphysicalavailability

0.195**

0.051

0.166

0.369**

0.043

0.286

Step2:Career/vocationsatisfaction

0.09**

0.39

0.04**

0.50

Constant

14.667**

2.818

0.968

2.349

Meaningfulness

0.426**

0.071

0.222

0.598**

0.060

0.290

Safety

0.136**

0.035

0.161

0.191**

0.032

0.194

Cognitive,

emotional,andphysicalavailability

0.174**

0.048

0.148

0.309**

0.042

0.239

Career/vocationsatisfaction

0.425**

0.049

0.332

0.322**

0.042

0.228

Note:Bold

denotesthatztest

forequivalence

ofsignificantregressioncoefficients

issignificantatp5

0.01;**p5

0.001.

724 J.A. Stewart-Sicking et al.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Loy

ola

Not

re D

ame]

, [Jo

seph

A. S

tew

art-

Sick

ing]

at 0

7:24

02

Nov

embe

r 20

11

Discussion

Broadening the existing picture

Just as in the study by May et al. (2004), the psychological conditions of engagement wereindeed able to account for considerable variation in work-related satisfaction. However,this study does not give equal support to all the dimensions; for women, cognitive,emotional, and physical availability was not a significant predictor of career/vocationsatisfaction.

While May et al. (2004) found that meaningfulness had the largest relationship tooutcomes such as job engagement, this study only partially replicated their results.Meaningfulness was indeed the most consistent and substantial predictor of well-beingoutcomes, but safety was a more important predictor of women’s career/vocationsatisfaction. It may seem surprising that meaningfulness was so important for clergy sinceone might assume all clergy work is meaningful. One benefit of this finding aboutmeaningfulness is that it calls attention to the variety of factors that make work personallymeaningful, including autonomous and challenging tasks. Just because some aspects of aclergy person’s work are meaningful, it does not follow that the ‘‘daily grind’’ of clergywork is meaningful. In fact, micro-managed or trivial work may be even more difficult toabide for a person who thinks that his or her job should give regular glimpses of the divine.This issue of meaningful work may be worth exploring more in studies of clergy working inpoorly-resourced churches or those working as associate ministers. Such studies areneeded to understand better the varying associations of different sources of mean-ingfulness – for example, as derived from tasks and roles (meaningfulness in work) asopposed to a sense of belongingness in certain types of organisational membership(meaningfulness at work) (Pratt & Ashforth, 2003).

Moreover, it seems valid to conclude that in a highly sanctified occupation such asreligious ministry, workplace problems can be associated with problems in existential well-being. The engagement variables accounted for the largest amount of variance inexistential well-being; perhaps clergy could not wall off work from the rest of their lives asmight an individual whose hobby is very different from his or her occupation. This findingfits Pargament and Mahoney’s (2005) sanctification theory, which suggests that sanctifiedaspects of life provide important – and vulnerable – sources of meaning. While career/vocation satisfaction did account for a small to moderate amount of additional variationin existential well-being, it did not provide much mediation of the effects of participants’perceptions of the conditions of their workplace. Thus, in a sanctified occupation such asthat of the clergy, career satisfaction does not reduce the link between well-being andnegative workplace characteristics.

Exploring the gender work paradox

We expected that there would be differences in the amount of work-related well-beingreported by men and women. While other studies have found that women clergy are moresatisfied with their work (Francis, Hills, & Rutledge, 2008; McDuff & Mueller, 2002), menin this study reported more career/vocation satisfaction. This appears to contradict earlierresearch, but it is likely that satisfaction with one’s career is not equivalent to satisfactionwith one’s job, the variable in these other studies. The finding in this study may suggestthat women clergy still feel the effects of the ‘‘stained glass ceiling’’ well-documented in theliterature (Zikmund, Lummis, & Chang, 1998) that limits their career advancement.

Mental Health, Religion & Culture 725

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Loy

ola

Not

re D

ame]

, [Jo

seph

A. S

tew

art-

Sick

ing]

at 0

7:24

02

Nov

embe

r 20

11

The findings of this study also provide insight into the source of the gender workparadox, which McDuff (2001) attributed to different preferences between men andwomen. The statistically significant differences in regression coefficients found divergentpreferences between clergy men and women. For both, meaningful work was important tobeing satisfied with one’s career, but women got more satisfaction from careers that wereaccompanied by psychological safety, while men were more satisfied in jobs that do notovertax them. Similarly, meaningful work was also key to EWB for all participants, but itwas a bigger factor for men than women. Finally, while psychological safety was animportant predictor for EWB for both men and women, men were more impacted by theavailability of resources.

Safety and availability are strongly correlated, so these differences may be a matter ofemphasis; clergy women may be more attuned to safety and men to availability. Thesedifferent emphases could point to theological differences. Perhaps men are more likely tohold a ‘‘suffering servant’’ vision of ministry, wherein they expect their ministry to becharacterised by suffering. Even if this is the case, neither women nor men can escape theill effects of an unbalanced or unsafe work life, and the effects are most pronounced inexistential well-being. One may be able to rationalise a career characterised by sufferingas being Christ-like, but this does not materially change the consequences.

While we expected that gender would moderate the relationships between workplacefactors and the dependent variables, the results of this study suggest that not only are therelationships moderated by gender, but the explanatory power of these variables differs bygender. For every dependent variable, the models for men explained more variance thanthose for women. Thus, workplace conditions are a larger piece of EWB for clergy menthan for clergy women. That said, perceptions of the workplace did matter to women, andcareer/vocation satisfaction had a larger relationship with EWB among the women in thestudy than among the men, indicating that the women tied the meaningfulness of theirlives more closely to the degree to which they believed they had met their goals forministry, matching the findings of McDuff and Mueller (2002).

Implications for practice

Since the workplace conditions linked with engagement are important predictors ofwell-being, there is a strong argument for taking an ecological approach (Conyne & Cook,2004) that includes both person-level and environment-level interventions when workingwith clients, such as the clergy, who have sanctified occupations. Many of the suggestionsfor fostering clergy well-being have focused solely on the person level: promotingacceptance, active coping, and reframing (Doolittle, 2007) and positive religious coping,and providing places for clergy to discuss spiritual struggles (Pargament et al., 2001). All ofthese interventions are important, but they tend to play towards clergy emphasis onintrapersonal coping (McMinn et al., 2005). What is needed is a list of environmentalinterventions, addressing areas such as those identified by Charlton et al. (2009):enhancing time off, reasonable expectations, formal support, informal support, andattention to clergy stress by those in power. To this list, this study would add interventionsthat seek to promote meaningful, autonomous work; foster predictable and clearsupervision; and identify community assets, with special attention to issues of safety forwomen and those of resources for men. These interventions would be applicable not onlyto the clergy, but also to workers more generally, and their importance is heightened forworkers who strongly sanctify their occupations.

726 J.A. Stewart-Sicking et al.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Loy

ola

Not

re D

ame]

, [Jo

seph

A. S

tew

art-

Sick

ing]

at 0

7:24

02

Nov

embe

r 20

11

Limitations and future research

While this large sample provides excellent power for detecting effects, interpreting anyeffect seen calls for some care. As Mueller and McDuff (2004) note, clergy feel a moralconstraint to understate dissatisfaction. Evidence of this effect was seen in the almostcomplete absence of any reports of negative religious well-being, which led to droppingthis variable from the analysis. Even though the data were anonymous and collected aspart of a wellness program that encourages honest self-examination, it is likely thatparticipants would still have found it difficult to admit the full extent of dissatisfactionwith the vocation that they see as sacred and holy (cf. Pargament & Mahoney, 2005).Therefore, effects may be slightly attenuated through range restriction in the dependentvariables.

As an ex post facto design, this study suffers the limitation of not allowing one to drawstrong causal inferences. Future work could use quasi-experimental and longitudinaldesigns to help understand how the workplace factors identified by Kahn’s (1990) modeldevelop and influence clergy well-being over time, including qualitative and mixed-methoddesigns that provide ethnographic analysis of the interplay between these factors.

The dependent variables in this study were also limited. Clergy satisfaction is moremultidimensional than unidimensional (Francis et al., 2008); so, satisfaction measurescould be designed to look at various aspects of one’s current position and one’s careerdevelopment. More direct measures of positive affect/engagement and negative affect/burnout would also be useful. Finally, a valid measure of spiritual well-being for clergywithout the ceiling effects observed in the SWBS is needed.

While it can be argued that the independent variables were a parsimoniousrepresentation of the domain of workplace factors influencing well-being, some specificnuances of the workplace would be interesting to explore further, for instance, measures ofboth positive and negative spillover from work to family and family to work (Grzywacz &Marks, 2000), especially if data could be obtained to group clergy by family configurationand life stage.

Finally, the sample used in this study is likely to constitute a better-functioning andbetter-resourced group than the general clergy population. First, salaries and resources arehigh in the Episcopal Church relative to other denominations, and few Episcopal clergyare bi-vocational (Carroll, 2006). Second, the clergy who choose to attend CREDO arelikely to be interested in self-care, and it is unlikely that a highly burned out and cynicalclergyperson would choose to attend a conference sponsored by the national church. Thus,the findings of this study may represent a lower bound of the effects of these factors onclergy well-being, as there was inevitably some restriction in the range of key variables.

In generalising the results from this sample of Episcopal clergy to workers across theboard, more success is likely to be found in understanding those in similar helping orcaring professions, especially those in which work is seen as a calling, for example, healthcare. While this study offered clergy as an instructive case of high sanctification of work,future studies could investigate a broad range of workers to see the extent to whichsanctification of work moderates the relationship between workplace conditions and arange of vocational and spiritual well-being variables.

Conclusion

The psychology of religion and spirituality is rapidly finding its way into applicationsin the workplace. Many benefits will undoubtedly be found by opening this area to

Mental Health, Religion & Culture 727

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Loy

ola

Not

re D

ame]

, [Jo

seph

A. S

tew

art-

Sick

ing]

at 0

7:24

02

Nov

embe

r 20

11

creativity and scientific study. Organisations in which religion and/or spirituality are

intertwined with work and the workplace have important lessons to teach in this area.By considering the links between workplace conditions and clergy well-being, this study

has shown both the promise and peril of holy work. When a job is about manifestingthe divine or the spiritual, it can be immersive and fulfilling; but when a job is about

manifesting the divine and it is not satisfying, harm can be done. Mental healthprofessionals need to be attentive to both the promise and perils of this situation to

help their clients flourish.

References

Ashforth, B.E., & Pratt, M.G. (2003). Institutionalized spirituality: An oxymoron?

In R.A. Giacalone & C.L. Jurkiewicz (Eds.), Handbook of workplace spirituality and

organizational performance (pp. 93–107). Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.Bakker, A., Schaufeli, W., Leiter, M., & Taris, T. (2008). Work engagement: An emerging concept

in occupational health psychology. Work & Stress, 22(3), 187–200.

Baron, R.M., & Kenny, D.A. (1986). The moderator–mediator variable distinction in social

psychological research: Conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations. Journal of

Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 1173–1182.Brotheridge, C.M., & Grandey, A.A. (2002). Emotional labour and burnout: Comparing two

perspectives of ‘‘people work’’. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 60, 17–39.Bufford, R., Paloutzian, R., & Ellison, C. (1991). Norms for the Spiritual Well-Being Scale. Journal

of Psychology and Theology, 19, 56–70.

Carroll, J.W. (2006). God’s potters: Pastoral leadership and the shaping of congregations. Grand

Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Pub.Charlton, R., Rolph, J., Francis, L.J., & Rolph, P. (2009). Clergy work-related psychological health:

Listening to the ministers of word and sacrament within the United Reformed Church in

England. Pastoral Psychology, 58, 133–149.Conyne, R.K., & Cook, E.P. (2004). Ecological counseling: An innovative approach to conceptualizing

person-environment interaction. Alexandria, VA: American Counseling Association.Cropanzano, R., Weiss, H.M., & Elias, S.M. (2004). The impact of display rules and emotional labor

on psychological well-being at work. In P.L. Perrewe & D.C. Ganster (Eds.), Emotional and

physiological processes and positive intervention strategies (Vol. 3, pp. 45–89). Amsterdam:

Elsevier JAI.

Dehler, G.E., & Welsh, M.A. (2003). The experience of work: Spirituality and the new workplace.

In R.A. Giacalone & C.L. Jurkiewicz (Eds.), Handbook of workplace spirituality and

organizational performance (pp. 108–122). Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.Doolittle, B.R. (2007). Burnout and coping among parish-based clergy. Mental Health, Religion &

Culture, 10(1), 31–38.Ellison, C. (1983). Spiritual well-being: Conceptualization and measurement. Journal of Psychology

and Theology, 11(4), 330–340.

Faeth, M.A. (2004). Power, authority and influence: A comparative study of the behavioral

influence tactics used by lay and ordained leaders in the Episcopal Church. (Doctoral

Dissertation) Available from Dissertations & Theses: Full Text. (Publication No. AAT

3241125).Francis, L., Hills, P., & Rutledge, C. (2008). Clergy work-related satisfactions in parochial ministry:

The influence of personality and churchmanship. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 11(3),

327–339.Francis, L.J., Kaldor, P., Robbins, M., & Castle, K. (2005). Happy but exhausted? Work-related

psychological health among clergy. Pastoral Sciences, 24, 101–120.

728 J.A. Stewart-Sicking et al.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Loy

ola

Not

re D

ame]

, [Jo

seph

A. S

tew

art-

Sick

ing]

at 0

7:24

02

Nov

embe

r 20

11

Greenhaus, J.H., Parasuraman, S., & Wormley, W.M. (1990). Effects of race on organizational

experience, job performance evaluations, and career outcomes. Academy of Management

Journal, 33, 64–86.Grzywacz, J.G., & Marks, N.F. (2000). Reconceptualizing the work–family interface: An ecological

perspective on the correlates of positive and negative spillover between work and family. Journal

of Occupational Health Psychology, 5, 111–126.Hackman, J.R., & Oldham, G.R. (1980). Work redesign. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.Kahn, W. (1990). Psychological conditions of personal engagement and disengagement at work.

Academy of Management Journal, 33, 692–724.Kreiner, G.E., Hollensbe, E.C., & Sheep, M.L. (2006). Where is the ‘‘me’’ among the ‘‘we’’? Identity

work and the search for optimal balance. Academy of Management Journal, 49, 1031–1057.Maslach, C., & Leiter, M. (2008). Early predictors of job burnout and engagement. Journal of

Applied Psychology, 93(3), 498–512.Maslach, C., Schaufeli, W., & Leiter, M. (2001). Job burnout. Annual Review of Psychology, 52(1),

397–422.

May, D.R. (2003). Fostering the human spirit at work: Toward an understanding of the influences on

employees’ experienced meaningfulness at work. Unpublished manuscript.May, D.R., Gilson, R.L., & Harter, L.M. (2004). The psychological conditions of meaningfulness,

safety and availability and the engagement of the human spirit at work. Journal of Occupational

and Organizational Psychology, 77(1), 11–37.McDuff, E. (2001). The gender paradox in work satisfaction and the protestant clergy. Sociology of

Religion, 62(1), 1–21.McDuff, E., & Mueller, C. (2002). Gender differences in the professional orientations of protestant

clergy. Sociological Forum, 17(3), 465–491.McMinn, M.R., Lish, R.A., Trice, P.D., Root, A.M., Gilbert, N., & Yap, A. (2005). Care for

pastors: Learning from clergy and their spouses. Pastoral Psychology, 53(6), 563–581.Mueller, C., & McDuff, E. (2004). Clergy-congregation mismatches and clergy job satisfaction.

Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 43(2), 261–273.Nesbitt, P.D. (1997). Feminization of the clergy in America: Occupational and organizational

perspectives. New York: Oxford University Press.Nesbitt, P., Price, M., & Stewart-Sicking, J.A. (2009). Called to serve: Initial research report to the

General Convention of the Episcopal Church. New York: Church Pension Group.Pargament, K.I., & Mahoney, A. (2005). Theory: Sacred matters: Sanctification as a vital topic for

the psychology of religion. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 15(3), 179–198.

Pargament, K.I., Tarakeshwar, N., Ellison, C.G., & Wulff, K.M. (2001). Religious coping among

the religious: The relationships between religious coping and well-being in a national sample of

Presbyterian clergy, elders, and members. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 40(3),

497–513.

Paternoster, R., Brame, R., Mazerolle, P., & Piquero, A. (1998). Using the correct statistical test for

the equality of regression coefficients. Criminology, 36, 859–866.Pratt, M.G., & Ashforth, B.E. (2003). Fostering meaningfulness in working and at work.

In K.S. Cameron, J.E. Dutton, & R.E Quinn (Eds.), Positive organizational scholarship

(pp. 309–327). San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.Schaufeli, W., & Bakker, A. (2004). Job demands, job resources, and their relationship

with burnout and engagement: A multi-sample study. Journal of Organizational Behavior,

25(3), 293–315.

Sheep, M.L. (2006). Nurturing the whole person: The ethics of workplace spirituality in a society of

organizations. Journal of Business Ethics, 66(4), 357–375.Spreitzer, G. (1995). Psychological empowerment in the work place: Dimensions, measurement and

validation. Academy of Management Journal, 38, 1442–1465.

Walker, A.G., Jones, M.N., Wuensch, K.L., Aziz, S., & Cope, J.G. (2008). Sanctifying work: Effects

on satisfaction, commitment, and intent to leave. International Journal for the Psychology of

Religion, 18(2), 132–145.

Mental Health, Religion & Culture 729

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Loy

ola

Not

re D

ame]

, [Jo

seph

A. S

tew

art-

Sick

ing]

at 0

7:24

02

Nov

embe

r 20

11

Warr, P. (1999). Well-being and the workplace. In D. Kahneman, E. Diener, & N. Schwarz (Eds.),Well-being: The foundations of hedonic psychology (pp. 392–412). New York: Russell SageFoundation.

Wolff, H., & Moser, K. (2009). Effects of networking on career success: A longitudinal study.

Journal of Applied Psychology, 94, 196–206.Zikmund, B.B., Lummis, A.T., & Chang, P.M.Y. (1998). Clergy women: An uphill calling (1st ed.).

Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press.

730 J.A. Stewart-Sicking et al.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Loy

ola

Not

re D

ame]

, [Jo

seph

A. S

tew

art-

Sick

ing]

at 0

7:24

02

Nov

embe

r 20

11