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STUDENT DETAILS

Student name: Nguyễn Cao Huy Student ID number: B1112016297

UNIT AND TUTORIAL DETAILS

Unit name: Individual essay Unit number: AEn-S320WSB-6

Tutorial/Lecture: Academic English Class day and time:
Lecturer or Tutor name: Ms. Heather Lennie

ASSIGNMENT DETAILS

Title: Why is spiritual motivation necessary for modern business?

Length: 1596 Due date: 27/12/2020 Date submitted: 27/12/2020

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Nguyễn Cao Huy

Academic English (AEn-S320WSB-6)
Ms. Heather Lennie
December 20, 2020

Why is spiritual motivation necessary for modern business?

In the period of development, more and more businesses are founded and growing day by day.

Technology, science, and society are developing rapidly, this is a big opportunity for any

business. Besides the advantages businesses have nowadays, strong competitiveness is one of the

many difficulties a business has to face. To be successful in modern business, not only high

operational efficiency, well–planned strategies are needed but also effective human resources

management. To encourage employees to work and to push them to move forward, motivation is

required. The material aspect of human resources motivation is not unfamiliar to many

employers. Spiritual motivation, on the other hand, is an uncommon term for many people in

business. However, many managers around the world have been applying this type of motivation

for a long time, this proves that spiritual motivation has its own potential efficiency for a

business. To understand why spiritual motivation is necessary for modern business, we need to

know what spiritual motivation is, how businesses apply it, and the ways it improves business

performance.

Similar to the energy for people to live, motivation is the reason for people to move forward,

work hard to achieve their goals. Motivation can come from material needs or spiritual needs and

it gives humans the meaning, the purpose of their life, their work, of what they do and so they

can value it. For spiritual motivation, it can be religious beliefs or personal beliefs. Those beliefs

shape our ways of living and working and our decisions will reflect our beliefs. The optimism we
have also had something to do with spiritual motivation, optimistic people likely to be more

active and more productive. When people have their decisions made because they feel right

about it, not because they have to satisfy their material needs, their decisions basically base on

spiritual motivation. We have to admit that spiritual motivation is necessary for human resources

management since people tend to work more efficiently when they feel happy and comfortable

with their job. To successfully achieve employee satisfaction it demands a lot more than people

might think and it is truly a challenging task for any business manager.

Besides marketing, investment, and recruitment, coming up with motivation strategies for the

employees is also very important. One of many common ways to build up a healthy workplace

environment is to understand, accept, and respect. Everyone needs to understand people’s

differences, no matter if they work with you or work for you. There are differences between

personalities, religions, and cultures, as long as their differences do not cause any bad influence

people should learn to accept them, not to discriminate against them. In many cases,

having foreign employees can be a big advantage, they can deal with difficult tasks that involve

language or religion.

Understanding more about the employees and help them to understand their manager can

make a wholesome connection between people in an organization. It is important to guide the

employees through tough tasks and to know what they want and need not just understand their

differences. To do this, communication strategies are needed. According to Human Resource

Management, produced by the University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing in 2016, there are

four main types of communications in a company, those are Upward communication, Downward

communication, Horizontal and Diagonal communication. A company has many levels and they
are connected, from lower levels to higher levels, from employees to managers, everyone who

works in different or the same position and level should well communicate and understand each

other. 

When communicating with employees, it is not all about why we do it but also how we do it.

In an article named 6 Key Attitudes and Behaviors of Successful Leaders, Alison Vidotto (2020)

stated that “If you choose to congratulate and encourage or to order and criticize, your choice

will set the tone of your leadership”. Managers can be fastidious but they always have to respect

their staff and try to gratitude the hard-working employees. Managers have big influences at

work, if they are always positive and active they likely to pass the same energy to their

employees.

There are many spiritual motivation techniques that businesses can apply, employee praise is

one of the most common techniques. When employees excellently finish their jobs, besides

material reward they should also receive praise from their manager. It is necessary to praise hard-

working employees in front of other employees, those hard-working employees can be examples

for the others. Many companies also apply the behaviors checklist method, this is one of many

ways to improve business ethics. Companies need to make sure employees will well behave

towards their co-worker, their manager, and most importantly their customers. Giving employees

some opportunities to shine and to be creative is what a manager should do, especially in modern

business when many jobs require gray matter and soft skills.

As mentioned previously, people tend to work more efficiently when they feel happy and

comfortable with their job. Applying spiritual motivation in business means taking advantage of

human’s Psychological capital (also known as personal resource), a useful resource but
underutilized in human resources management. P. Grabarek (2018) stated that “Psychological

capital refers to a set of resources a person can use to help improve their performance on the job

and their success. It includes four different resources – self-efficacy, optimism, hope, and

resilience”. Furthermore, “spirituality provides a positive effect on employee outcomes by

increasing the meaningfulness accrued from work and perceived control over goal

accomplishment, suggesting that spirituality performs a role as a personal resource with

motivational potential and leads to high work engagement and job performance” (Bickerton et

al. 2014). One of many examples of a successful business is Southwest Airlines, they believe

they treat their employees right, the employees will show the same energy towards their

customers. Research has shown that efficient spiritual motivation can increase productivity,

achieve high-quality output, improve customer satisfaction. As an evitable fact, many people

always try to seek for better job opportunities, to keep someone employed for the long term

means to treat them well and to give them impression. In many cases, spiritual motivation can

also help reducing recruitment and selection costs.

Nowadays, business can be separated into two main forms, traditional business and modern

business. Though they may have the same goals that are to serve human needs and to gain high

profits, these two forms of business have differences in their operation, their strategies, and

human resources management. According to Safinaz Jahan (2016), “As an employee of a

modern organization get more freedom and flexibility to exchange his or her assessment.

Consequently, in this type of organization, you find high employee morale. Traditional is a job-

oriented organization so you are not sure about the matter of employee morale”. It is argued that

modern organization tends to give prominence to teamwork, they believe that building effective

teams mean profit increase while traditional organization follows a chain of command where
every employee needs to obey their manager (Safinaz Jahan, 2016). Modern business is the

business of adaptation, every individual in a business need to gain new experience, improve soft

skill and apply what they have learned to the job, to solve problems and come up with new ideas.

What modern business needs is not just abundant human resources but also qualified human

resources. To make good use of those human resources and to maintain it for the long term,

experienced management has to go along with motivation, or in this case, spiritual motivation is

needed for human resources management. In the modern world, more jobs that require

professional knowledge, skills, and abilities are created, new problems come up and need to be

solved. It is more stressful in modern business when many organizations are rising and

competing with each other. Creating a healthy workplace environment is as important as other

elements of successful business such as marketing, financial management, investment, etc.

Spiritual motivation does not ask for expenditure, it depends more on appropriate business

policies and experienced management. It can be said that spiritual motivation can be applied by

any type of business and it is most suitable for small businesses since most small businesses need

to be as economical as possible so they can spend more on other important things.

Though it seems like spiritual motivation has no drawback, this type of motivation is not

always effective in some cases. In modern business, companies may face crises, such as

economic crises, natural catastrophes, global pandemic, or when they are on the brink of

bankruptcy, it is very likely that those companies will lay off some of their employees and

reduce their employee’s pay. Many employees can determine on leaving those companies and

find better job opportunities. In those cases, companies can not use spiritual motivation as the

answer to those problems, they need to come up with proper strategies to deal with specific

situations.
 A good manager understands the importance of human resources, an excellent manager

knows how to manage it efficiently. It takes a lot of effort to lead a team of employees to success

in modern business. Improving employee attitude at work is one of many steps to do it. Spiritual

motivation not only forms a better workplace environment but also improves business

performance. It is necessary to apply spiritual motivation in any business, especially in modern

businesses because it takes more than just a proper plan to be successful in the modern world.

We cannot truly utilize all of the human resource's potentials but spiritual motivation can bring

us one step closer to doing so.

References
1. University of Minnesota Libraries (March 22, 2016). Chapter 9 from Human Resource
Management. Retrieved from:
https://open.lib.umn.edu/humanresourcemanagement/chapter/9-1-
communication-strategies/
2. Vidotto, A. (November 14, 2020). 6 Key Attitudes and Behaviors of Successful Leaders.
Retrieved from:
https://richtopia.com/effective-leadership/6-key-attitudes-successful-
leaders/
3. Grabarek, P. (December 10, 2018). What Is Psychological Capital. Retrieved from:
https://workrbeeing.com/2018/12/10/psychological-
capital/#:~:text=Psychological%20capital%20refers%20to%20a,and
%20why%20they%20matter%20together
4. Moon, T., Youn, N., Hur, W., & Kim, K. (May 5, 2018). Does employees’ spirituality enhance
job performance? The mediating roles of intrinsic motivation and job crafting. Retrieved from:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12144-018-9864-0
5. Bickerton, G. R., Miner, M. H., Dowson, M., & Griffin, B. (2014). Spiritual resources in the
job demands-resources model. Journal of Management, Spirituality & Religion, 11, 245–268.
Retrieved from:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14766086.2014.886517
6. Martin, E. (July 29, 2015). A major airline says there's something it values more than its
customers, and there's a good reason why. Retrieved from:
https://www.businessinsider.com/southwest-airlines-puts-employees-first-
2015-7?international=true&r=US&IR=T
7. Safinaz Jahan. (February 14, 2016). Modern Organization VS Traditional Organization.
Retrieved from:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/modern-organization-vs-traditional-safinaz-
jahan#:~:text=Traditional%20organization%20represent%20the
%20organizational,upward%2C%20and%20employees%20are
%20departmentalized.&text=Modern%20Organization%20means%20a
%20boundaryless,collaborating%20more%20than%20ever%20before.