An Existential Anthropological Study of Selfhood, Uncertainty and Resilience Among Youth of Tando Ghulam Ali, Sindh

This study combines three orientations, namely existential thought about the meaning of ‘being’ and ‘existence, ’ phenomenological insights into ‘lived experience, ’ and anthropological endeavor at what it means to be human. It attempts to focus on the human conditions by directly engaging with human beings. Specifically guiding itself with the questions such as how young people engage in the meaning-making of their lived experiences in their life course’s ever-changing process. Taking its theoretical insights and inspiration from existential and phenomenological anthropology, by zooming in on lived experiences, the research was conducted using life story interviews to collect the narratives to gain understandings into the life-worlds as it is lived and made sense of by young people of Tando Ghulam Ali, a rural town of District Badin, Sindh. Based on the ethnographic data and observations, it is argued that the meaning-making of lived experiences was different among research participants with a strong presence of selfhood and self-consciousness temporally and affectively; the difference in orientation towards life is entangled with personal history as well. This research went beyond the horizons of culture and society to put existence, life, and being, which are silhouetted at meta-level, at the heart of anthropological focus. This research is an experimental research project in anthropology, which has attempted to step its foot into the human condition's terra incognita, which calls for anthropologists’ further exploration.

A Spirituality Based Model of Personality Assessment for Managers in Relation to Job Satisfaction, Organizational Citizenship Behavior and Paranoia and the Moderating Role of Workplace Spirituality.

Personality is a very broad and complex phenomenon which has been vastly studied in different domains from diverse perspectives and there is no single perspective where all researchers have a consensus. There are many personality related traits, attitudes and behaviors of organizational concern, but in case of personality, the models are again mainly borrowed from psychology. The major limitation of the models is that they measure the personality in bits and pieces rather than taking a holistic view. Here we need a basic or ontological dimension to take an integrated view of personality. Spirituality as per many scholars is an ontological dimension of personality. The researchers in psychology in general and in management sciences in specific are now giving attention to the subject. The individual as well as the workplace spirituality are very well researched topics now a days. The current study has focused on the exploration of spirituality as a pivotal phenomenon in assessing human personality through its psychometric capabilities. So spirituality can be a phenomenon where the personality can be gauged holistically as personality traits, attitudes and behavioral outcomes can be predicted through it. This will help the organizations to select, develop and retain appropriate employees in a more meaningful way. The theory suggested that the spirituality can be gauged from low to high with different attitudinal, behavioral and transcendental consequences. After extensive literature review of spirituality across different religions especially incorporating the eastern philosophy, which was missing part in current management science literature, a theory and a definition of spirituality was established which was further used as a basis to develop a scale. For this very purpose, in the first study a tool was developed keeping in view the definition of spirituality, and then its validity as well as the reliability were tested. Furthermore to authenticate the validity of the spiritual phenomenon and its psychometric capabilities, the instrument was tested with certain variables related to employees’ personality. In this regard the variables taken constituted an attitude that is Job Satisfaction, a behavior that is OCB and a personality disorder that is Paranoia. To test the role of WPS in nurturing the spirituality at employee level, it was taken as a moderator in the research model. In the first study, the items were collected from multiple sources and an exhaustive list was developed and then by using grounded theory approach the a list of 30 finalized items was developed. Further the instrument was pilot tested on a sample of 100 students and then it was finally tested on a sample of 430 individuals. After reliability analysis the items with unacceptable loadings were eliminated and the list was reduced to 18 items. In the second study, a sample of 600 respondents was selected from 30 cross sectoral organizations. Out of the sample 530 were useful having no missing values. To analyze the data correlation, regression, and SEM techniques were used. The results supported all the hypothesis in general and hence the findings suggested that the low vs. high spirituality have their respective implications, such as employees with high spirituality are more satisfied, high in exhibiting OCB and were less paranoid. Workplace spirituality also moderated the relation between IV and DVs. Furthermore the study has multiple contributions for literature as very fruitful implications for the practitioners while selecting, retaining employees and enhancing their performance.