Quantitative assessment of spiritual capital in changing organizations by principal component analysis and fuzzy clustering

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the application of statistical tools and techniques for quantitative assessment of spiritual capital (SC) based on a questionnaire survey in the organizations which undergo large-scale organizational change projects. Design/methodology/approach – A sample of 65 individuals from three organizations were interviewed. The paper uses the 12 principles of transformation available to spiritual intelligence (referred to as SQ characteristics) to assess SC in a two-phase integrated algorithm of principal component analysis (PCA) and fuzzy clustering. Findings – The paper proposes a two-phase integrated algorithm. In the first phase, PCA is used to reduce the scores of items related to each of SQ characteristics and aggregate them into a single and unique measure. In the second phase, PCA is applied for total SQ quantification. For verification and validation, fuzzy clustering is employed along with PCA to cluster the people in the survey into different classes, which may possess different stocks of SC and rank them based on their level of SQ. The results of PCA are verified and validated by fuzzy clustering revealing the applicability and usefulness of PCA for SC quantification. Research limitations/implications – The paper is based on individual judgments about their own SQ characteristics hence the results of questionnaire survey may be biased by individual personal characteristics. Future research can apply the proposed algorithm and check for its reliability using other psychometric instruments available in the field. Originality/value – The paper contributes by filling a gap in the quantitative management tools literature, in which empirical studies on validated multivariate analysis of spirituality have been scarce until now.