Accountants and Auditors’ Spiritual Capital Pattern Planning Using Grounded Theory Approach

Problems such as pure materialism in companies, traditional approaches in the financial profession, ignoring the spiritual values in many companies and unprofessional behaviors have caused scandals for individuals and organizations. Creating spiritual capital of human resources can lead to success and efficiency of society. Therefore, human resources are the most vital organizational resource and poor management of human resources can be the most important threat to the long-term success of the organization. There has been a lot of thematic research on spiritual capital; however, it appears that none has been comprehensive and in-depth yet. Therefore, to eliminate the shortcomings of previous researches, the current study develops a comprehensive spiritual capital patterm model among accountants and auditors using a developmentally holistic, systematic, qualitative approach, based on grounded theory approach. In this qualitative study, the required data were collected by purposive method and snowball sampling through semi-structured interviews with 21 accountants and auditors, and the validity of the findings was confirmed by the reviewing methods of the participants as well as non-participating experts. Data were determined in three stages of open, axial and selective coding. Based on the research findings, a set of characteristics affecting spiritual capital were identified and finally the comprehensive model of spiritual capital comprising causal factors (4 categories), background factors (3 categories), core factors (8 categories), intervening factors (2 categories), strategies (5 categories), and consequences (6 categories) was presented.