Modeling the determinants of spiritual capital in companies based on the grounded theory and structural equation modeling (SEM)

The study of financial crises and scandals of recent years indicates that accountants have caused the creation of companies that have lost their spiritual nature by paying too much attention to profit maximization. Accounting has links with capitalism, materialism, individualism, and secularism values as causes of accounting scandals but studies indicate that, despite these issues, accounting has spiritual values such as honesty, responsibility, and accountability, and it is necessary to improve spiritual capital to prevent accounting and financial crises. Therefore, the present research aims to develop a model for measuring and improving the spiritual capital of companies. The research was conducted using the grounded theory in qualitative and quantitative phases. In the qualitative phase, the statistical population consisted of professional and academic experts in accounting and finance, and finally, 18 experts were interviewed using the purposive snowball sampling method. Thereafter, several codes were used according to the results of semi-structured interviews with experts, and the conceptual model of the research was developed after categorizing them. In the quantitative phase, a questionnaire was developed and given to 335 participants using Cochran’s sampling method according to the indices and components. The collected data were analyzed using the PLS-SEM (structural equation modeling). The findings of the quantitative phase indicated that the model of extracted elements, consisting of causal conditions (n = 4), axial conditions (n = 6), contextual conditions (3), interfering conditions (2), strategic conditions (n = 4), and consequences (n = 5) as the main indices, had a good fit.