The Relationship Between Spiritual Intelligence and Professional Ethics of Librarians: A case study

Background: the place and role of the spiritual intelligence and professional ethics have become of great importance and managers seek to improve spirituality and use professional ethics in the organizations. These two factors can reduce the tension and stress in the workplace and improve the status of the organizations. The objective of the present study was to investigate the relationship between spiritual intelligence and professional ethics of the librarians working at the libraries of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences in 2017. Method: this is an applied analytical survey. The population of the present study included all managers and librarians working at the libraries of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences in 2017 (65 people). King's Spiritual Intelligence Self-Report Inventory (2008) and a researcher-made questionnaire of professional ethics were used for data collection. The former consisted of four components including critical existential thinking (CET), personal meaning production (PMP), transcendental consciousness (TC) and consciousness state expansion (CSE); the lowest and highest scores were respectively 24 and 120 and this questionnaire was confirmed to be reliable by a Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.89. The latter was developed based on the draft of the professional ethics of librarians in Iran. The lowest and highest scores of the components of this questionnaire were respectively 31 and 155; the reliability of this questionnaire was also confirmed by a Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.85. The independent t-test and Pearson correlation were used so as to investigate the relationship between variables Findings: Total mean of the components of spiritual intelligence was 45.52 which is a moderate level. The level of the component of professional ethics was also 82.39 which is a very good level. The results indicated that there is no significantly positive relationship between spiritual intelligence and professional ethics; however, this relationship did exist regarding the components. Furthermore, among the components of spiritual intelligence, the highest (49.78) and the lowest (37.16) scores respectively belonged to Personal meaning production and consciousness state expansion. Regarding the professional ethics, the highest (88.92) and the lowest (77.84) scores respectively belonged to the Protect library resources or Conservation of resources and the Neutrality in the profession. Conclusion: the results showed t