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The purpose of this paper is to examine the roles of job‐ and organization‐related variables in explaining the attachment of Lithuanian employees to their current employer.

A total of 190 employees of a plastic manufacturing company located in an urban area in Lithuania completed a questionnaire containing 84 items describing job and organizational attributes. These data were analyzed using multivariate regression.

In multivariate analysis, job‐ and organization‐related variables each explained approximately equal proportions of the variance in employee attachment. When all of the job and organization‐related variables were used simultaneously to predict employee organizational attachment, only intrinsic job characteristics, opportunities for promotion and training, and communication to/from employees made significant unique contributions to explanation of employee organizational attachment. The job and organizational variables together explained 56 percent of the variance in attachment. While the organization‐related variables did not make a larger contribution to explanation of the variance in organizational attachment than to job‐related variables, organization‐related variables seem to explain how job‐related variables influence attachment.

The paper provides practical insights to organizational managers in Lithuania about the relative importance of job‐ and organization‐related aspects of the work environment in predicting employee attachment to an organization. These insights may help reduce the current out‐migration trends of workers and help Lithuanian companies compete more effectively in the European Union (EU).

Only a few studies have examined the influence of different variables in determining the strength of employee‐employer relationships in transitioning countries of Eastern Europe such as Lithuania. The paper contributes value by empirically examining the applicability of prevailing models of the determinants of employee organizational attachment to the employment environment of Lithuania, a country transitioning from the Soviet era as a member of the EU.

Religious pursuits may promote explicitly “spiritual” goods (theo-relational connectedness, character formation, etc.) and “secular” utilities including health. The purpose of this paper is to initiate investigation of this intersection for paternal religious practices in Lithuania’s dynamic post-Soviet social context. Reflecting on religio-political history, the nature of the religious field, spiritual capital, and externalities related to confessional identity, what relationships exist between institutional engagement, devotional practice, education and other predictors in the post-Soviet Lithuanian religious context?

Original data were collected in 2011 (returning 73 of 100 surveys) in Klaipėda, Lithuania. Correlation and χ² identified variables for regression analysis. Given Ordinary Least Squares heteroscedasticity (Breusch-Pagan test), weighted least squares modeling estimated coefficients for extra mural and institutional religious practice generically and differentiated by confessional identity.

Generically and by confessional identity, utility differences in institutional context appear paradoxical to secularization hypotheses. While correlated, institutional engagement and non-institutional devotional practice evidenced non-complementarity regarding educational attainment: greater education predicted higher institutional engagement but sparer devotional life. The authors suggest in explanation higher opportunity costs in individual devotional practice opposite positive offsets from secondary institutional utilities (e.g. social networking). Both were predicted by education, work hours, the non-dependent religious practice variable, self-reported health status, patterned by confessional identity, specifically Protestant opposite majority Catholic. Intergenerationally, a gender gradient was identified.

This analysis illuminates with original data divergent public institutional and private devotional religious practice utility structures in a dynamic transitional post-Soviet context.