Impact of Spiritual leadership on Resilience and Burnout.

Abstract

Drawing on the conservation of resources theory and value congruence theory, the present study theorizes that spiritual leadership is negatively related to employee burnout, both directly and indirectly via employee psychological resilience and that employee’ spiritual intelligence and fear of COVID-19 moderate the relationship between spiritual leadership and employee psychological resilience. Based on time-lagged (two waves, one months apart) survey data collected from 228 hospitality employees, our findings reveal that spiritual leadership is negatively associated with employee burnout, both directly and indirectly via employee psychological resilience. We also find that employee spiritual intelligence and employee fear of COVID-19 weakens the positive relationship between spiritual leadership and employee psychological resilience. These findings not only highlight core theoretical contributions towards the existing literature on spiritual leadership, psychological resilience, spiritual intelligence, fear of COVID-19 and employee burnout but also offer useful practical implications for hospitality managers concerned about the repercussions of burnout for employees’ and organizations’ outcomes during pandemic.