Spiritual Leadership in Korea’s Financial Industry - Establishing a Baseline -

Abstract

This study was designed to validate Fry's (2003) model of spiritual leadership within the Confucian context of South Korea and establish a baseline for the model in Korea's financial sector. Spiritual leadership is an emerging, holistic model of leadership that encapsulates the relationships of leaders, followers, organizational culture, and organizational outcomes. However, while the theory has been extensively tested in individualistic cultural contexts, validation of the theory in collectivist cultures such as Korea has only recently been pursued. The study examined the emergence of spiritual leadership values and the relationship of these values on organizational commitment and productivity, as mediated by the spiritual survival variables of calling and membership through structural equation modeling. Survey data were collected from a South Korean financial services company with strong Confucian values. The results of this study supported the universality of Fry's (2003) spiritual leadership model in a Confucian context, despite high job uncertainties facing participants. Measures of reliability and validity were above adequate levels and fell within the range of previous studies. Also, goodness-of-fit measures such as NNFI and CFI were all highly significant (p < .001) and above the .95 level. Hence, a baseline for future research in Korea's financial sector was established. The study recommends the need to explore the positive and negative aspects of Confucianism as it relates to (a) the emergence of spiritual leadership and (b) group-level analysis of spiritual leadership. Notably, the results suggest that Confucian values can positively contribute to organizational outcomes through collective membership, but negatively through weak empowerment, based on the degree of reciprocal trust and loyalty between leaders and followers. Additionally, the lower mean scores of spiritual leadership values in this study as compared to previous studies suggest that among other possibilities, the potential weakening of leader-follower relationships during times of uncertainty and crisis can upend the strengths of spiritual leadership. Future longitudinal studies are needed to more deeply examine the relationship of job uncertainties on spiritual leadership.