Spiritual Leadership in the Workplace

Abstract

While spiritual leadership has been a subject of interest in the major spiritual and religious wisdom traditions for eons, it was the mid-1990s that spiritual leadership of individuals, teams, and organizations became the focus of scholarly research. However, it was not until a causal theory of spiritual leadership was introduced in 2003 and the Leadership Quarterly special issue on spiritual leadership in 2005 that the field gained focus and made a significant step toward achieving paradigmatic recognition. Since then, spiritual leadership theory has evolved to encompass ethical and spiritual well-being; an inner-life practice that is the source for drawing strength from a higher power to transcend one’s selfish programs for happiness to better love and serve others, the triple bottom line or employee well-being (people), sustainability (planet), and profit; the spiritual leadership–balanced scorecard business model; and, most recently, global leadership for sustainability. An ever-growing body of research, including two meta-analyses, on spiritual leadership has established the reliability and validity of the spiritual leadership survey and revealed that the spiritual leadership predicts a large number of individual and organizational outcomes across numerous countries and cultures.