Abstract
Drawing on spiritual leadership theory and intrinsic motivation theory, we proposed a homologous multilevel model to explore the effectiveness of spiritual leadership on employees’ task performance, knowledge sharing behaviors and innovation behaviors at the individual level. With questionnaires rated by 306 pairs of employees and their supervisors in 26 teams from the energy industry in mainland China, we conduct multilevel analysis to examine our hypotheses. The results show that spiritual leadership was positively related to employee task performance, knowledge sharing behaviors and innovation behavior, when we controlled for possible confounding effects of moral leadership and benevolent leadership, and ruled out alternative explanation of ethical leadership. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
Highlights
Along with growing uncertainty and new challenges facing organizations in dynamic environments (Tyssen et al, 2014), an enormous number of enterprise managers focus on creating a clear organizational vision, forming favorable organizational cultures, and inspiring employees’ inner motivation to increase the competitive advantage of the organization (Chen and Li, 2013; Chen et al, 2013)
It was found that spiritual leadership was significantly and positively correlated with employees’ task performance (r = 0.45, p < 0.01), knowledge sharing behaviors (r = 0.61, p < 0.01) and innovation behaviors (r = 0.63, p < 0.01); these results provided initial support for H1, H2, and H3, respectively
The results showed that controlling for benevolent leadership and moral leadership, spiritual leadership was significantly related to task performance (β = 0.34, p < 0.01), and after entering ethical leadership, spiritual leadership was significantly related to task performance (β = 0.33, p < 0.01), but ethical leadership was insignificantly related to task performance (β = 0.04, p > 0.05)
Summary
Along with growing uncertainty and new challenges facing organizations in dynamic environments (Tyssen et al, 2014), an enormous number of enterprise managers focus on creating a clear organizational vision, forming favorable organizational cultures, and inspiring employees’ inner motivation to increase the competitive advantage of the organization (Chen and Li, 2013; Chen et al, 2013). One approach that embodies such management patterns is spiritual leadership, which incorporates vision, hope/faith, and altruistic love to motivate oneself and others in order to have a sense of spiritual survival (Chen et al, 2013). This leadership style points the way that could intrinsically inspire employees to work beyond role obligation for the common good of the group. Some studies have shown that individuals who are intrinsically motivated have more interest and confidence than those who are externally controlled, which in turn is manifested as enhanced performance and creativity (Valas and Slovik, 1993; Sheldon et al, 1997).
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