Abstract
PurposeThe purpose of the present study is to examine the relationship between spiritual leadership and employees' alienative commitment to the organization, both directly and indirectly, via employee social capital. We also test the role of employee political skill as a boundary condition of the indirect spiritual leadership–alienative commitment link.Design/methodology/approachTime-lagged data were collected from 491 employees in various manufacturing and service organizations. Data were analyzed using structural modeling equation in Mplus (8.6).FindingsSpiritual leadership was negatively associated with alienative commitment, both directly and indirectly, via social capital. Employee political skill moderated the indirect relationship between spiritual leadership and alienative commitment, such that the relationship was stronger when employee political skill was high (vs low).Practical implicationsThe demonstration of spiritual leadership's behaviors by both managers and employees can develop employees' social capital at work, which in turn can reduce employees' negative commitment to the organization. Likewise, improving employees' political skills can help leadership diminish alienative commitment.Originality/valueThe present work contributes to the literature on spiritual leadership by foregrounding how and why spiritual leadership undermines employee alienative commitment to the organization. By doing so, the study also enhances the nomological networks of the antecedents and outcomes of social capital and contributes to the scant literature on negative alienative commitment. Given the prevalence and negative repercussions of alienative commitment for employees' and organizations' productivity and performance, our findings are timely and relevant.
Highlights
Organizational commitment is considered as one of the important predictors of employees’ and organizations’ learning and performance and an imperative pillar in managing durable employment relationships (Hur and Perry, 2020; Parish et al, 2008)
The present study developed a model that predicted a negative relationship between spiritual leadership and employee alienative commitment
The present work hypothesized that spiritual leadership is negatively related to employee alienative commitment, both directly and indirectly, via employee social capital
Summary
Organizational commitment is considered as one of the important predictors of employees’ and organizations’ learning and performance and an imperative pillar in managing durable employment relationships (Hur and Perry, 2020; Parish et al, 2008). Alienative commitment gauges individuals’ negative affective bond with the organization that can lead to several destructive repercussions for organizations, such as it can impede creativity and organizations’ learning and long-term success (Hornung, 2010; Usman et al, 2021a). It undermines employees’ ability to work hard and restricts them to fulfill the minimum work standards to ensure their membership with the organization. By ignoring the negative form of commitment, previous studies (e.g. Hur and Perry, 2020; Ruiz-Palomo et al, 2020) have offered an asymmetric and restrictive view of employees’ commitment to the organization and may impede managers’ endeavors to develop appropriate interventions to influence employee commitment
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