Spiritual Leadership Theory Research Articles

Spiritual Leadership, Ethical, and Philanthropic Citizenship, Mediated by Professional Moral Courage

In recent years, organizations have witnessed a formidable shift in employees’ behaviors deeply rooted in a negatively charged work environment. This initiates a need for spiritual leadership to address organizational vice and challenges associated to employees’ behavior. These behaviors subsequently reflect in employees’ work outcomes and conform a penultimate connection of personal, environmental and behavioral factors. With this premise, our study encompasses an integrated framework of social cognitive theory and spiritual leadership theory to test the impact of spiritual leadership on employees’ ethical and philanthropic citizenship behaviors through a mediating channel of professional moral courage. Data for this study is collected from four higher educational institutes (N = 320) with scales which are found reliable and valid for this context. Findings show that observed data fits the hypothesized model and conforms to criteria of model fit indices. The significance and effect size of the results indicate distinctive incremental variance in the dependent variables of ethical and philanthropic citizenship of behavior and proved the intervening effect of professional moral courage. The theoretical and practical implications along with future research directions are discussed subsequently.

Workplace mistreatment and spiritual leadership: new cure for ancient curse

ABSTRACT The present study proposed and tested a mediation model which investigated the direct and mediated effect of spiritual leadership on employee’s group innovativeness via workplace bullying and tolerance to incivility as mediating variables, under the lens of spiritual leadership theory, SET and IM theory. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse data from 368 4- and 5-star hotels’ full-time employees in Izmir and Bodrum regions of Turkey. The results show that spiritual leadership significantly predicted group innovativeness, and workplace bullying and tolerance to incivility partially mediated this relationship. The novel findings of our study enrich spiritual leadership-workplace mistreatment-employee performance nexus in hospitality literature.

Spiritual Leadership: Meaning in the Sustainable Workplace

The topic of leadership enjoys unflagging interest among management theorists and practitioners. One of the trends that arose in the 1990s is spiritual leadership. Some authors have pointed out the importance of spiritual leadership is to create a sustainable workplace for employees. Thus, there is a need to present the achievements of academic knowledge in this topic. The aim of the paper is to synthesize research in the emerging spiritual leadership theory and its importance for the creation of a sustainable workplace. This study explores the concept of spiritual leadership and proposes a conceptual model of spiritual leadership within the context of the sustainability of the workplace. The study is based on a literature review and bibliometric analysis of 373 publications from the Scopus database, spanning the period from 1980 to 2019. The findings obtained indicate that the development of the spiritual leadership theory is relevant and applicable to the creation and maintenance of a sustainable workplace for employees.

Spiritual leaders can retain nurses.

To awaken, to alert, to educate and to motivate nurse leaders towards spiritual leadership. Government restructuring has resulted in nursing layoffs, high nurse to patient ratios and reduced professional support. As a result, nurses can experience negative psychological effects which can result in nurses choosing to leave the profession. The majority of spiritual leadership literature is reflective of Fry's Spiritual Leadership Theory; thus, available research evidence pertaining to spiritual leadership was utilized for this commentary. Frontline nurses desire spiritual leaders and cultures built upon altruistic love. Nurse leaders must be alerted to workplace spirituality and must be motivated to apply spiritual leadership. Spiritual nurse leaders must value the qualities of spiritual leadership to create solid visions and cultures based on altruistic love to retain nursing staff. Spiritual leadership is evidenced to increase retention while improving the psychological well-being of individual health. To rebuild the nursing culture and to retain frontline nurses, nurse leaders must feel motivated to incorporate spirituality in the workplace by implementing spiritual leadership. Strategies are recommended to assist nurse leaders in creating a culture of altruistic love and to attain a meaningful inner life through self-assessment, self-awareness and self-compassion.

Organizational sustainability: a redefinition?

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to redefine the concept of organizational sustainability by assimilating corporate spirituality into the concept of the triple bottom line (TBL). Design/methodology/approach This paper is a conceptual paper which presents a newly coined concept for sustainable organizations as a result of a literature study on management and psychology fields. This study explores the concept of competitive advantage, research-based view (RBV) theory, spiritual leadership theory (SLT), positive environmental psychology (PEP) and human resource development (HRD) to fill the void of “soul” as an element in TBL, which is seen as a barrier that prevents organizations from being more holistically sustainable. Findings The paper provides new insights into the redefinition of organizational sustainability by introducing quadruple bottom line (QBL), effectively a combination of management and psychological disciplines. This paper also proposes measurements of corporate spirituality, adapted from well-established mental health research, which have been used in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as well. Research limitations/implications Researchers are encouraged to test the proposed concept further. Practical implications The paper includes implications for the development of sustainable organizations by offering CEOs and managers corporate spirituality support with which they can make wise decisions when considering environmental, societal and economic perspectives in their operations. Originality/value The QBL concept promises to contribute significantly to the growth of more comprehensive, holistic and sustainable organizations, as well as to extend the current literature on organizational sustainability.

The Spiritual Role of a Leader in Sustaining Work Engagement: A Teacher-Perceived Paradigm

Work engagement is arguably one of the key challenges confronted by the higher education sector of Pakistan. Therefore, it is important to understand the diverse perspectives of work engagement in this sector. This study examines the effect of job demand and spiritual leadership on work engagement in public universities of Pakistan through the mediating role of burnout and moderating effect of spiritual leadership between job demand and burnout and between burnout and work engagement. The study framework was established from theories, namely, the job demand-resource theory and the spiritual leadership theory. The respondents were 271 faculty members working in different universities of Pakistan. The findings show a significant relationship between job demand and burnout and between burnout and work engagement. Moreover, the results show a positive relationship between spiritual leadership with work engagement and negative relationship with burnout. However, the findings show the insignificant direct relationship between job demand and work engagement, whereas burnout mediates the relationship between job demand, spiritual leadership, and work engagement. Interestingly, spiritual leadership plays an important role in moderating the relationship between burnout and work engagement but does not moderate the relationship between job demand and burnout. Besides, the findings of the study will redound to organizational benefits by enriching research on the area of burnout and work engagement, which is so far in its infancy by referring to its potential antecedent and moderating variable. Finally, the study will be useful for both organizations and employees to achieve desired outcomes.

Driving organizational entrainment through spiritual leadership

Connectedness is considered as one of the defining characteristics of the twenty-first century, with organizational research highlighting the importance of time, pace, rhythm, and cycles in business through the phenomenon of entrainment. Entrainment is a process of synchronization and connectedness within, between, and across rhythmic activities. This conceptual paper argues that applying spiritual leadership at each level of an organization can drive the (inter)connectedness in today’s organizations through entrainment. First, the concept of entrainment is introduced, with a focus on intraentrainment. The learnings from entrainment are then applied to spiritual leadership theory to enrich it. As such, it proposes a basis for new empirical research in the fields of leadership and organizational entrainment.

The Effect of Spiritual Leadership on Employee Effectiveness: An Intrinsic Motivation Perspective.

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.

THE ROLE OF LEADER’S SPIRITUAL LEADERSHIP ON ORGANISATION OUTCOMES

This paper aims to investigate a causal model of spiritual leadership theory in organisational context and evaluates the effectiveness of spiritual survival and empowerment on organisational outcomes in terms of commitment and citizenship behaviour. It used structural equation model (SEM) approach to test a conceptual framework with data collection of 329 full-time employees working in service industries in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The findings illustrated the critical effects of spiritual leadership on organisational outcomes throughout membership, empowerment, and personal characteristics regarding meaning and calling. Specifically, a qualitative approach was conducted to highlight the testing results and get a better understanding of unanticipated consequences from the quantitative analysis. Based on the findings, the study proposed some specific interests of managerial implications and identify some limitations for future study.

Spiritual Leadership as a Model for Islamic Leadership

Western-based models dominate leadership research and practice, although a consensus is emerging that new theories and models are needed to foster cross-cultural understanding and rapprochement. This holds not only for global organizations that employ workers from different cultures but also for public and private organizations whose cultures and employees are grounded in and embrace religious beliefs and practices as central to their work. This article addresses these issues, drawing from spiritual leadership theory and Islamic religious tenets, and performing a theoretical transposition of the components of the spiritual leadership model into a model of Islamic leadership more appropriate for Islamic organizations and organizations employing Muslim workers. Implications for future theory building, research, and practice are discussed.

Servant and Spiritual Leadership Theories: Are They Two Different Notions?

The aim of this study is to analyze if two emergent models of leadership, servant and spiritual are really different or, on the contrary, are similar, with different labels. Both approaches were analyzed from their backgrounds, depictions, definitions, theoretical models proposed and limitations. It is concluded that both models of leadership are about the same models that share a similar root; both of them are oriented towards transcendental values of employees as a core component of leadership and a main factor related to the quality of job performance. Further studies should be done in order to provide new empirical evidence to support whether servant and spiritual leadership can be considered as completely independent models.

Having Burned the Straw Man of Christian Spiritual Leadership, what can We Learn from Jesus About Leading Ethically?

In considering what it means to lead organizations effectively and ethically, the literature comprising spirituality at work (SAW) and spiritual leadership theory (SLT) has become highly influential, especially in the USA. It has also attracted significant criticism. While in this paper, we endorse this critique, we argue that the strand of literature which purportedly takes a Christian standpoint within the wider SAW school of thought, largely misconstrues and misapplies the teaching of its founder, Jesus. As a result, in dismissing the claims and application of SAW and SLT, there is a real risk that we lose the vital contribution of Christian thought, not least some of the timeless counter-cultural wisdom of Jesus which, we contend, offers a vital foundation to the practice of ethical leadership and business ethics in organizations. In proposing a way forward, two thorny issues which face all leaders are addressed: dealing with ego and closing the gap between what we say and what we do. The more we understand about the dynamics of human nature, the more we learn about the profundity of Jesus’ teachings. We then propose a number of ways in which Jesus-centred ethical leadership can be practised. Each is radical and each implies risk: both the personal risk of inner renewal arising from repentance as a doorway to personal integrity, as well as the risk of opposing unethical practices and promoting the excellence of core practices in the workplace.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as Spiritual Leader

The purpose of this paper is to explore Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s spiritual leadership through his “I Have a Dream” speech. The paper explores the three characteristics of spiritual leadership as posed by Fry’s (2003) spiritual leadership theory: vision, hope/faith and altruistic love. The research draws upon these characteristics through qualitative content analysis of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech to illustrate Dr. King’s leadership as that of a spiritual leader. The research advances the spiritual leadership theory by establishing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a spiritual leader. Through the illustration of Dr. King’s spiritual leadership, the characteristics of a spiritual leader are given tangible understanding.

An empirical investigation on the effects of spiritual leadership components on organizational learning capacity: A case study of Payame Noor University

Article history: Received January 18, 2013 Received in revised format 3 May 2013 Accepted 20 May 2013 Available online May 25 2013 This paper presents an empirical investigation on the effects of spiritual leadership components on organizational learning capacity for a case study of Payame Noor University, Iran. The proposed study uses a standard questionnaire for measuring spirituality leadership proposed by Fry (2003) [Fry, L. W. (2003). Toward a theory of spiritual leadership. The leadership quarterly, 14(6), 693-727.] and for measuring the impact of organizational learning capacity, the proposed study uses another questionnaire proposed by Teo et al. (2006) [Teo, H. H., Wang, X., Wei, K. K., Sia, C. L., & Lee, M. K. (2006). Organizational learning capacity and attitude toward complex technological innovations: an empirical study. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 57(2), 264-279.]. The results of our survey have indicated that all components of spiritual leadership, except love and altruism as meaningful, influence spirituality leadership, significantly. © 2013 Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Is the spiritual bond bound by blood? An exploratory study of spiritual leadership in family firms

Our research is one of the first to examine spiritual leadership, which lies at the crossroads of workplace spirituality and transcendental leadership, within the context of family firms. We describe how the unique characteristics of family firms allow for and encompass spiritual leadership. First, we adapt the construct of spiritual leadership to the firm level. Then, analyzing dyadic data, we provide empirical support for the emerging theory of spiritual leadership by linking the spiritual bond between leader and follower to organizational citizenship behavior, a new dependent variable in the nomological net of spiritual leadership. We further explore the relationship in subsets of our data, finding that the relationship holds for family members but does not hold for non-family employees of the family business. Implications and avenues for future research are discussed.

Human Nature Heuristics and Leadership Theory

Human nature heuristics are foundational to the analytical frameworks of leadership theories though they go largely unnoticed. I propose a modified version of Sullivan’s typology of human nature and map a select set of established and emergent leadership theories on it. The mapping highlights that several ‘made leader’ theories apply heuristics suitable for ‘born leader’ theories. Authentic, charismatic, and spiritual leadership theories in particular apply multiple heuristics in an inconsistent manner and need refinement on that account. I discuss the implications of a heuristic view of human nature on the issues concerning theoretical assumptions, construct clarity, scope, internal consistency, and the moral choice inherent therein.

Is the Spiritual Bond Bound by Blood? An Exploratory Study of Spiritual Leadership in Family Firms

Our research is one of the first to examine spiritual leadership, which lies at the crossroads of workplace spirituality and transcendental leadership, within the context of family firms. We describe how the unique characteristics of family firms allow for and encompass spiritual leadership. First, we adapt the construct of spiritual leadership to the firm level. Then, analyzing dyadic data, we provide empirical support for the emerging theory of spiritual leadership by linking the spiritual bond between leader and follower to organizational citizenship behavior, a new dependent variable in the nomological net of spiritual leadership. We further explore the relationship in subsets of our data, finding that the relationship holds for family members but does not hold for non-family employees of the family business. Implications and avenues for future research are discussed.

From theoria to theory: Leadership without contemplation

This article explores the transition of the theological and philosophical concept of theoria—contemplation—to the modern notion of theory. Theory derives linguistically from theoria and retains a connection with knowledge. However, it has lost and, moreover, typically excludes theoria’s focus upon the direct experiential knowledge of the divine. In keeping with the thrust of this special issue, we focus on how the secularization of the theological concept of theoria defines in a profound manner the limits and possibilities of thinking and theorizing work and organization. We examine the nature of theoria and the transitions that have led to its metamorphosis. It is suggested that dominant forms of theorizing work and organization are typically performative (Lyotard, 1984). This is illustrated, somewhat ironically, through a review of Spiritual Leadership Theory, which appears to promote spiritual leadership without contemplation.

Expression of spiritual leadership in Lithuanian businesses

The article determines the level of spirituality expression of Lithuanian mid-level businesses CEO’s. The authors briefly present a scientific premise of spiritual leadership theory that was the basis for the research. Spirituality is represented in three different levels: intra-personal, supra-personal and inter-personal by identifying elements of each level that are interrelated. The article points out links with other similar scientific research, describes research methods and research instrument, provides research scope and stages, and indicates methodologically significant data collection and analysis procedures. Research findings show CEO’s spirituality expression that leads to a conclusion that spirituality among leaders of mid-level Lithuanian businesses is not expressed enough in neither of the above spirituality levels. However, the presence of high score allows us to infer that there are some instances of spiritual leadership among these executive managers.

Spiritual Leadership and Job Satisfaction: A Proposed Conceptual Framework

The objective of this study is to propose a framework that relates spiritual leadership theories to job satisfaction in a multidimensional approach. The framework is designed based on the previous literatures. Spiritual leadership components that will be included in the study consist of vision, altruistic love, hope/faith, meaning, calling and membership. Job Descriptive Index (JDI) is adapted to measure job satisfaction. JDI provides five subscales that measure different facets of job satisfaction describing various aspects of the respondent’s work experiences such as the work itself, pay/promotion, supervision, and coworkers. This study also included turnover intention in the framework to measure job dissatisfaction. In this study, nine hypotheses will be proposed based on the conceptual framework outlined.