research paper on spiritual leadership

A systematic literature review on spiritual leadership: antecedents, mechanism, moderators and outcomes

Journal of Organizational Change Management

ISSN : 0953-4814

Article publication date: 5 April 2024

The aim of this study is to offer evidence-based knowledge of the most popular research topics in studies on spiritual leadership (SL) and the research approaches and theories in use. Another aim is to create a comprehensive research framework covering the antecedents and outcomes of SL, as well as the underlying mechanisms and conditional factors. This study also synthesizes future research avenues presented in the literature.

Design/methodology/approach

This study used a systematic literature review method. The presented analysis covered both bibliometric studies and in-depth manual content analysis. In total, 274 articles indexed in the Scopus database were analyzed, with a particular focus on 126 empirical papers.

This study shows that most of the research took place in developing countries and focused on the links between SL and workplace spirituality, employee well-being and engagement. It provides a complex research framework which orders previous variables according to their levels. Future research is required that would use a multilevel research approach and determine the impact of SL on society and the leaders themselves, as well as determining the reverse impact of organizational performance on the development of SL.

Originality/value

This study takes advantages of both bibliometric and in-depth content analysis to expand the understanding of the state of the art in SL research. It demonstrates how different factors contribute to SL and how they subsequently influence outcomes. It also offers numerous future research directions which go beyond those identified so far in the literature to further develop the theory of SL.

Bibliometric analysis
Cluster analysis
Content analysis

Piwowar-Sulej, K. and Iqbal, Q. (2024), "A systematic literature review on spiritual leadership: antecedents, mechanism, moderators and outcomes", Journal of Organizational Change Management , Vol. 37 No. 8, pp. 18-35. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOCM-11-2023-0483

Emerald Publishing Limited

Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

1. Introduction

The interest in spirituality issues in the context of work began in the early 1920s and has been growing since ( Petchsawang and Duchon, 2009 ). Spirituality revolves around finding meaning, sense, interconnectedness and value in one’s work. It brings numerous benefits for both employees and companies: improving employee well-being (reduces stress and burnout and stimulates quality of life); increasing employee morale, motivation, job satisfaction, commitment and job performance; and mitigating employee absenteeism and intention to quit ( Pawar, 2016 ; Singh and Singh, 2022 ). A spiritual workplace culture promotes positive interactions, empathy and compassion among employees. This can create a more supportive and cohesive work environment, leading to improved teamwork and collaboration ( Singh and Singh, 2022 ). Accordingly, the practitioners and academicians are emphasizing the use of effective leadership styles in the context of workplace spirituality ( Jain, 2022 ; Pawar, 2014 ; Ribeiro et al. , 2021 ).

What are the most popular research topics in the studies on SL?

Which research approaches (qualitative/quantitative, unilevel/multilevel) are the most common in such research?

Which theories have been used to explain how SL leads to outcomes?

What complex research model (covering antecedents, outcomes of SL and the mediators/moderators functioning at different levels of analysis) can be created based on the evidence from prior research?

Which future research directions have been proposed in previous studies?

The contribution of a systematic literature review to the development of a research field – as in this case – lies in a broad set of theoretical implications, such as organizing and categorizing knowledge, rapidly disseminating the latest knowledge among readers/future researchers, evaluating and summarizing the body of work, identifying areas of knowledge and research gaps, and thus reducing uncertainty in the field ( Fisch and Block, 2018 ). Moreover, a good literature review is exclusive, meaning that it is unique and it synthesizes the best available evidence in a given research area ( Denyer and Tranfield, 2009 ). By answering the above RQs, this literature review contributes to the understanding of SL among researchers and practitioners and encourages researchers to further explore the phenomenon and practitioners to introduce SL principles in organizations.

At this point, it is worth emphasizing that although some literature reviews have been published on similar topics, none of them have responded to the above RQs, which highlight the existing research gaps. Some previous literature reviews have been devoted to the general notion of workplace spirituality. For example, Rocha and Pinheiro (2021) , Maidl et al . (2022) and Singh and Singh (2022) aimed at providing a better understanding of this concept. There have also been reviews which analyzed how leadership has been linked with spirituality. For example, Dent et al . (2005) conducted a qualitative narrative analysis of 20 randomly selected papers on spirituality and leadership. They only mentioned the notion of SL. Anderson and Sun (2017) did not present the methodology used in their literature review, instead focusing on definitions of new leadership styles (including SL) and overlaps between them. They emphasized that empirical works on SL are sparse. Göçen and Şen (2021) examined 17 empirical articles which linked SL with organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Samul (2019) as well as Vedula and Agrawal (2023) conducted solely bibliometric analyses. The former studied the link between the SL leadership style and sustainable workplaces and determined thematic clusters based on keyword analysis, whereas the latter analyzed papers on a broad definition of leaders’ spirituality and determined thematic clusters based on a co-citation analysis. Finally, Oh and Wang (2020) considered 59 empirical studies published before 2018 (analyzing 46 quantitative studies) and provided only a basic bibliometric analysis conceptualizing this leadership style (measurement and data analysis methods), without analyzing the research directions recommended by previous researchers.

This study utilizes the Scopus database, which is extensively used by social science researchers (also in the context of workplace spirituality) because of its size and the interdisciplinarity of peer-reviewed sources ( Vedula and Agrawal, 2023 ). The authors identified a total of 274 articles to analyze further. Moreover, the authors used both bibliometric analysis (including network analysis of keywords) and in-depth qualitative analysis following Piwowar-Sulej and Iqbal (2023) . The former allows researchers to determine general trends related to research productivity as well as the most popular research topics. It introduces quantitative rigor into this study ( Maditati et al. , 2018 ). The visual representation of how detailed topics interrelate is called science mapping ( Santana and Cobo, 2020 ). The latter type of analysis is essential for identifying the qualitative information needed to answer the RQs. It covers the whole content of the articles in order to gain deeper insight into the findings of previous studies ( Piwowar-Sulej and Iqbal, 2023 ). Considering the above, this article methodologically evaluates the past research on SL so as to identify directions for improving future research and to make new contributions for advancing research in this area.

2. Methodology

2.1 sample and data collection.

The systematic literature review process comprises a set of consecutive phases that are closely related to each other ( Denyer and Tranfield, 2009 ; Xiao and Watson, 2019 ) ( Figure 1 ). First, the authors formulated RQs and defined the purpose of the study.

The second stage was using the Scopus database as a source of valuable publications in the social sciences and setting the inclusion and exclusion criteria for the initial research sample. Then, because this study focuses on leadership style treated as a measurable construct, the authors applied the search string “TITLE-ABS-KEY (“spiritual leadership”)” and did not set a starting year to find the first article on the topic. Scopus found 421 documents which met this condition, starting with the year 1991. Next, the authors excluded works other than articles and those written in languages other than English; papers published in 2023 were also excluded in order to improve the reproducibility of the analysis. Since 2023 is ongoing, new documents can be indexed in the database every day. Therefore, searching in Scopus at different points in 2023 for documents published in the same year could yield different results. The authors decided not to limit the subject area to business and management because they easily found articles that were published in the field of engineering, for example, which seemed to be relevant. In the last stage of data collection, the 274 articles which remained after applying the exclusion criteria were exported in the form of a csv file.

2.2 Data analysis

Next, the authors transformed the csv file into xls format, independently scanned the titles and abstracts, compared their results and agreed on the final set of publications. They focused on the construct of SL and excluded papers that were devoted to more general issues of spirituality (e.g. related to religion). After the scanning phase, the authors obtained a set of 167 articles about SL. At this phase, the types of articles could be determined (theoretical/conceptual/literature review vs empirical). The authors identified 41 theoretical papers and 126 empirical ones and in further stages analyzed the empirical ones.

The following step was to use the most popular bibliometric indexes (i.e. number of publications and number of citations used in bibliometric analyses ( Khan et al. , 2020 )) to prepare the general characteristics of the final sample of articles. To answer RQ1 , the authors applied keyword network analysis using the software program VOSViewer. This program allows researchers to identify the main research topic addressed by previous studies and to determine less explored topics, which open up avenues for future research ( Perianes-Rodriguez et al. , 2016 ). In the sample of empirical works, VOSViewer returned a total of 362 keywords. The authors purified the list of keywords (e.g. unified the American and British names of variables) with the use of VOSViewer’s thesaurus file. Then, they set the minimum number of occurrences of keywords to five, as recommended by van Eck and Waltman (2014) . These conditions were met by 12 keywords.

Then, the entire texts of the 126 empirical articles were subjected to in-depth qualitative manual analysis in order to answer RQ2 – RQ5 , that is, to determine the research approaches (quantitative/qualitative and unilevel/multilevel), the variables (antecedents and outcomes of SL and the mechanisms and conditional factors), and the theories used in the reports to explain the phenomena in question. The authors also searched for research directions recommended by previous researchers. They worked independently and systematically, collecting their results in an extended xls database. Finally, they compared their results and agreed on common conclusions. At the end, to enrich the discussion of the findings as well as to propose additional future research avenues, the authors also conducted in-depth content analysis on the theoretical papers.

3.1 Basic characteristics of the research sample

3.1.1 research productivity-related information.

The first empirical work was published in 2005 ( Figure 2 ) in the journal Leadership Quarterly and was authored by Fry, Vitucci, and Cedillo. This paper has been cited 339 times so far, which was the most citations among empirical papers. Fry is also the author of the most cited theoretical work in the sample (publication year: 2003, 1,014 citations).

The most productive journal in terms of the number of published empirical papers was Journal of Management, Spirituality and Religion ( Table 1 ). However, the most productive in terms of citations received per paper was Journal of Environmental Psychology , which published only 1 paper cited 208 times.

Overall, the empirical studies entailed 21 countries across the globe. The empirical research was most often conducted in Indonesia (n = 27), followed by China (n = 20), Turkey (n = 9), South Korea (n = 8), Pakistan (n = 7), Iran (n = 6) and India (n = 5). Four studies each were conducted in Malaysia, Taiwan, the USA and Vietnam. Three empirical studies involved Thailand. Two each were conducted in Belgium, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. There was one empirical paper each in the contexts of Australia, Cameroon, Cyprus, New Zealand and Sweden. It is evident that a higher number of non-Muslim countries contributed to the SL research than Muslim countries, but the numbers of papers from the former were lower. Regarding evidence in relation to a specific industry, most of the studies were conducted in educational settings (n = 22), followed by manufacturing and service (n = 15 each), health (n = 13), finance (n = 10), healthcare and Hi-tech (n = 9 in both cases) industries.

3.1.2 The most popular research topics, approaches and theories applied in prior empirical studies

The procedure for the keyword analysis described in the methodological section helped the authors answer RQ1 by identifying three main thematic clusters, which are visible in Figure 3 . The first one (red) covers the papers which focus on the associations between SL and workplace spirituality, employee well-being and engagement. The second one (green) includes empirical studies which explored employee job satisfaction, organizational commitment, OCB and performance. Finally, the articles included in the third cluster (blue) addressed the issues of employee self-determination, psychological capital and innovative behaviors. The least used keywords (one each) included counterproductive work behaviors, work alienation, social innovation and firm value.

When it comes to RQ2 , 106 out of 126 empirical papers used a quantitative research approach, 15 qualitative and 5 multimethod. The most popular method of collecting data – identified manually – was survey (used a total of 103 times, including four papers which used a multimethod research approach). The second most popular was interview (a total of seven times (including one multimethod paper). A multilevel research approach was used in three studies.

As far as RQ3 is concerned, 54 out of 126 empirical studies used theories to explain how SL acts. The theories which were used more than once in the sample – identified through the in-depth content analysis – were the self-determination theory (n = 15), the conservation of resources theory (n = 8), the social exchange theory (n = 5), the job-demand resource theory (n = 4), the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions (n = 3), the social identity theory (n = 3), the social cognitive theory (n = 2), the path-goal theory (n = 2) and the social information processing theory (n = 2). Keywords related to the first theory are also clearly visible in Figure 3 .

3.2 A complex research model derived from the analyzed empirical articles

3.2.1 mechanism of the “spiritual leadership–outcome” relationship.

To answer RQ4 , the authors created a complex research model (covering the antecedents and outcomes of SL, as well as the mediators/moderators) based on the evidence from prior research. This model is shown in Figure 4 . Out of 126 empirical papers, only 78 focused on the mechanism of the SL–outcome relationship. Due to the limited length of this paper, only examples of the identified relationships are elaborated below.

Regarding intervening variables, previous studies focused mostly on spiritual well-being (n = 11), workplace spirituality (n = 8), organizational commitment (n = 6) and followers’ psychological capital (n = 5). The review of the extant literature revealed that workplace spirituality mediates the positive relationship between SL and corporate social entrepreneurial orientation ( Luu, 2022 ), customer-oriented boundary-spanning behavior ( Farmanesh et al. , 2021 ), organizational commitment ( Sapta et al. , 2021 ), innovative work behavior ( Alfarajat and Emeagwali, 2021 ), subjective well-being ( Zou et al. , 2020 ) and environmental passion and intrinsic motivation ( Indrajaya, 2017 ). In the higher education context of Indonesia, organizational commitment mediated the relationship between SL and OCB ( Djaelani et al. , 2020 ), but not the one between SL and employee engagement ( Maryati and Astuti, 2022 ). Affective commitment significantly mediated the relationship between SL and happiness at work in India ( Srivastava et al. , 2022 ), but not the one between SL and employee well-being in Italy ( Chang and Arisanti, 2022 ). Past studies confirmed that spiritual well-being significantly mediated the relationship between SL and employee innovative behavior ( Alfarajat and Emeagwali, 2021 ), OCB ( Madison and Kellermanns, 2013 ) and engagement ( Wu and Lee, 2020 ), but partially mediated the one between SL and job satisfaction ( Indrajaya, 2017 ). Moreover, spiritual leaders did not indirectly affect employees’ intention to leave through spiritual well-being ( Yusof et al. , 2016 ). Spiritual leaders indirectly significantly influenced alienative commitment – which measures the extent to which employees feel a lack of alternatives and of control over environmental pressure and work activities ( Ali et al. , 2022a ) – and employee engagement ( Wu and Lee, 2020 ) through social and psychological capital, respectively.

It has been found that organization-level intervening variables such as environmental justice orientation ( Anser et al. , 2021 ), Islamic work ethics ( Supriyanto and Ekowati, 2020a ), organizational identification ( Chen et al. , 2019 ), perceived caring climate ( Ali et al. , 2022b ) and work engagement ( Chang and Arisanti, 2022 ) significantly mediated the relationship between SL and OCB towards the environment, Islamic OCB, helping behavior, hazing behavior – which refers to unofficial, temporary practices of initiating and socializing newcomers into a working group by engaging in degrading behaviors towards them ( Mawritz et al. , 2022 ) – and employee well-being, respectively. In the context of China, organizational identification and psychological safety ( Chen et al ., 2019 ), as well as uncertainty avoidance and creative role identity ( Yang et al ., 2021 ), were concluded to be sequential mediators on the relationship of SL with employee proactive behaviors and innovative behavior, respectively. Moreover, Sholikhah et al . (2019) claimed a partial mediating impact of organization-based self-esteem on the “SL–OCB” relationship in Islamic educational institutions in Indonesia. Similarly, tolerance of incivility partially mediated the relationship between SL and workplace bullying in the hospitality sector in Turkey ( Ghaedi et al. , 2021 ).

Individual-level variables, such as calling ( Wang et al. , 2021 ), mindfulness ( Mohammed et al. , 2022 ), basic need satisfaction ( Yang et al ., 2020 ), psychological empowerment ( Usman et al. , 2021 ), person–organization fit ( Farmanesh et al. , 2021 ), perceived social support ( Ali et al. , 2020b ), psychological capital ( Wu and Lee, 2020 ), intrinsic motivation ( Afsar et al. , 2016 ) and quality of work life ( Pio, 2022 ) significantly mediated the relationship between SL and harmonious passion, human engineering, career satisfaction, intrapreneurial behavior, customer-oriented boundary-spanning behavior, workplace ostracism, engagement, pro-environmental behavior and employee performance, respectively.

In the context of China and Indonesia, it has been proven that the “SL–innovative behavior” relationship was significantly mediated by autonomous motivation, employee engagement, job crafting and knowledge sharing ( Arifin et al. , 2022 ; Supriyanto and Ekowati, 2020b ; Yang et al. , 2021 ; Zhang and Yang, 2021 ). Quality of work life, ethical behavior and organizational commitment in Indonesia ( Djaelani et al. , 2020 ; Pio and Lengkong, 2020 ), and employee environmental justice orientation and meaningful climate in China ( Anser et al ., 2021 ; Yang et al ., 2019a ), significantly mediated the relationship between SL and OCB. On the other hand, OCB and job satisfaction significantly mediated the “SL–employee performance” relationship in the banking sector of Indonesia ( Supriyanto et al ., 2020 ). In addition, Yang et al. (2019a , b , c) reported the full mediating impact of career success expectation on the “SL–employee voice behavior” relationship. Along with this, studies also reported a partial mediating effect of autonomous motivation, satisfaction of basic psychological needs and individual Confucian values on relationship between SL and craftsmanship spirit ( Zhu et al. , 2022 ), work-unit productivity, OCB ( Hunsaker, 2016 ) and work engagement ( Chen et al ., 2022 ). Chen et al . (2012) concluded that there was an indirect impact of SL on productivity through self-efficacy and self-esteem among employees in Taiwan and China.

3.2.2 Contextual factors: spiritual leadership and outcomes

Only 22 studies investigated the moderating effect of different variables on the relationship between SL and organizational and individual outcomes. Most of them assessed the conditional impact of power distance (n = 3). Each of the two studies provided empirical evidence about the contingent role of organizational support, political skills, justice orientation, corporate culture and organizational climate. Happiness at work, work centrality, environmental passion, Islamic work ethics, self-esteem, task uncertainty, workplace spirituality, managerial position and leader integrity were only examined in one study each.

In the context of Indonesia, empirical findings supported the significant moderating impact of workplace spirituality on the “SL–employee job satisfaction” relationship ( Sholikhah et al. , 2019 ). Work centrality in a unit ( Usman et al. , 2021 ) and corporate culture ( Chen and Li, 2013 ) significantly moderated the relationship between SL and employees’ intrapreneurial behavior and extra-role/in-role performance, respectively. It was also found that the interaction term for SL and justice orientation significantly influenced workplace ostracism ( Ali et al. , 2020b ) and workplace hazing ( Ali et al. , 2022b ). Moreover, Zhu et al . (2022) provided empirical evidence about the amplifying impact of SL on employees’ autonomous motivation in the presence of a higher level of ethical climate.

There is inconsistent empirical evidence about the moderating role of political skills on the relationship between SL and outcomes. For example, Ali et al. (2022a , b , c) concluded that there is a positive conditional impact on the “SL–social capital” relationship, but Supriyanto and Ekowati (2020a , b) reported a nonsignificant contingent role of political skills on the relationship between SL and Islamic OCB in Indonesia. Three studies offered strong evidence of the conditional impact of power distance orientation on the relationship between SL and autonomous motivation ( Zhu et al. , 2022 ), basic need satisfaction ( Yang et al ., 2020 ) and workplace spirituality ( Zou et al. , 2020 ).

3.3 Directions for future research recommended by previous researchers

A total of 85 empirical research papers provided future research directions, which were used to answer RQ5 . Only one study suggested considering personality traits as a control variable in future research ( Zakkariya and Aboobaker, 2021 ). Three studies recommended conducting comparative research such as family vs nonfamily businesses ( Dede and Ayranci, 2014 ), nonreligion vs religion-based spirituality ( Sapta et al. , 2021 ), servant vs SL and comparisons across different cultures and industries ( Ali et al. , 2022b ). The authors divided the recommendation into those related to outcomes, mechanisms, moderators and research design ( Table 2 ).

4. Discussion

4.1 main findings and their theoretical contributions.

This study – by combining the strengths of bibliometric methods and in-depth content analysis – provided evidence on the most popular research topics ( RQ1 ), research approaches ( RQ2 ), theories ( RQ3 ) and variables ( RQ4 ) present in SL research. It also revealed new perspectives within the field ( RQ5 ), thus contributing to further evolution of the SL theory.

The thematic clusters obtained from the keyword network analysis in order to answer RQ1 differ from those created by Samul (2019) , who focused on the interplay between SL and workplace sustainability. That author considered organizational commitment to be an emerging theme, whereas the current study shows that it is one of the most explored topics in research on SL. In turn, Vedula and Agrawal (2023) used bibliographic coupling to distinguish the following thematic clusters: spiritual needs at work, defining workplace spirituality, SL’s traits, values and practices, and positive organizational effects of the interaction of SL and workplace spirituality (such as organizational performance or OCB). The current study enriches their findings by showing the more detailed employee-related outcomes of SL. It also demonstrates that workplace spirituality shaped by a spiritual leader is mostly linked with employee well-being (as depicted in Figure 3 ).

This study is the first to report – in response to RQ4 – such a complex research model based on previous 126 empirical studies. For example, Oh and Wang (2020) , who analyzed 46 quantitative papers, presented in their final model only 8 moderators and 8 mediators. The current study supports their findings in terms of the scarcity of research on the antecedents of SL. This research model clearly shows what we know about relationships between SL and numerous phenomena, whereas Göçen and Şen (2021) in their literature review focused solely on the linkage between SL and OCB. Hence, this study should discourage future researchers from examining the same relationships and instead encourage them to make a step forward to increase our understanding of the antecedents and consequences of this particular leadership style.

Another contribution of this study to theory lies in the presentation of the numerous future research directions ( RQ5 ) postulated in the papers it analyzes ( Table 2 ). However, the authors of this study would like to propose additional research avenues. For example, this study shows some inconsistencies in the current understanding of SL’s effects and underlying mechanisms. This finding can lead to the refinement and development of theories in research on SL. It would be worth examining the mediating role of affective commitment between SL and employee positive mental states in contexts other than India (where the mediation was supported) ( Srivastava et al. , 2022 ) and Italy (where the mediation was not supported) ( Chang and Arisanti, 2022 ). At this point it is worth emphasizing that most of the analyzed research was conducted in developing Eastern countries and used the self-determination theory, as shown in response to RQ2 . Leadership is highly context-dependent and various theories might be more applicable in different situations. Some theories might better explain employee behavior in specific cultures, offering more contextually relevant insights. While the self-determination theory is a valuable framework for understanding employee motivation and behavior in research on SL, the authors would like to encourage researchers to use a variety of theories in future studies. This would allow researchers to explore SL from multiple angles, leading to a more comprehensive understanding of the complex dynamics involved.

Furthermore, only a few studies examined the antecedents of SL. The concept of Makkar and Singh (2020) , which was based on experts’ opinions, can guide future researchers when selecting variables to analyze for their role in stimulating SL. It would be worth examining the role of a leader’s connectedness, self-less action, or meaningfulness in developing SL. A leader’s social/family environment can also influence the occurrence of SL ( Low and Ayoko, 2020 ). It should also be noted that Makkar and Singh (2020) proposed a group-level outcome in the form of co-worker support, which was not identified in the research sample. Future research could also determine the impact of SL on society. Finally, little effort was made in the sample of articles to use a multilevel research approach, as demonstrated in response to RQ2 . By assigning previously examined variables to the subsequent levels in Figure 3 , this study helps future researchers design multilevel research models. Furthermore, in the analyzed articles, no effort was made to comprehensively examine the joint impact of SL on a set of outcomes operating at different levels to fill the micro-macro gap ( Molina-Azorín et al. , 2019 ). There was also a lack of papers which would examine this leadership style in Central or Eastern Europe. Therefore, future research is encouraged to fill these gaps.

Leader-level outcomes of SL are also missing in the sample of articles. Therefore, further research is needed to identify them because practicing SL may lead to the leader’s personal growth ( Low and Ayoko, 2020 ). Furthermore, further research on the reverse impact of, for example, organizational variables on the development of SL is needed. Most studies on leadership overlook the reverse causality between leadership style and performance, yet it can also be hypothesized that companies with high performance are better able to invest in the development of effective practices ( Boselie et al. , 2005 ). In the case of the SL style, this relationship may be even more visible, as the results of spiritual leaders’ actions will justify further investments in the development of such leadership. There can also be different levels of SL (the continuum from nonspiritual to fully SL) ( Rocha and Pinheiro, 2021 ). An examination of the changes in these levels, when introducing developmental activities and considering other factors is needed to fully understand how this leadership style develops in practice.

4.2 Practical implications

Firstly, this study has a conceptual relevance for practice ( Hamet and Maurer, 2017 ), influencing how practitioners understand the state of the art of research on SL, including its antecedents, consequences and underlying mechanisms. A widely discussed problem with academic research is that it does not reach out to practitioners ( Hamet and Maurer, 2017 ). The synthesis provided by this study has the potential to be better suited to managers’ requirements than a large body of individual research papers and it can be treated as a reference tool ( Hoang et al. , 2022 ).

Secondly, this study has also legitimizing and instrumental value for business practice ( Hamet and Maurer, 2017 ). Incorporating insights from this literature review into practical strategies and initiatives can help organizations foster a more holistic and meaningful approach to leadership, leading to numerous positive outcomes, as shown in this study. Organizations that would like to achieve the outcomes presented herein can incorporate SL criteria into their recruitment and selection processes (e.g. leader’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) awareness, one of the antecedents of SL). They also can use insights from the literature review to design SL development programs and to develop or refine ethical guidelines and policies based on the ethical and moral principles inherent in SL. In the external context, higher education is an important factor in changes in business practices. Therefore, it is helpful to include the results of this study into management courses.

4.3 Limitations and related future research directions

Although this review provides evidence-based insights after examining 126 empirical studies on SL and provides scholars with many new empirical research directions that were shown in the discussion section, it has some limitations. These can be addressed in future literature reviews. Firstly, the authors could have missed valuable studies written in languages other than English. Secondly, articles which are not indexed in Scopus or do not directly specify the keyword “spiritual leadership” were not included in the analysis. This study was focused on SL treated as an operationalized research construct, whereas future studies may focus on a leader’s general spirituality ( Pawar, 2014 ). Finally, the immanent feature of literature reviews is that they synthetize the knowledge available at a given point in time. New articles are being published continually, which requires the updating of the current findings.

Stages of the research process

Number of empirical papers which tested the relationship of spiritual leadership, by year of publication

Network map of keywords

Complex research framework derived from previous research

Ten most productive journals in terms of the number of empirical works

Number of empirical papers (out of 126)	Number of citations received	Number of citations per paper
10	326	32.60
7	79	11.29
6	59	9.83
4	219	54.75
4	594	148.50
4	37	9.25
3	3	1.00
3	10	3.33

3	11	3.67

Own work

Area	What is needed
Outcomes	Anxiety, work-life satisfaction, depression, dark-side employee behaviors ( , 2022), knowledge-related outcomes (individual sharing, hiding, sabotage) ( ), prohibitive voice behaviors ( ), psychological contract, workaholic ( , 2019), work engagement ( , 2019)
Mediators	psychological protection ( ., 2022; ., 2022), obsessive passion ( , 2021), organizational support ( ., 2019b), social capital ( , 2020a; ), personal learning ( ., 2021), meaningful work ( , 2020b), psychological need satisfaction ( , 2022), collective promotion focused ( ., 2019a), collective value fit ( , 2019), environmental passion, intrinsic motivation ( ., 2021)
Moderators	self-esteem and instrumental thought, ( , 2022; , 2022; , 2021), cultural values (collectivism, traditionality, power distance) ( ; , 2022; ), the person-environment fit perspective, demographic characteristics ( , 2022), environmental awareness ( , 2021), work centrality ( , 2021), organizational atmosphere ( , 2020), followers’ individual differences ( ), job autonomy, workplace exclusion ( , 2021), harmonious work passion, justice orientation ( , 2020b), organizational structure ( , 2020), job demands ( ), leader narcissism, motivation to lead, organizational support ( ., 2021), controlled and commitment-focused HR practices, team structure ( , 2019a), Confucian values ( , 2018), religiosity, emotional intelligence ( )
Research design	Longitudinal design ( ; ; , 2022), experimental design ( , 2020b; , 2021), the four-wave longitudinal design ( ), mixed methods ( , 2021), cross-cultural studies ( ), multi-criteria decision-making methods ( , 2021), a team or organizational unit of analysis ( , 2022), multi-group, multidivisional analyses, multi-source or secondary data sources, random sampling techniques ( ), meta-analysis ( ), qualitative analysis ( , 2022), objective measurement of performance ( , 2005)

Source(s): Own work

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Ali , M. , Usman , M. , Aziz , S. and Rofcanin , Y. ( 2022a ), “ Undermining alienative commitment through spiritual leadership: a moderated mediation model of social capital and political skill ”, Journal of Asian Business and Economic Studies , Vol. 29 No. 4 , pp. 263 - 279 , doi: 10.1108/jabes-09-2021-0155 .

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

From “doing alone” to “working together”—research on the influence of spiritual leadership on employee morale.

1 Department of Financial Management, Business School, Ludong University, Yantai, Shandong, China
2 Property Management Department, School of Management, Zhejiang Shuren University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China
3 International Economy and Trade Department, Business School, Ludong University, Yantai, Shandong, China
4 School of Management, Zhejiang Shuren University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China
5 College of Teacher Education, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, Hangzhou, China

Spiritual leadership is a beneficial attempt to implement organizational strategy and sustainable development by improving employees’ personal spiritual needs, stimulating employees’ intrinsic motivation, sense of responsibility, and calling in the work process. We theoretically illustrate that spiritual leadership has a significant positive impact on employee morale. The factors of personal self-efficacy and interpersonal trust play an intermediary chain role in this process. SPSS 24.0 and Process3.5 were used to test the mediating effect using multilevel regression analysis and the bootstrap method. Survey data collected from 278 employees from Chinese organizations supported our proposed hypotheses. The research verifies it is necessary to pay attention to improving the spiritual needs of leaders and employees in organizational development. Through the cultivation, spiritual leadership not only can stimulate the cohesion of the organization and the intrinsic motivation of the employees, but also is of great significance to enrich the spiritual life of the organization members.

1. Introduction

In the busy modern life, work is no longer just a means of making living. People invest time and energy in their work and it has become an important part of the connection between people. Work has also become the most important way to meet the material needs and spiritual needs for modern people. As to many people, the time spent on families is decreasing, while that spent on work is increasing. Terms such as “Neijuan 1 ” and “996 2 ” have emerged. In the process of work, people release their potential, complete their work goals and obtain material rewards and spiritual satisfaction to realize their self-worth. With the enrichment and satisfaction of material life, people urgently need to obtain spiritual recognition and satisfaction. Spiritual research in the workplace has emerged and flourished, with increasingly abundant research results ( Benefiel et al., 2014 ).

In spite of rich theoretical contents, modern organization motivation is difficult to play its role in the practice process, and organizations face “motivation strange phenomenon “—managers clearly attach great importance to motivation problems also invested a lot of resources and energy, but gained no essential performance promotion from employees, and even their resistance and boredom to the management. The idea of “eating from a big pot” emerged. Many employees are satisfied with the existing state of affairs and reluctant to move forward in organizations ( Zhu, 2014 ). Although stimulating employee morale has always been a problem in organizations, it is particularly urgent and important today. According to a report published on April 2020 by the Association of Human Resource Management from America., 2/3 of employers agree maintaining employee morale has always been a huge challenge; 35% of employers face employee productivity changes, while companies with more than 500 employees witness more challenging than small or medium-sized employers. 73% of residential/food service/healthcare facility staff had low morale ( Pattnaik and Jena, 2021 ).

Leaders must recognize that employees have spiritual needs, as well as physical, mental, and emotional needs ( Latham, 2013 ). At the same time, during the organizational reform, the distrust generated by drastic changes lead to low morale and spiritual loss ( Kinjerski and Skrypnek, 2004 ). In particular, the COVID-19 pandemic has greatly changed people’s work styles and lifestyles. In the face of drastic changes, people’s attitudes and emotions toward work become more complex: on one hand, they have to deal with the huge work pressure generated in the process of social and organizational changes; on the other hand, people urgently need to realize their self-worth through work achievements.

In 2021, LinkedIn conducted a survey of the most concerned issues of job seekers around the world, and found that the first value proposition of employees is a good balance between work and life, followed by excellent salary and benefits. People no longer regard work as a means to make a living, but to gain respect and need, so as to obtain a higher level of life experience, which is also a beneficial discussion of the satisfaction and improvement of human spiritual needs 3 . In this context, the issues of motivation and trust become major issues for the survival and development of organizations, especially for enterprises, and these issues can be offset by the positive effects of spiritual in the workplace ( Kinjerski and Skrypnek, 2004 ; Karakas and Sarigollu, 2019 ; Ali et al., 2020 , 2022a , b ).

Although spiritual leadership theory is put forward in Western culture, it is also suitable in the context of Chinese culture ( Chen et al., 2012 ; Chen and Li, 2013 ; Yang et al., 2014 ). Confucius said, “With good manners, people do not dare to disrespect; Good justice, the people dare not refuse; Good faith, then people dare not use the feeling “. It is the exact impact interpretation of spiritual leadership on the subordinates. Therefore, this paper tries to explain that spiritual leadership is directly and indirectly related to employee morale.

First, based on the self-determination theory(SDT), employee morale and performance are more influenced by intrinsic motivation( Deci and Ryan, 2000 ; Ryan and Deci, 2000 ). Experiencing spiritual leadership, employees feel caring and love from leaders, which is more likely to stimulate their intrinsic motivations. This stimulation can be explained by the positive effect of spiritual leadership on employee’s self-efficacy at the individual level and leads to promotion of employee morale.

Second, as the research combines workplace spirituality theory and leadership theory, spiritual leadership provides ideas and methods for leaders in organization to enhance spiritual needs. While they believe in the ability, integrity and kindness of their leaders, followers are easier to trust and are willing to engage in risky behavior ( Mayer et al., 1995 ). Also, Avolio et al. (2004) believe that the trust from leaders is related to the positive attitudes of followers. Therefore, spiritual leadership increases employee morale by improving interpersonal trust within organizations.

Additionally, spiritual leaders enrich the spiritual needs and the members’ spiritual world by using vision, hope and altruistic love to ascend their intrinsic motivation to form the sense of calling and responsibility in the workplace so as to achieve a higher level of life experience. The crossover principle of conservation of resources (COR) is invoked to explain the positive relationship between spiritual leadership and employee morale. We conceptualized spiritual leadership as contextual resources while the self-efficacy and interpersonal trust as the employees’ personal resources. Spiritual leaders’ core values and vision associated with this type of leadership can transmit to employees ( Ali et al., 2022a ).

We developed a theoretical model to illustrate how spiritual leadership influence on employee morale stressing on the influence mechanism and process. Spiritual leadership positively affects employee self-efficacy, further positively affects interpersonal trust within the organization, and ultimately improves employee morale. At the same time, we demonstrated all the hypothesis empirically using the data from the questionnaire survey from the organization members of China.

2. Theoretical basis and research hypothesis

2.1. spiritual leadership.

Spiritual leadership, as a more spiritual and faith-based leadership type, focuses on the organization’s vision. The development of workplace spirituality, character ethics, positive psychology, and other theories provides a consensus on the values, attitudes, and behaviors necessary for positive human health and well-being, thus enriching the theoretical content of spiritual leadership.

As for spiritual leadership, scholars have made different definitions from different perspectives ( Wu and Xiang, 2021 ), including the perspective of behavioral purpose of leaders ( Aslan and Korkut, 2015 ), organizational perspective ( Thompson, 2004 ), individual perspective ( Reave, 2005 ), and dimensional content ( Sendjaya, 2007 ). The widely accepted definition originates Fry’s behavioral process perspective, which defines spiritual leadership as the causal leadership theory that spiritual leadership essentially achieves organizational change through intrinsic motivation and learning ( Fry, 2003 ; Fry et al., 2005 , 2017 ). Spiritual leadership involves intrinsically inspiring values, attitudes, and behaviors in oneself and others to obtain a spiritual sense of existence through a sense of calling and belonging ( Fry et al., 2005 ). Spiritual leadership sources from inner life; altruistic love is the culture foundation while hope/belief is the impetus for the vision of serving key stakeholders ( Fry et al., 2017 ; Yang and Fry, 2018 ; Ali et al., 2020 ).

To sum up, the spiritual leadership has three key features: (1). A high level of moral values, such as integrity, honesty, caring, notarization, etc.; (2). Encouraging and guiding others, valuing mutual connections with subordinates and collaborators; (3). Motivating persons to achieve organizational vision and mission, to explore the significance of the work ( Wu and Xiang, 2021 ).

Many scholars adopted empirical methods to analyze and study spiritual leadership’s antecedents and influence factors and drew abundant conclusions (see Table 1 for details).

Table 1 . Partial results of empirical studies on spiritual leadership.

The research done by Chinese scholars on the variables of spiritual leadership mainly focuses on the individual level, including employees’ psychological capital, emotional commitment, proactive behavior, autonomous motivation, task performance, creativity and innovation, employees’ expostulation, retention will, and craftsman spirit. Scholars affirm the positive influence of spiritual leadership on employees. As for the mediating variables of spiritual leadership’s influence, the main conclusions of current research are: individual-level factors include psychological capital ( Deng, 2016 ), autonomous motivation ( Shi et al., 2018 ), psychological toughness ( Wang and Wang, 2019 ), and psychological need satisfaction ( Deng et al., 2021 ; Wu, 2021 ). Organizational-level factors include leader-member exchange ( Meng et al., 2018 ; Ni et al., 2019 ), workplace spirituality ( Deng et al., 2020 ; Ke and Ding, 2020 ), organizational identification etc.

Scholars believed that spiritual leadership has a positive impact on individual employees ( Usman et al., 2021 ). While some scholars have proved that spiritual leadership has a negative impact on individual passive factors, as work alienation ( Khan et al., 2019 ; Wang and Wang, 2019 ; Ali et al., 2022b ).

But whether the positive impact on individuals can rise to the level of the organization, that is, the content and mode of the impact of spiritual leadership on the organization are not clear. At the same time, the contents of outcome variables, mediating variables, and moderating variables of various studies are overlapping and repeated, so it is urgent to clarify the logical mechanism of applying spiritual leadership to affect employees in organizations in the context of Chinese culture.

2.2. Employee morale

The theoretical content of employee morale definition includes needs psychology, needs hierarchy, “field” theory and organizational identity, etc. ( Baehr and Renck, 1958 ; Huang et al., 2015 ). Although scholars have different perspectives and definitions of morale, they can reach a consensus on the essence of morale. That is an attitude, a kind of enthusiasm for labor, manifested as a state of mind. Employee morale at work results from the interaction between individuals and the group. In this process, individual needs are met, and individuals identify with the organizational goals, resulting in a harmonious and consistent situation. Therefore, individuals are willing to cooperate with other members of the group ( Huang et al., 2015 ).

Employee morale includes a mix of emotions and attitudes that can generate high levels of energy, spirit, and willingness to work to improve organizational performance ( Pattnaik and Jena, 2021 ). The positive feelings of employees, such as enthusiasm and willingness to cooperate clearly means high morale. Similarly, low morale depicts employees’ negative emotions, such as dissatisfaction, discouragement, and dislike of work, which leading to increased employee turnover ( Kanimozhi and Vinothkumar, 2018 ). Compared with employees with low morale, employees with high morale are more willing to work harder and are more committed to organizational goals ( Bowles and Cooper, 2009 ).

By establishing the consistency between employees’ personal and organizational values, spiritual leadership enables employees to recognize and respect spiritually. The employees are more willing to regard work as a requirement of self-realization rather than a simple means of making a living, and they are willing to devote more time and energy to work. Spiritual leadership can keep leaders focusing and motivating employees effectively, thus solving the low morale of employees ( Hyson, 2013 ). Spiritual leadership is the “beacon” of employee career development, which guides and promotes employee career development ( Yang et al., 2014 ). As spiritual leadership attaches importance to employees’ satisfaction at the spiritual level, it significantly impacts employees’ happiness, satisfaction, organizational commitment, and other positive emotions. Spiritual leadership has a significant positive impact on career calling ( Shi et al., 2018 ), positively affecting employees’ work experience. Therefore, spiritual leadership can improve the employee morale, and then we put forward hypothesis 1: spiritual leadership has a significant positive impact on organizational staff morale.

2.3. Interpersonal trust

Trust is defined differently in different areas ( Rousseau et al., 1998 ): Economists tend to see trust calculable ( Williamson, 1993 ), or institutionalized ( Hicks et al., 1974 ); Psychologists generally build their own evaluation of trust based on the attributes of the trustor and trustee and value a series of internal perceptions generated by personal attributes ( Rotter, 1968 ; Tyler and Lind, 1990 ). As the complex meaning of trust, this paper only discusses the content of interpersonal trust within the organization, including the trust of employees in leaders and the trust between colleagues.

Leaders in organization plays an important role in the process of trust-building. Trust in leaders and professional ethics play a mediating role in the relationship between spiritual leadership and organizational virtues ( Taboli and Abdollahzadeh, 2016 ). In Chinese enterprises, some characteristics of leaders (such as moral quality, paternalism, etc.) have a profound impact on the psychology and behavior of employees ( Zhu and Akhtar, 2014 ). Spiritual leadership can inspire employees from the spiritual level, including vision, hope, and generous love, to form an atmosphere of unity and enhance employees’ confidence in themselves, leaders, colleagues and the organization. Spiritual leadership can influence employees’ expostulation through the chain mediating effect of organizational atmosphere and psychological security ( Wang et al., 2017 ), which shows that spiritual leadership positively impacts the spiritual atmosphere within an organization. Therefore, hypothesis 2 is proposed: spiritual leadership has a significant positive impact on interpersonal trust.

Trust in leaders is associated with positive attitudes of followers, which in turn is associated with positive behaviors ( Avolio et al., 2004 ). It is the most direct, economical and efficient way for leaders to improve the effectiveness of the organization ( Cao et al., 2008 ). Positive interpersonal trust will form an upward working atmosphere. Employees, perceiving this atmosphere, will have the requirements of self-value realization and work hard, thus improving organizational staff morale as a result. Therefore, this paper proposes hypothesis 3: interpersonal trust has a significant positive impact on employee morale.

2.4. Self-efficacy

Self-efficacy is defined as confidence in their ability to mobilize the motivation, cognitive resources, and course of action to perform a particular action in a given environment ( Bandura, 1977 , 2002 ). As a subjective feeling of evaluating one’s own ability, self-efficacy will affect employees’ attitude, emotions, and behavior performance at work ( Chen and Li, 2017 ). Employees with high self-efficacy show more positive job performance ( Stajkovic and Luthans, 2010 ). Higher self-efficacy among employees in an organization will lead to overall positive motivation and pursuit and higher employee morale. Therefore, hypothesis 4 is proposed: self-efficacy has a significant positive impact on employee morale.

Employees with high self-efficacy will show strong interpersonal coordination and communication skills and be more active and proactive in their communication with leaders and colleagues ( Yan and Chen, 2009 ). Such positive communication will enhance the understanding among members, thus providing a favorable premise for forming a positive trust relationship. Positive communication will also be helpful to build a good working atmosphere, conducive to forming a trust. Therefore, hypothesis 5 is proposed: self-efficacy has a significant positive impact on interpersonal trust.

Since spiritual leadership focuses on stimulating employees’ spiritual needs to improve their intrinsic motivation and value, as well as their work experience and status, it is certainly conducive to developed employees’ positive psychological state and improve their psychological capital level ( Yang et al., 2015 ). Therefore, hypothesis 6 is proposed: spiritual leadership significantly positively impacts self-efficacy.

Based on theoretical and empirical analysis, researchers believe that transformational leadership positively impacts team effectiveness through the cognitive trust of leaders, while service leadership positively impacts team psychological security through emotional trust; they both improve team performance, and trust’s mediating effect is proved ( Schaubroeck et al., 2011 ). According to the research content of hypotheses 1 (Spiritual Leadership ⇒ Employee Moral), 2 (Spiritual Leadership ⇒ Interpersonal Trust), and 3 (Interpersonal Trust ⇒ Employee Moral), hypothesis 7 is proposed: interpersonal trust plays a mediating role between spiritual leadership and employee morale.

Spiritual leadership stimulates positive behaviors and attitudes of followers by enhancing their psychological capital level ( Yang et al., 2015 ). A strong sense of self-efficacy can produce high motivation and excellent performance when employees’ personal and organizational goals are consistent ( Appelbaum and Hare, 1996 ). Spiritual leadership meets the spiritual needs of employees and confirms that employees’ goals are consistent with the organization’s vision. This can enhance employees’ morale and improve the organization’s performance. Therefore, based on hypotheses 1 (Spiritual Leadership ⇒ Employee Moral), 4 (Self-efficacy ⇒ Employee Moral), and 6 (Spiritual Leadership ⇒ Self-efficacy), hypothesis 8 is proposed: self-efficacy plays a mediating role in the relationship between spiritual leadership and employee morale.

Therefore, based on hypotheses 5 (Self-efficacy ⇒ Interpersonal Trust), 7 (Spiritual Leadership ⇒ Interpersonal Trust ⇒ Employee Moral), and 8(Spiritual Leadership ⇒ Self-efficacy ⇒ Employee Moral), hypothesis 9 is proposed: Self-efficacy and interpersonal trust play an intermediary chain role between spiritual leadership and employee morale.

Based on the above analysis, We draw the model diagram of the research hypothesis in Figure 1 .

Figure 1 . The research hypothesis model diagram: the relationship between spiritual leadership and employee morale: a chain mediation of self-efficacy and interpersonal trust.

3. Research design and analysis

3.1. data collection.

This study adopts the method of a questionnaire survey to collect a wide range of samples from specific people in specific industries, which is relatively low cost ( Heeringa et al., 2017 ; Rasool and Samma, 2020 ; Shafait et al., 2021 ). We invited the university alumni to help us complete the questionnaire. Because alumni involve in different majors and industries, it can be considered random questionnaires. We asked two college English teachers to help us translate all the items of the questionnaire together and performed preliminary testing. The written expression of some items was adjusted based on communication with respondents in the preliminary test. All questionnaires were conducted through the Questionnaire Star platform 4 and post-interview between June and August, 2020.

The spiritual leadership questionnaire is developed by Fry et al. (2017) , including 17 items from three dimensions: vision, hope, and altruistic love. The employee morale questionnaire is developed by Griffith’s research ( Griffith, 2010 ), and we select the three dimensions with the highest proportion of principal component analysis among the six dimensions, including supervision, job satisfaction, and job involvement, with 26 items. The self-efficacy questionnaire is developed from the self-efficacy dimension of Psychological Capital by Luthans et al. (2007) and contains seven items in a single dimension. All the three scales were Likert 7-point scales in which 1 = “strongly disagree” and 7 = “strongly agree.” As the questionnaire on interpersonal trust, 18 items are selected for the two dimensions including trust in leaders from Nyhan and Marlowe (1997) and trust in colleagues developed by Seers et al. (1995) . This questionnaire asked the sample to choose the number from the scale in which 1 = “nearly zero “and 7 = “nearly 100%”.

Respondents are required to provide information of gender, length of the time employed, working positions, their organization’s nature and industry. A total of 278 valid questionnaires were collected from June to August 2020, including 105 males (37.8%) and 173 females (62.2%). 73 (26.3%) have worked for 1–5 years, 89 (32.0%) have worked for 6–10 years, 67 (24.1%) have worked for 11–15 years, 21 (7.6%) have worked for 16–20 years, and 28 (10.1%) have worked for more than 20 years. There are 134 ordinary employees (48.2%), 67 grass-roots managers (24.1%), 57 middle managers (20.5%) and 20 senior managers (7.2%). There are 100 employees in state-owned enterprises (36.0%), 108 employees in private enterprises (38.8%), 17 employees in wholly foreign-owned enterprises (6.1%), and one employee in a sino-foreign joint venture (0.4%), and 52 employees in non-profit organizations (18.7%).We classified the organizational industries according to the Classification of Industries in the National Economy, which began on March 29,2019 in China. The sample involved all 16 industries. Among them, the most involved is in education, finance, public services, and manufacturing. The description of the questionnaire sample characteristics was shown in Table 2 .

Table 2 . Description of the questionnaire sample characteristics.

As multiple research variables are high-order variables and contain multiple dimensions, principal component variables of each dimension are extracted as dimension variables. Then the mean value of each dimension of the questionnaire is taken as the research variable. Some items with standard loading coefficients less than 0.6 (item 5 of the generous love dimension of spiritual leadership and item 1 of the morale supervision dimension) were removed in extracting principal components. All dimension items passed Bartlett’s sphericity test and were suitable for factor analysis. The specific data can be found in Table 3 .

Table 3 . Extraction of model variables and dimension factors, reliability and validity test table.

3.2. Reliability and validity tests

The reliability test of the questionnaire data shows that the α coefficients of spiritual leadership, employee morale, interpersonal trust, and self-efficacy are above 0.9, indicating the high-reliability quality of the data. Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted for each variable and dimension, and the corresponding combined reliability (CR value) and mean–variance extraction (AVE value) were both greater than 0.7 and 0.5, indicating good aggregation validity of data (see Table 3 for specific data).

3.3. Hypothesis test

In this research, spiritual leadership is taken as an independent variable, employee morale as a dependent variable, and self-efficacy and interpersonal trust as intermediary variables. The SPSS 24.0 software is employed to test the theoretical hypothesis through multiple rounds of hierarchical regression. And plug-in Process 3.5 is adopted to test Model 7, 8, 9, the integration of the chain intermediary, and the bootstrap method is used to repeatedly sample 5,000 times to calculate the 95% confidence interval, respectively. The results are shown in Tables 4 , 5 . In the regression process, the multicollinearity is tested, and the VIF coefficients are less than 2, indicating no multicollinearity between variables.

Table 4 . Test results of intermediary effect model between spiritual leadership and employee morale.

Table 5 . Analysis of intermediary effect between spiritual leadership and employee morale.

It can be seen from Table 4 . that spiritual leadership has a significant positive impact on employee morale (Hypothesis 1 proved, t = 25.488). Spiritual leadership significantly positively impacts self-efficacy (Hypothesis 6 proved, t = 13.61). Spiritual leadership and self-efficacy significantly positively impact interpersonal trust (Hypotheses 2 and 5 proved, t = 10.657 and t = 10.71). Spiritual leadership, self-efficacy, and interpersonal trust significantly affect employee morale (Hypothesis 3 and 4 proved, t = 10.999/8.289/12.783). After adding the variables of self-efficacy and interpersonal trust, the impact of spiritual leadership on employee morale is still significant, and the explanatory ability of the equation to the dependent variable is enhanced ( R 2 increased).

According to the analysis results in Table 5 , the confidence interval corresponding to each indirect path does not contain 0, indicating that the mediation effect is significant and the chain mediation is established. That is, self-efficacy plays a partial intermediary role between spiritual leadership and employee morale (Hypothesis 7 proved), interpersonal trust plays a partial intermediary role between spiritual leadership and employee morale (Hypothesis 8 proved), and self-efficacy and interpersonal trust play an intermediary chain role between spiritual leadership and employee morale (Hypothesis 9 proved).

4. Conclusion and recommendations

4.1. conclusion.

We theoretically analyze the positive correlation between spiritual leadership, employee morale, interpersonal trust and self-efficacy and established a theoretical model of the influence of spiritual leadership on employee morale, expressed spiritual leadership has a positive impact on employees’ self-efficacy from a personal perspective, then affects interpersonal trust, and ultimately affects employee morale. We also empirically prove the following conclusions based on questionnaire data from different industries in China: spiritual leadership has a positive impact on self-efficacy, interpersonal trust, and employee morale; self-efficacy and interpersonal trust play a separate intermediary role and an intermediary chain role between spiritual leadership and employee morale. The research proves the influence mechanism of spiritual leadership on employee morale: spiritual leadership has a positive impact on self-efficacy, which shows that spiritual leadership can improve employees’ spiritual needs, stimulate their intrinsic motivation and generate more positive work incentive from the individual perspective; spiritual leadership and self-efficacy positively affect interpersonal trust, which shows that spiritual leadership can produce a more trusted working atmosphere within the organization; spiritual leadership, self-efficacy and interpersonal trust have a positive impact on employee morale, which reveals that spiritual leadership can stimulate the cohesion and sense of calling at the organizational level from the individual and collective levels, enable employees to improve their spiritual needs in the workplace, and form a unique organizational spirit and culture, which is the driving force for the sustainable development of organizations. It can be seen that the spiritual leadership has a diffusion role, which can expand from the personal inner life and spiritual care of the leaders to the individual staff and the whole organization playing the role of a “beacon” ( Yang et al., 2014 ). At the same time, interpersonal trust has a significant mediating effect on spiritual leadership and employee morale, which shows that recognition and trust play a vital role in working relationships on one hand; and on the other hand, improving employee morale should rely more on the improvement of working atmosphere and environment. The application of spiritual leadership is beneficial to atmosphere. Based on the improvement of organizational cohesion, employees’ working attitude and motivation will be more effective. Their intrinsic motivation is stimulated, which becomes more passionate.

By studying the direct effect of spiritual leadership on employee morale and the indirect effect of self-efficacy and interpersonal trust chain intermediary, this paper analyzes the mechanism and mode of spiritual leadership to improve employee morale. It discusses the application of spiritual leadership to organizational culture and strategy development. It enriches the content of workplace spirituality research, and provides evidence support and conclusion suggestions for the improvement of employee morale and the construction of organizational atmosphere in the context of Chinese cultural situation.

4.2. Recommendations

Spiritual leadership helps to improve employee morale from two aspects: intrinsic motivation and the trust working atmosphere. Improving the workplace spiritual level will develop a unique competitive advantage for the organizations, conducive to dealing with the complex and changeable business environment and forming the driving force of sustainable development. For the sustainable development of organizations, the following suggestions are put forward:

(1) Pay attention to spiritual factors in organizations to meet the spiritual needs of the employees. The spiritual content in the organization requires the participation of all members. And the formation of vision planning, hope culture, and altruistic love values require leaders’ involvement in the organization. To improve the spiritual leadership of the organization, we should emphasize the important role of spiritual factors such as self-reflection and mindfulness in the development of leadership to guide the organization to implement the practical activities of spiritual leadership. In Sounds True (A multimedia publishing company in Colorado, United States), employees are encouraged to “work with their complete selves and work with others”; at 11 a.m., the clock rings for 15 min for meditation or silence ( Fry et al., 2017 ). Some organizations support conversations between employees about soul needs, personal achievements and spiritual aspirations.

(2) Carry out practical activities to improve the internal spirit in the workplace. It is suggested that in organizing various activities, attention should be paid to the construction of members’ personal spiritual life and trust atmosphere in the organization. Practical activities for internal life, such as reflection on values, can not only improve the spiritual needs of employees and stimulate their intrinsic motivation in the process of work; moreover, it has developed a unique spirit and energetic atmosphere in the organization, enhanced the sense of belonging of employees, and is conducive to improve the quality of organizational services.

(3) In this study, spiritual leadership plays a positive role, and most scholars reached positive conclusions. In the process of leaders in organization ship building, we should pay full attention to the inner life and good quality of leaders and make an objective evaluation of their belief enthusiasm. The spiritual needs and helpful qualities of the candidates should be important dimensions in choosing leaders in organization. While many organizations choose leaders with better performance in reality.

The theory and practice of spiritual leadership in China are both in the initial stage of development. With the enrichment of material life and the increasing spiritual needs of organizational employees, spiritual leadership will become an important part of organizational culture and be well valued and promoted. At the same time, spiritual leadership can be combined with organizational behavior to conduct new discussions, such as the impact of the CEO’s social responsibility on organizational performance and employee performance ( Khan et al., 2022 ; Liu et al., 2022 ).

5. Limitations and future research

(1) Due to the limitation of objective conditions, the questionnaire survey is randomly distributed to alumni via the questionnaire star website. There is no excessive condition setting for the respondents. The paired questionnaire content should be designed for the research objects of specific industries or characteristics, and the sample size should be expanded in future study. In that case, it is believed that more rich conclusions will be drawn.

(2) The analysis of the influence mechanism of spiritual leadership can focus on the research of organizational work atmosphere. The combination of in-depth interviews and questionnaires can be organized for specific cases, which can help excavate and discover the unique spiritual content of the organization. Targeted analysis can also be conducted for leaders in different industries and at different levels. Since it involves subjective cognition, the application situation of some questionnaire items may be different, and it is also very important to develop the content of the questionnaire under the Chinese culture situation. The development of such a questionnaire also needs to be done through in-depth interviews.

(3) In the research model, only gender factors in the control variables negatively impact self-efficacy and employee morale; women’s self-efficacy and employee morale are lower than men. This may be related to the cultural situational factors. In the later research process, we can study the demographic variables of spiritual leadership through interviews and theoretical analysis.

Data availability statement

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Ethics statement

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by Ludong University Research Ethics Review Committee. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

Author contributions

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work and approved it for publication.

This research was supported by the MOE (Ministry of Education in China) Youth Foundation Project of Humanities and Social Sciences (Project No. 19YJC630180); the Youth Foundation of Shandong Natural Science Foundation (Project No. ZR2022QG052); the Open Fund Project of Zhejiang Modern Service Research Center (Project No. SXFJZ202202).

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

1. ^ Neijuanis a net word in China, it comes from "involution," which means internal competition in an organization.

2. ^ 996 is a net word in China. It means working from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. for 6 days a week.

3. ^ LinkedIn (2022). LinkedIn Global Talent Trend Report, 2022 https://max.book118.com/html/2022/0722/5021341001004312.shtm , 37(1):86–96.

4. ^ https://www.wjx.cn/

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Keywords: self-efficacy, interpersonal trust, sustainable development, spiritual leadership, employee morale

Citation: Jiang J, Ye Z, Liu J, Shah WUH and Shafait Z (2023) From “doing alone” to “working together”—Research on the influence of spiritual leadership on employee morale. Front. Psychol . 14:992910. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.992910

Received: 13 July 2022; Accepted: 15 February 2023; Published: 15 March 2023.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2023 Jiang, Ye, Liu, Shah and Shafait. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Zhixiao Ye, [email protected] ; Wasi Ul Hassan Shah, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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From “doing alone” to “working together”—Research on the influence of spiritual leadership on employee morale

1 Department of Financial Management, Business School, Ludong University, Yantai, Shandong, China

2 Property Management Department, School of Management, Zhejiang Shuren University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China

3 International Economy and Trade Department, Business School, Ludong University, Yantai, Shandong, China

Wasi Ul Hassan Shah

4 School of Management, Zhejiang Shuren University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China

Zahid Shafait

5 College of Teacher Education, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, Hangzhou, China

Associated Data

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

1. Introduction

2. Theoretical basis and research hypothesis

2.1. spiritual leadership.

Many scholars adopted empirical methods to analyze and study spiritual leadership’s antecedents and influence factors and drew abundant conclusions (see Table 1 for details).

Partial results of empirical studies on spiritual leadership.

Perspective	Antecedents	Influence factors	Intermediary effect	Moderating effect
Individual	Characteristics altruism and trust Confucian values…	Employee behavior Job performance Psychology/attitude Career development…	Psychological capital Employees’ self-esteem Self-efficacy Employee cognitive Trust in leaders Professional ethics…	Gender Length of service Culture Perceived organization support Emotional intelligence…
Team	Common vision Incentive mechanism…	Team performance Team innovation…
Organization	Common vision Incentive mechanism…	Organization performance Organization culture Organization transformation…

The authors arranged referring to Wu Xiangfan, Xiang Yi. Review and Prospect of spiritual leadership in organizations. Journal of Xinjiang University of Finance and economics , 2021 (2): 13.

2.2. Employee morale

2.3. Interpersonal trust

2.4. Self-efficacy

Based on the above analysis, We draw the model diagram of the research hypothesis in Figure 1 .

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is fpsyg-14-992910-g001.jpg

The research hypothesis model diagram: the relationship between spiritual leadership and employee morale: a chain mediation of self-efficacy and interpersonal trust.

3. Research design and analysis

3.1. data collection.

Description of the questionnaire sample characteristics.

	NO.	Items	Frequency	Percentage(%)
Gender	1	Male	105	37.8
Gender	2	Female	173	62.2
Total				100
Length of the time employed	1	1–5 years	73	16.3
	2	6–10 years	89	32.0
	3	11–15 years	67	24.1
	4	16–20 years	21	7.6
	5	More than 20 years	28	10.1
Total				100
Position	1	Ordinary employees	134	48.2
	2	Grass-roots managers	67	24.1
	3	Middle managers	57	20.5
	4	Senior managers	20	7.2
Total				100
Organizational nature	1	State-owned enterprises	100	36.0
	2	Private enterprises	108	38.8
	3	Wholly foreign-owned enterprises	17	6.1
	4	Sino-foreign joint venture	1	0.4
	5	Non-profit organizations	52	18.7
Total				100
Industry	1	agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, and fishery	3	1.1
	2	mining	3	1.1
	3	manufacturing	33	11.9
	4	construction	10	3.6
	5	wholesale and retail	15	5.4
	6	transportation, storage, and postal services	11	4.0
	7	finance	52	18.7
	8	realty	8	2.9
	9	education	57	20.5
	10	accommodation and Catering	5	1.8
	11	resident services, repair, and other services	5	1.8
	12	scientific research and technology services industry	7	2.5
	13	information transmission, software, and information technology services	19	6.8
	14	culture, sports, and entertainment	1	0.4
	15	leasing and business services	7	2.5
	16	public services and management	42	15.1
Total				100

Extraction of model variables and dimension factors, reliability and validity test table.

Variable name	Dimension name	KMO ( < 0.001)	Extraction sums of squared loadings % of variance	Standardized Clonbach coefficient	CR	AV
Spiritual leadership	Vision	0.901	83.0%	0.976	0.949	0.787
	Hope	0.893	84.3%		0.954	0.807
	Altruistic love	0.904	84.0%		0.962	0.809
Employee moral	Supervision	0.962	76.7%	0.976	0.976	0.745
	Job involvement	0.879	77.9%		0.942	0.730
	Job satisfaction	0.869	79.6%		0.934	0.739
Interpersonal trust	Trust in leaders	0.934	88.1%	0.972	0.981	0.864
Interpersonal trust	Trust in colleagues	0.935	74.8%	0.972	0.962	0.719
Self-efficacy		0.906	72.8%	0.934	0.933	0.666

3.2. Reliability and validity tests

3.3. Hypothesis test

In this research, spiritual leadership is taken as an independent variable, employee morale as a dependent variable, and self-efficacy and interpersonal trust as intermediary variables. The SPSS 24.0 software is employed to test the theoretical hypothesis through multiple rounds of hierarchical regression. And plug-in Process 3.5 is adopted to test Model 7, 8, 9, the integration of the chain intermediary, and the bootstrap method is used to repeatedly sample 5,000 times to calculate the 95% confidence interval, respectively. The results are shown in Tables 4 , ,5. 5 . In the regression process, the multicollinearity is tested, and the VIF coefficients are less than 2, indicating no multicollinearity between variables.

Test results of intermediary effect model between spiritual leadership and employee morale.

	Self-efficacy			Interpersonal trust			Employee morale			Employee morale
	.	SE	.	.	SE	.	.	SE	.	.	SE	.
Constant	–	0.214	0.462	–	0.142	1.548	–	0.137	0.63	–	0.082	−0.653
Gender	−0.117	0.097	−2.477	−0.033	0.065	−0.951	−0.07	0.062	−2.073	0	0.038	0.004
Working years	0.076	0.038	1.609	−0.052	0.026	−1.512	0.018	0.025	0.545	0.006	0.015	0.315
Working position	0.094	0.049	1.949	−0.02	0.033	−0.584	0.058	0.031	1.686	0.023	0.019	1.123
nature of organizations	−0.024	0.033	−0.504	0.007	0.022	0.215	−0.006	0.021	−0.18	0.002	0.012	0.088
Spiritual leadership	0.625	0.049	13.61	0.459	0.042	10.657	0.834	0.031	25.488	0.331	0.029	10.999
Self-efficacy				0.47	0.04	10.71				0.255	0.028	8.289
Interpersonal trust										0.456	0.035	12.783
	0.433				0.698		0.707			0.898
value.	F(5,272) = 41.509			F(6,271) = 107.687			F(5,272) = 134.379			F(7,270) = 340.603

(1) N = 278; (2) * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001.

Analysis of intermediary effect between spiritual leadership and employee morale.

Terms	Effect	Boot SE	BootLLCI	BootULCI	Standardized effect quantity
H7:Spiritual Leadership⇒Self-efficacy⇒Employee Moral	0.152	0.014	0.121	0.174	0.159
H8:Spiritual Leadership⇒Interpersonal Trust⇒Employee Moral	0.200	0.032	0.141	0.263	0.309
H9:Spiritual Leadership⇒Self-efficacy⇒Interpersonal Trust⇒Employee Moral	0.128	0.02	0.088	0.166	0.134
H1:Spiritual Leadership⇒Employee Moral	0.797	0.031	0.736	0.858	0.503

Boot LLCI refers to the lower limit of 95% interval of bootstrap sampling, BootULCI refers to the upper limit of 95% interval of bootstrap sampling.

4. Conclusion and recommendations

4.1. conclusion.

4.2. Recommendations

Pay attention to spiritual factors in organizations to meet the spiritual needs of the employees. The spiritual content in the organization requires the participation of all members. And the formation of vision planning, hope culture, and altruistic love values require leaders’ involvement in the organization. To improve the spiritual leadership of the organization, we should emphasize the important role of spiritual factors such as self-reflection and mindfulness in the development of leadership to guide the organization to implement the practical activities of spiritual leadership. In Sounds True (A multimedia publishing company in Colorado, United States), employees are encouraged to “work with their complete selves and work with others”; at 11 a.m., the clock rings for 15 min for meditation or silence ( Fry et al., 2017 ). Some organizations support conversations between employees about soul needs, personal achievements and spiritual aspirations.
Carry out practical activities to improve the internal spirit in the workplace. It is suggested that in organizing various activities, attention should be paid to the construction of members’ personal spiritual life and trust atmosphere in the organization. Practical activities for internal life, such as reflection on values, can not only improve the spiritual needs of employees and stimulate their intrinsic motivation in the process of work; moreover, it has developed a unique spirit and energetic atmosphere in the organization, enhanced the sense of belonging of employees, and is conducive to improve the quality of organizational services.
In this study, spiritual leadership plays a positive role, and most scholars reached positive conclusions. In the process of leaders in organization ship building, we should pay full attention to the inner life and good quality of leaders and make an objective evaluation of their belief enthusiasm. The spiritual needs and helpful qualities of the candidates should be important dimensions in choosing leaders in organization. While many organizations choose leaders with better performance in reality.

5. Limitations and future research

Due to the limitation of objective conditions, the questionnaire survey is randomly distributed to alumni via the questionnaire star website. There is no excessive condition setting for the respondents. The paired questionnaire content should be designed for the research objects of specific industries or characteristics, and the sample size should be expanded in future study. In that case, it is believed that more rich conclusions will be drawn.
The analysis of the influence mechanism of spiritual leadership can focus on the research of organizational work atmosphere. The combination of in-depth interviews and questionnaires can be organized for specific cases, which can help excavate and discover the unique spiritual content of the organization. Targeted analysis can also be conducted for leaders in different industries and at different levels. Since it involves subjective cognition, the application situation of some questionnaire items may be different, and it is also very important to develop the content of the questionnaire under the Chinese culture situation. The development of such a questionnaire also needs to be done through in-depth interviews.
In the research model, only gender factors in the control variables negatively impact self-efficacy and employee morale; women’s self-efficacy and employee morale are lower than men. This may be related to the cultural situational factors. In the later research process, we can study the demographic variables of spiritual leadership through interviews and theoretical analysis.

Data availability statement

Ethics statement.

Author contributions

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work and approved it for publication.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s note

1 Neijuanis a net word in China, it comes from "involution," which means internal competition in an organization.

2 996 is a net word in China. It means working from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. for 6 days a week.

3 LinkedIn (2022). LinkedIn Global Talent Trend Report, 2022 https://max.book118.com/html/2022/0722/5021341001004312.shtm , 37(1):86–96.

4 https://www.wjx.cn/

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DOI: 10.1080/14766086.2020.1728568
Corpus ID: 213523455

Spiritual leadership: Current status and Agenda for future research and practice

Jihye Oh , Jia Wang
Published in Journal of Management… 16 February 2020

50 Citations

Spiritual leadership in educational organization: a systematic literature review, spirituality in leadership – a psychologicalapproach, a framework for leader, spiritual, and moral development, spiritual leadership in healthcare: a bibliometric analysis, a systematic literature review on spiritual leadership: antecedents, mechanism, moderators and outcomes, leading without a self: implications of buddhist practices for pseudo-spiritual leadership, spirituality in organizational leaders – ways to inner, ways to wisdom, assessing religious leadership: a scoping review of leadership effectiveness criteria and current trends in the academic literature, spirituality at workplace: role of spiritual leadership, productivity, and emotional exhaustion, unlocking employees resilience in turbulent times: the role of spiritual leadership and meaning, 101 references, the research agenda of spiritual leadership. where do we stand.

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Spirituality and Servant Leadership

A Personal Reflection of a Corporate Leader

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First Online: 26 November 2022
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N. A. C. Samarasinghe 3 ,
U. A. Kumara 4 ,
M. S. S. Perera 5 &
R. Ulluwishewa 6

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Literature on servant leadership suggests that spirituality and servant leadership are mutually reinforcing. As leaders grow spiritually, they begin to exhibit servant leadership characteristics. On the other hand, as leaders practice servant leadership, they evolve spiritually. This chapter at first conceptualizes spirituality in rational terms and explains its relationship with servant leadership showing how servant leadership could contribute to employees’ spiritual growth. Then, the first author reflects on his experience as a corporate leader, examining how spirituality and servant leadership reinforce each other. He then portrays how servant leadership contributes to employees’ spiritual growth. The chapter concludes with policy recommendations.

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Ref: The impact of spirituality on work performance Habibollah Javanmard Management Faculty, Islamic Azad University, Arak Branch, Iran, 2013

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Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Nugegoda, Sri Lanka

N. A. C. Samarasinghe

Faculty of Management Studies and Commerce, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Nugegoda, Sri Lanka

U. A. Kumara

Department of Business Economics, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Nugegoda, Sri Lanka

M. S. S. Perera

Center for Spirituality in Sustainable Business Management, Faculty of Management Studies and Commerce, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Nugegoda, Sri Lanka

R. Ulluwishewa

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School of Business, Woodbury University, Burbank, CA, USA

Satinder K. Dhiman

Robertson School of Government, Regent University, Virginia Beach, VA, USA

Gary E. Roberts

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Samarasinghe, N.A.C., Kumara, U.A., Perera, M.S.S., Ulluwishewa, R. (2022). Spirituality and Servant Leadership. In: Dhiman, S.K., Roberts, G.E. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Servant Leadership. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69802-7_67-1

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69802-7_67-1

Received : 07 August 2022

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Published : 26 November 2022

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Spiritual leadership: Current status and Agenda for future research and practice
Lastly, research on spiritual leadership is largely a collaborative e ﬀ ort; over 80% (48) of the studies involved more than one researcher. Speci ﬁ cally, 27 of these 48 collaborated
Linking Spiritual Leadership with Other Leadership Concepts: A
Research on spiritual leadership has been developing since the 1980s and is gaining more and more attention. In the last decade, there has been a lot of research in this area, along with the opinion that it is a new paradigm in the field of leadership. ... In this paper, a research agenda for further investigations was developed. The conducted ...
PDF Spiritual Leadership: A Guide to a Leadership Style That Embraces ...
SPIRITUAL LEADERSHIP: A GUIDE TO A LEADERSHIP STYLE THAT EMBRACES MULTIPLE ... Clear and Effective Communications ABSTRACT The purpose of this research study was to examine the characteristics of Spiritual Leadership and compare and contrast this style to 5 other well-known leadership styles including Transformational ... For this paper, we ...
A systematic literature review on spiritual leadership: antecedents
The aim of this study is to offer evidence-based knowledge of the most popular research topics in studies on spiritual leadership (SL) and the research approaches and theories in use. Another aim is to create a comprehensive research framework covering the antecedents and outcomes of SL, as well as the underlying mechanisms and conditional factors.
Spiritual leadership: Current status and Agenda for future research and
ABSTRACT. Over the past decade, spiritual leadership has emerged as a new paradigm of and approach to leadership. To provide a thorough understanding of the current status of research on this new phenomenon and stimulate more scholarly interest, we conducted a systematic review of existing spiritual leadership literature.
Full article: Spiritual leadership and organizational commitment: The
Although there are various leadership theories, this research explicitly discusses one theory, namely spiritual leadership theory. Today, one of the most prominent organizational challenges faced by leaders is the need to continuously develop new business models without neglecting the company's economic performance.
Mapping Spiritual Leadership: A Bibliometric Analysis and ...
Spiritual leadership has gained much traction among researchers and practitioners for its value-laden approach as it engenders feelings and expressions of a leader's spirituality at the workplace by intrinsically motivating the followers to envision work as a calling, thereupon culminating in greater organizational performance. However, despite the significant attempts to consolidate the ...
Frontiers
Theory and Hypotheses Spiritual Leadership Theory. Fry (2003) incorporated spirituality, a long-neglected aspect, into leadership theories, and ultimately proposed the concept of spiritual leadership, which emphasizes intrinsically motivating one's self and others through the leader's values, attitudes, and behaviors. Conceptually, spiritual leadership comprises three principal components ...
The Emergence of Spiritual Leader and Leadership in Religion-Based
In the present research, we qualitatively document the process by which spiritual leader and leadership emerge in religion-based organizations. Data from 26 participants in three religion-based organizations revealed three cardinal themes that depict (1) the development of spiritual leader (e.g., embodiment of a spiritual leaderspiritual lifestyle; inspiration) and spiritual leadership (e.g ...
Frontiers
Therefore, this paper tries to explain that spiritual leadership is directly and indirectly related to employee morale. First, based on the self-determination theory ... In this research, spiritual leadership is taken as an independent variable, employee morale as a dependent variable, and self-efficacy and interpersonal trust as intermediary ...
The Research Agenda of Spiritual Leadership. Where Do We Stand
Where Do We Stand. M. Nicolae, I. Ion, Elena E. Nicolae. Published 2013. Business, Psychology, Philosophy. This article aims at exploring the current spiritual leadership research agenda in order to assess its progress, limitations and practical implications for contemporary organizations and to reveal possible future lines of scientific enquiry.
From "doing alone" to "working together"—Research on the influence of
Therefore, this paper tries to explain that spiritual leadership is directly and indirectly related to employee morale. First, based on the self-determination theory ... In this research, spiritual leadership is taken as an independent variable, employee morale as a dependent variable, and self-efficacy and interpersonal trust as intermediary ...
Spiritual leadership: Current status and Agenda for future research and
ABSTRACT Over the past decade, spiritual leadership has emerged as a new paradigm of and approach to leadership. To provide a thorough understanding of the current status of research on this new phenomenon and stimulate more scholarly interest, we conducted a systematic review of existing spiritual leadership literature. By analyzing 59 empirical studies published in peer-reviewed journals, we ...
Effective Leadership: What Does Spirituality Have To Do With It?
Helping leaders connect with their spiritual self— however the leader defines it —offers a culture-free, nonjudgmental path for supporting their health, well-being, and personal and leadership development. When a leader connects with their spiritual resourcefulness, it may help them buffer stress; open to diverse people, ideas, and ...
Spiritual leadership and employee innovation
Hypothesis 1: Spiritual leadership positively influences innovative work behavior. Spiritual well-being. As this paper has argued, spiritual leadership can enhance employees' IWB; however, the mechanisms that enable this relationship deserve a closer look. Currently, research on the relationship of spiritual leadership and IWB has not been ...
(PDF) The Spiritual Leadership Dimension In Relation to Other Value
This article aims at exploring the current spiritual leadership research agenda in order to assess its progress, limitations and practical implications for contemporary organizations and to reveal possible future lines of scientific enquiry. ... This paper reviews some spiritual leadership models, and provides a typology about them. The ...
Servant and Spiritual Leadership Theories: Are They Two Different
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. ... Spirituality and servant leader behavior: A correlational study. Paper presented at the International ... (2013). The research agenda of spiritual leadership. Where do ...
Spirituality and Servant Leadership
A vast body of research has been conducted on servant leadership. Servant leadership understands motivations, capabilities, and development potentials of followers and transforms the relationship between leaders and followers through a conscious choice to focus on genuine care of common interest and shared vision (Ernest C. H. Ng, 2022).We have identified from many definitions that a leader is ...
Spiritual Leadership Research Papers
Servant and Spiritual Leadership. In the last decades, topics such as values, ethical and moral behavior, quality of life, spirituality and even positive emotions are reaching special relevance in the organizational management field. Based on these trends, new leadership... more. Download. by LISA R .