Spiritual leadership and Commitment: Testing an Extended Model

Abstract

Past research argued that encouraging spiritual leaders and promoting spirituality at workplace helped improving workplace behaviors in organizations such as employee commitment. However, studies which examined workplace spirituality’s mediating role amongst spiritual leadership and commitment are scarce. Moreover, limited studies are available on the moderating impact of perceived organizational support on the association amongst spiritual leadership and workplace spirituality. Further, limited studies tested moderating impact of individual spirituality for association amongst workplace spirituality and organizational commitment. Therefore, this study was designed to fill these gaps in literature. It pays critical contribution to literature by testing a better and complete model of spiritual leadership with relevant variables. The study is based on and primarily supports theories such as spiritual leadership theory and social exchange theory. The study has been based on Takaful/Islamic Insurance industry segment of Pakistan. Using area sampling, questionnaires were distributed to Takaful sales agents and 282 were received back. It reveals workplace spirituality as a partial mediator playing its role amongst spiritual leadership and organizational commitment. Additionally, it finds perceived organizational support and individual spirituality as partial moderators for concerned relationships. This research suggests Takaful companies to encourage spiritual leaders along with promoting the culture of workplace spirituality for getting higher commitment levels from their sales agents. The study also highlights the significance for increased organizations’ support for sales agents for gaining desired results.