Assessing the spiritual leadership effectiveness: The contribution of follower's self-concept and preliminary tests for moderation of culture and managerial position

Experiencing meaningfulness climate in teams: How spiritual leadership enhances team effectiveness when facing uncertain tasks

“…Finally, we considered task uncertainty as a contextual factor that influences the effects of spiritual leadership, responding to calls for more exploration on the boundary conditions for the effectiveness of spiritual leadership (Chen & Yang, ). Previous research studying such boundary conditions has mainly focused on managerial position (Chen & Li, ) and organizational spirituality (Pawar, ). However, considering that the contemporary team environment is characterized by turbulence and change (Gardner et al, ; Kozlowski et al, ) and that spiritual leadership is viewed as a necessary “condition for organizations to be successful in today's highly unpredictable high‐velocity, Internet‐driven environment” (Fry, , p. 720), this line of research has largely neglected whether and how uncertain team context could shape the relation between spiritual leadership and meaningfulness climate.…”

“…However, this may decrease the generalizability of our findings. Although spiritual leadership has been found to be effective in the Chinese context (e.g., Chen & Li, ; Chen & Yang, ; Chen, Yang, & Li, ), spiritual leadership is also prevalent in other countries such as the United States (Fry et al, ), Thailand (Afsar, Badir, & Kiani, ), and India (Pawar, ). Therefore, the research question about how and when spiritual leadership influences team effectiveness is best suited to a cross‐country context.…”

“…Spiritual leadership refers to “the values, attitudes, and behaviors that one must adopt in intrinsically motivating one's self and others so that both have a positive increase in the sense of spiritual well‐being through calling and membership, that is, they experience meaning in their lives, have a sense of making a difference, and feel understood and appreciated” (Fry, Vitucci, & Cedillo, , p. 836). Research on spiritual leadership has shown its beneficial effects on employee outcomes, such as organizational commitment, organizational citizenship behavior, and well‐being (e.g., Chen & Li, ; Chen & Yang, ; Fry et al, ; Fry & Cohen, ; Fry & Slocum, ), yet there is limited knowledge on how spiritual leadership influences teams. Particularly as modern organizations are increasingly team based, examining spiritual leadership in teams allows us to have a more comprehensive understanding of spiritual leadership by increasing our knowledge on how spiritual leadership influences a team as a whole.…”

Struggling with Meaningfulness when Context Shifts: Volunteer Work in a German Refugee Shelter

“…Meaningfulness – defined as an inherently positive ‘subjective experience of the existential significance or purpose’ (Lips‐Wiersma and Morris, ; see also Pratt and Ashforth, ) – has been related to several favourable individual (Arnold et al, ; Bassi et al, ; Hackman and Oldham, ; Isaksen, ) and organisational outcomes (Britt et al, ; Chen and Li, ). The extant literature on meaningfulness primarily advances from a psychological understanding of the matter focusing on the level of the individual.…”

Transcendental leadership and organizational citizenship behavior: Investigating the role of spirituality in the workplace

“…Rego and e Cunha (2008) reported that when people experience workplace spirituality, they may feel more affectively attached to their organizations, experience a sense of obligation/loyalty towards them, and feel less instrumentally committed. Chen and Li (2013) examined different determinants considered to affect the spiritual leadership (SL) effectiveness, including one motivational mediating factor of follower's self-concepts, and two conditional factors, i.e., culture (as a macro-level factor) and managerial position (as a micro-level factor). The construct of SL was validated based on a sample comprising 591 workers from different profitable organizations in two major Chinese societies.…”