Servant Leadership in a Social Religious Organization: An Analysis of Work Engagement, Authenticity, and Spirituality at Work

Abstract

Religious organizations represent a main part of the third sector and the social economy. Social faith-based institutions have some unique features that, in some respects, differentiate them from other entities, as they are characterized and defined not only by the services they provide, but also by how they provide them. It is part of their mission to convey the values that prevail in their institutional culture while developing their activities, being attractive to those workers who identify with their values. From this point of view, a key element of these entities’ success is that their employees feel identified with their work so that they are engaged in the institution and its values. The style of leadership exercised in such organizations is critical to fostering these attitudes and their long-term survival. This paper aims to study the link between perceived servant leadership by followers and work engagement, as well as the mediating role of authenticity and spirituality at work in this relationship. To this end, 270 workers from a Spanish Catholic organization in the social sector were surveyed. These data were processed by PLS (partial least squares). The results show that a servant leadership style by itself does not directly promote work engagement among employees of the target organization. The engagement of these workers comes through two mediating variables: authenticity and spirituality at work. This study covers a gap in the literature because although there are studies arguing that a strategy of servant leadership is critical to these organizations, to our knowledge, they do not finish demonstrating the fundamental roles that attitudes of authenticity and spirituality at work play in the perception of this type of leadership, achieving greater work engagement.

Servant Leadership and Authentic Leadership as Job Resources for Achieving Workers’ Subjective Well-Being Among Organizations Based on Values

“…For instance, Banks et al 85 reported a large positive correlation between servant and authentic leadership (0.60). Later, Ortiz-Gomez et al 53 in their servant leadership scale´s validation, found a positive and significant correlation between followers´ perception of servant leadership and authentic leadership (0.845). Also, the three dimensions of servant leadership, independently, showed a positive and significant correlation with perceived authentic leadership: openness (0.749), vision (0.822) and stewardship (0.688).…”

“…The language of the sent questionnaire was Spanish. Servant leadership is measured from the follower’s point of view, using the Spanish version of Ortiz-Gómez et al called SSLS6-3F (Spanish Short Servant Leadership Survey), 53 which is developed from Reinke’s version 58 and includes the original three dimensions of openness, stewardship and vision. Respondents answered on a Likert scale ranging from 1 (totally disagree) to 5 (totally agree), on which a higher score represented a higher perception of servant leadership.…”

“…This research considers as a starting point that servant leadership is the most consistent style of leadership with non-profit organizations in general and with faith-based entities in particular. 52 , 53 Servant leadership was initially developed as a Christian way of life, not as a kind of leadership, so the service leader must first be a server and then a leader. 41 This process occurs because servant leaders motivate their followers to pursue a shared goal that reflects their own religious and social beliefs, thus fostering a sense of connectivity between the worker and the organization.…”

“…This research considers as a starting point that servant leadership is the most consistent style of leadership with non-profit organizations in general and with faith-based entities in particular. 52,53 Servant leadership was initially developed as a Christian way of life, not as a kind of leadership, so the service leader must first be a server and then a leader. 41 This Authentic leadership implies that leaders get to know themselves and the environment around them, thereby resulting in little or no difficulty in maintaining their course and communicating it to their followers in terms of principles, values and ethics.…”

Bibliometric Study on Spirituality in Organizations: An Overview of the Field

“…Meaningful work, the first dimension of spirituality in the workplace, regards the belief that people seek meaning at work. It explains the spirituality of the workplace at the individual level and is described as the experience of employees that their work is an important and significant part of their life (Duchon & Plowman, 2005;Mousa, 2020;Ortiz-Gómez, Ariza-Montes, & Molina-Sánchez, 2020). In other words, it refers to the extent to which employees enjoy their work, feel energized by it, and sense that it gives them personal meaning and purpose (Milliman et al 2003).…”