Spiritual leadership and employee innovation
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Spiritual leadership and employee innovation William D. Hunsaker 1
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract This study examines the effects of spiritual leadership on employees’ innovative work behavior (IWB) and how employees’ spiritual well-being intervenes this relationship. The research was based on a self-reported survey of 264 workers in China and was analyzed through multiple regression in structural equation modeling to test the hypothesized relationships. The results of the study concluded that employees’ IWB is positively influenced by the effects of spiritual leadership. Furthermore, the effects of spiritual well-being intervened in explaining how spiritual leadership influences employee innovation. This study suggests that the innovative behavior of employees can be enhanced through initiating spiritual leadership practices that enable a spiritual workplace, which, in turn, can help organizations to more effectively cope with competitive market pressures to continuously innovate. Moreover, the study expands our current understanding of the role employee well-being can play in enriching individual creativity and innovation. Keywords employee well-being . innovative work behavior . spiritual leadership . spiritual well-being . workplace spirituality
Introduction More than ever before, managers would agree that understanding and managing innovation is a widespread competitive issue facing organizations. Central to achieving this competitiveness are the innovative work behaviors (IWB) of employees, the primary resource that organizations rely on to generate, promote, and implement new ideas for the good of the organization (Scott and Bruce 1994; West and Farr 1989). What factors can stimulate the innovative behaviors of this critical human resource? A review of the literature suggests that individual factors, such as creative capacity, past experience, intrinsic motivation, and self-efficacy, and contextual factors, like work environment, organizational structure and climate, job complexity, coworker support, and supervisor support are among the key factors that influence the creative and innovative spirit of employees (Amabile et al. 1996; Amabile and Pratt 2016; Anderson, Potocnik, and Zhou 2014; Axtell et al. 2000; BaniMelhem, Zeffane, and Albaity 2018; Woodman, Sawyer, and Griffin 1993). However, one of the most critical factors that influence the innovative behaviors of employees is effective leadership (Anderson et al. 2014; De Jong and Den Hartog 2010; Mumford et al. 2002). * William D. Hunsaker [email protected] 1
School of Business Administration, Kyungpook National University, 80 Daehak-Ro, Buk-Gu, Daegu 41566, South Korea
Researchers have shown the importance of leadership in influencing employees’ creative behaviors to achieve greater organizational performance (Choi, Tran, and Kang 2017; De Jong and Den Hartog 2010; Tierney 2008). Providing a compelling vision, influencing organizational values and culture, respecting employees’ contributions, demonstr
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