Abstract
This study is about Spiritual Leadership and the role it plays in organisational commitment. The researcher explores how the practice of Spiritual Leadership connects with organisational commitment. Research shows that there is a strong correlation between organisational commitment and the type of leadership style in an organisation (Yahaya & Ebrahim, 2016). A person’s leadership style is a personal trait which builds commitment, empowers and motivates people to successfully achieve personal and organisational goals (Kumar, 2017). Spiritual values in an organisation help to strengthen an employee’s connection with the organisation in several ways and have a significant impact on organisational commitment (Usman & Danish, 2010; Nguyen et al., 2018).
The researcher applied a qualitative, exploratory, interpretative phenomenological research approach. Primary data was collected via in-depth semi-structured interviews. The target group consisted of nine senior management employees from a South African mining and construction equipment organisation.
The themes that emerged from this study include Value-Centric Leadership, the connection between Ethical Leadership and Commitment, Commitment, Trust, and Goal Setting in Spiritual Leadership, Spirituality and Workplace Integration and Empathy, Organisational Support and well-being.
The main finding of the study was that Spiritual Leadership may lead to commitment in an organisation provided that there is belief, authenticity and trust from the leader.
A proposed conceptual model of Spiritual Leadership, Trust and Organisational Commitment is presented that aims to incorporate findings from previous literature combined with the information extracted from the participants and represents the insights the researcher gained from this study. While the research showed that spiritual values and practices can be incorporated into a workplace, the concept of workplace Spirituality remains a new concept. More research is required to understand how leaders can integrate, adopt and further promote spiritual values and practices in an organisation.