Keywords:

Spirituality, Leadership, Travel agents, Job commitment, Job satisfaction SEM.

Introduction

Spirituality has attracted the interest of many scholars within the context of organizations and leadership and operationalized its concept, antecedents and consequences (e.g. Afsar et al., 2016; Chen & Yang, 2012; Benefiel et al., 2014; Fry, 2003; Fry et al., 2005; Karakas, 2010; Saks, 2011; Yang et al., 2019.; Wang et al., 2019; Yang & Fry, 2018). Fry (2003) has attempted to connect spirituality and leadership and extend the concept of “spiritual leadership”, which is conceptualized as “the values, attitudes, and behavior necessary to intrinsically motivate oneself and others so that they have a sense of spiritual well-being through calling and membership” (Fry, 2008, p. 109). Traditional theories of leadership highlight the cognitive and/or affectional aspects of a leader's traits and behaviours (Chen & Li, 2013), but spiritual leadership underlines the spiritual sides of leadership by highlighting the significance of minds, values, and well-being (Fry et al., 2005). This is due to the fact that employees in organisations frequently desire to understand the nature and significance of their work and to be acknowledged as members of the organisation rather than only as individuals pursuing financial gain (Bennis, 1999). Furthermore, in a competitive oriented organisation, a leader's spirituality can assist staffs in healing their fatigued minds and bodies within the framework of the workplace, resulting in a sense of spiritual well-being (Fry, 2003). As a result, scholars have explored the impacts of spiritual leadership on employees’ performance (Wang et al., 2019; Yang et al., 2019), satisfaction (Fry et al., 2017), knowledge sharing (Wang et al., 2019), job burnout (Yang and Fry, 2018) and employees’ commitment (Chen & Li, 2013). However, because spiritual leadership as a concept is still in its early stage of development, there have not been enough empirical evidence of the wide variety of its possible outcomes, which infers the need of exploring the potential outcomes of spiritual leadership from different perspectives. This study explores four aspects in one context to expand our understanding of spiritual leadership: employees’ satisfaction as a potential outcome of spiritual leadership, employees’ commitment as a mediating variable, spiritual leadership as a multidimensional construct contain three main subdimensions (vision, hope/faith, and altruistic love), and Egypt as a context.

First, this study highlights job satisfaction as a potential outcome of spiritual leadership. The level of employees’ job satisfaction is influenced by a wide variety of factors, such as organizational culture, leadership style and personnel relationships (Seashore & Taber, 1975), workplace social relationships, and the supervision quality (Hamidifar, 2010). Situational aspects such as the leaders and employee’s relationship are among the most substantial determining factor of job satisfaction (Hamidifar, 2010). Employees are further satisfied with leaders who are thoughtful or spiritually supportive (Yukl, 1971). Spiritual leadership has been found to have a positively impact on life satisfaction (Wolf, 1998) and in particular on employees’ job satisfaction (Komala & Ganesh, 2007).

Second, this study investigated employees’ commitment as a mediating variable between spiritual leadership (as a multidimension construct) and job satisfaction. Previous studies confirmed the relationship between commitment and employees’ attitudes and satisfaction (Meyer et al.,2002). Additionally, there is empirical studies confirmed the positive association between spiritual leadership and commitment (e.g. Chen and Li, 2013), however, no empirical attempt has been conducted to investigate the mediating role of commitment in the relationship between spiritual leadership and job satisfaction with structural equation modelling data analysis method.

Third, spiritual leadership was operationalized in this study as multidimensional construct with three sub-dimensions (vision, hope/faith and altruistic love) (Fry et al., 2017). However, several prior studies have operationalized spiritual leadership as a unidimensional construct (e.g. Chen & Li, 2013; Wang et al., 2019). Therefore, it was difficult to fully understand how the three sub-dimensions of spiritual leadership are impact employees’ commitment and job satisfaction.

Fourth, the context of this study is travel agents located in Egypt, since the concept of spiritual leadership has first developed and studied int he USA (e.g. Fry et al., 2005; Yang and Fry, 2018), the validation of its factorial structure and potential outcomes has been investigated in several countries, such as China (e.g. Yang et al., 2019), Thailand (e.g. Afsar et al., 2016), and South Korea (e.g. Hunsaker, 2016); however, there are scarce of empirical researches investigated spiritual leadership in Arab countries (e.g. Egypt) . Thus, it still uncertain whether the multidimensional factorial structure of spiritual leadership and its outcomes can be generalized to such countries.

Taken together, the aim of the current study is to investigate the relationship between spiritual leadership as a multidimensional construct and employees’ job satisfaction with the mediating effect of job commitment in the context of Egypt using structural equation modelling as the main data analysis technique.

Theoretical Background and Hypotheses Development

Spiritual Leadership and Job Commitment

Spiritual leadership as introduced by (Fry, 2003) is a spirit-oriented form of leadership theory. Spiritual leaders inherently can inspire themselves and their followers, while also increasing spiritual well-being by assisting their employees in finding significance and value in their workplace, as well as gratifying their natural desire for spiritual life (Fry et al., 2005). Spiritual leadership as introduced by Fry, 2003 consist of three sub-dimensions: vision, hope/faith and altruistic love. The first subdimension, vision, focus on the future directions of the organization, spiritual leaders are responsible of the strategic decisions that can shape the organization future ( Fry et al., 2005). Furthermore, spiritual leaders create organization values and communicate these values with subordinates, as a result, employees and organisations can share the same values (Afsar et al., 2016). The second subdimension of spiritual leadership focus on hope/faith, which refers to a strong refers to a strong belief that an organization's vision can be realised in the future, and spiritual leaders convey solid conviction to employees through helping them in obtaining that vision (Fry, 2003). The third and final subdimension of spiritual leadership emphasis altruistic love which is described as fostering a sense of belonging and connection among employees by care and love (Fry, 2008). Employees who are treated with altruistic love feel themselves as a valuable source of the organization (Fry et al., 2005).

spiritual leaders have the ability to shape the future vision of the organization, explain why it exists and designate the real rationale they should endeavour while performing tasks (Chen and Li, 2013; Fry, 2003). As a result, employees are more likely to feel internally motivated to attain a meaningful goal, and they are more likely to believe that such a vision is well connected with their own values or goals. This encourages employees to have a positive impression about the organization, which leads to a strong desire to continue in the organization. Since alignment with the organization’s goals and values is a key factor of job commitment (Riketta, 2005), a spiritual leader assures that the inspirational meaning of the organization’s main purposes will be regarded as being more reliable and persuasive by the company employees (Vandenberghe, 2011), which, in result, employees become more committed to the organization. Thus, the following hypothesis is proposed as drawn in Figure 1:

Hypothesis one (H1): There is a positive relationship between vision (as a dimension of spiritual leadership) and employees job commitment.

Hope/faith (as a dimension of spiritual leadership) is more than solely obtaining the organizational goals, but rather means that both leaders and subordinates are confident in their ability to attain the goals that the organisation worth (Fry et al., 2005). Additionally, spiritual leaders emphasise that the organization’s employees have the power to successfully attain the organization's goals to give people hope. As a result, employees not only believe their leader's confidence in the organization's vision, but also experience a sense of efficacy in achieving that vision (Chen and Li, 2013). As a result, the organization’s employees are more likely to believe that they are capable of achieving the organization's vision, and such feelings of positive self-worth and self-efficacy are projected to lead to more favourable perceptions of commitment to their organisations (Pierce and Gardner, 2004). Consequently, the following hypothesis can be suggested:

Hypothesis two (H2): There is a positive relationship between hope/faith (as a dimension of spiritual leadership) and employees job commitment.

Employees will be more loyal to organisations if they work with leaders who exhibit legitimate concern, care, and respect based on altruistic love, since they believe they are treated as important and valuable source of the organization (Rego and Cunha, 2008). Given that love is the foundation for a high-quality relationship between employees and their organisations (Vandenberghe, 2011), spiritual leaders who create friendly working environments that emphasise shared respect and care, which construct the factors of altruistic love, will support their employees to become more committed to their organisations. Accordingly, the below hypothesis is proposed as shown in Figure 1:

Hypothesis three (H3): There is a positive relationship between altruistic love (as a dimension of spiritual leadership) and employees job commitment.

Spiritual Leadership, and Job Satisfaction

Job satisfaction has been widely reviewed in the previous studies because job dissatisfaction has been extensively recognized as the main reason employees quiet their job (Sturges& Guest, 2001). Job satisfaction is impacted by a wide variety of factors such as organization culture, leadership style, and employees’ relationships (Seashore & Taber, 1975), social interactions in work, individuals’ capabilities to perform their tasks, and the supervision quality (Armstrong, 2006). Situational variables such as leaders and employee’s relationship are considered the most substantial determinant factor of job satisfaction and commitment (Hamidifar, 2010). People are highly satisfied with leaders who are thoughtful or helpful than with those leaders who are unsympathetic to their subordinates (Yukl, 1971). Spiritual leadership has been found to be positively and significantly impact life satisfaction (Wolf, 1998) and in particular employees’ job satisfaction (Komala& Ganesh, 2007). Spiritual leadership thorough interest of the employee’s specific spiritual needs improves the presence of inherent motivation, trust, and commitment and, accordingly, deliver high satisfaction and performance. Departments with hope/faith in the company's vision and with employees who have the common sense of calling and hardworking and, consequently, have better satisfaction, productivity, and performance (Fry et al., 2011).

Spiritual leadership with its three subdimensions of vision, hope/faith, and altruistic love can improve employee’s job satisfaction for three main reasons. First, spiritual leadership helps employees appreciate the significance and calling of work by developing a compelling vision, rather than perceiving work as a trade-off of rewards (Chen and Yang 2012; Yang et al. 2019). Meaningful workplace makes employees feel valued, purposeful, and driven at work, which leads to higher job satisfaction (e.g., Lavy and Bocker 2018; Lee and Lee 2019). Second, the behaviours and actions of spiritual leaders toward employees, such as articulating compassionate and concern and delivering guidance and training, build a caring working environment wherein employees feel high levels of self-efficacy and satisfaction (Chen and Li 2013, and Rigotti et al. 2020). Third, as introduced by Hobfoll (1989) the conservation of resources theory considers spiritual leadership as a valuable factor that increases employee’s resources and attains gains such as higher amounts of good peer-relations by displaying spiritual practices (Yang et al. 2019), resulting in superior job satisfaction. Therefore, the following hypotheses are suggested as shown in Figure 1:

Hypothesis four (H4): There is a positive relationship between vision (as a dimension of spiritual leadership) and employees job satisfaction.

Hypothesis Five (H5): There is a positive relationship between hope/faith (as a dimension of spiritual leadership) and employees job satisfaction.

Hypothesis six (H6): There is a positive relationship between altruistic love (as a dimension of spiritual leadership) and employees job satisfaction.

Job Commitment, and Job Satisfaction

Organizational commitment has drawn the attention of many scholars in the field of organizational psychology since 1960s (Becker, 1960). Different theories on organizational commitment have been developed such as two-dimension organizational commitment theory (Cohen, 2007), multi-dimension organizational commitment theories (O'Reilly & Chatman, 1986; Meyer et al., 1990), affective dependence theory (Porter et al., 1974), one-side-bet theory (Becker, 1960; Suliman & Iles, 2000), and combined theory (Somers, 2009). Employee’s commitment may highlight the emotional alignment of the employee to the organization (affective commitment), complying with the organization’s obligation (normative commitment), or perception of the consequences of quitting the job (continuous commitment)

The relation between job commitment and job satisfaction can be a two-sided relation. Scholars have been able to be flexible in selecting the independent and dependent variables from these two concepts. Job satisfaction, when tested as an independent variable, enhances job commitment. Employees are more likely to be committed to their organisation if they are satisfied with their compensation, work environment fairness, promotion chances, and manager assistance (Eslami & Gharakhani, 2012; Tuu & Liem, 2012; Anh & Dao, 2013). Organizational commitment, on the other hand, improve job satisfaction, and committed people work hard for the organization's vision and benefits (Vandenberg & Lance, 1992). In this approach, job commitment is not the outcome of employees’ behaviour towards their job, but it is the source of changes (Bateman & Strasser, 1984). In line with the previous discussion, the below hypothesis is proposed:

Hypothesis seven (H7): There is a positive relationship between employee’s job commitment and employees job satisfaction.

Figure 1: Research Framework and Hypotheses

Methods

Measures and Instrument Development

A quantitative research approach was adopted to collect the field data. A questionnaire was structured to be completed by the target respondent without any intervention from the authors. All the study measures were derived from a comprehensive literature review and were operationalized using a multi-dimensional scale. Spiritual leadership was operationalized by multidimensional second order scale adopted from Fry (2005), the scale has three main dimensions describes the company vision (five variables, a=0.978), hope/faith (five variables, a=0.980), and altruistic love (7 variables, a=0.977). Five first order variables were employed to measure employee’s commitment as suggested by Jaworski and Kohli (1993), The sale has good reliability in the current study The sale has good reliability in the current study (a=0.983). Similarly, employee satisfaction was measured by five first order multi-item scale derived from Lytle (1994) and shows a high internal consistency in this study (a=0.9. (See Table 1).

The questionnaire was translated from English to Arabic and then back translated to validate it. Eight academics and nine professionals pre-tested the questionnaire to assess its content validity and give any feedback. Few comments on the questionnaire words were revised to purify and refine the scale.

Sampling and Data Collection Process

The study population includes all employees of travel agents (category A) in greater Cairo in Egypt, thirty-five faculty student enumerators were recruited and trained to collect the required data from employees. This method was chosen to avoid the frequent poor response rate of the traditional mail and/or online data collection procedures, as well as the unwillingness to participate in anonymous surveys. Respondents have signed a consent letter before proceeding with the survey. Enumerators were trained to read the questionnaire in a clear language and fill in the answers from the respondents. Before starting the survey, participants completed a consent form. Enumerators were taught how to read the questionnaire in plain English and fill in the blanks with the responses from the respondents. The paper targeted 700 travel agents’ employees. Consequently, 750 surveys were read out to participant, and 650 responses were gathered and valid for analysis with a response rate of 87 %. Data were collected from travel agents’ employees in Greater Cairo during the first two weeks of April 2021.

A t-test was conducted to test if the mean scores of early-late respondents were dissimilar. The results show no significant differences in the data, suggesting that no non-response bias exist (Armstrong and Overton, 1997).

Among the 650 valid responses, 450 were females (69%) and 250 males (31%). The majority (73%) had a bachelor's degree and were between the ages of 25 and 40 (77 percent). The majority (66%) were single, and more than half (54%) had three years’ experience in the career. The scale items have mean values that range from 3.88 to 4.22 on a scale of one to five. The standard deviation values (see Table 1) vary from 0.804 to 1.028, approving that the data is more widely dispersed and less packed around its mean (Bryman and Cramer, 2012).

Data Analysis and Findings

With Amos V.22 graphics and Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) technique, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was employed to test the research hypotheses. A two-phases approach as recommended by Anderson and Gerbing's (1988) was conducted. The first phase, convergent and discriminant properties of the research measures were approved by employing first-order confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). In the subsequent phase, the research hypotheses were tested in the previously structured model. The fit indices suggested by Hair et al., (2018); Byrne (2011); and Kline (2011) were employed to evaluate the model fit to data, as shown in Table 1.

Measurement Model

The output of the CFA model's results shows a proper model fit to data, as shown in Table 1: (χ2 (314, N=650) = 1255.058, p <0.001, normed χ2 =3.997, RMSEA = 0.0377, SRMR=.0344, CFI = 0.962, TLI = 0.961, NFI = 0.962, PCFI = 0.882 and PNFI = 0.871 (See Table 1).

Composite reliability (CR) and Cronbach's alphas (a) scores for all employed latent variables (as seen in Table 1) are satisfactory and above the proposed level of 0.80 (Hair et al., 2018; Fornell & Larcker, 1981), signalling a solid internal reliability. The standardised regression wights of factor loadings varied from 0.908 to 0.981, exceeding the favoured value of 0.7 with a lowest t-values of 43.571 (Anderson & Gerbing, 1988). These results approve that the employed variables that were theoretically formed to operationalize the research scales have a positive and strong relationships, thus convergent validity was approved. All dimensions’ Average Variance Extracted (AVE) scores exceeded the recommended value of 0.50 value (Fornell & Larcker, 1981), additionally approving convergent validity. The Maximum Shared Variance (MSV) values failed to exceed the related AVE values, suggesting that the study dimensions are clearly distinctive (Hair et al., 2018). Consequently, discriminant validity was approved (See Table 1).

Structural Model Results

As proposed by Anderson and Gerbing's (1988) , the second phase (after conducting CFA), The structural model as shown in figure 2 should be evaluated. The SEM results showed a satisfactory Goodness-of-Fit (GoF) indices: χ2 (317, N=650) = 1272.755, p <0.001, normed χ2 =4.015, RMSEA = 0.040, SRMR=.043, CFI = 0.951, TLI = 0.952, NFI = 0.951, PCFI = 0775 and PNFI = 0.756 (See Table 2). Moreover, the tested model suggested a satisfactory explanatory power of spiritual leadership dimensions (vision, hope/faith, and altruistic love) and employees commitment as endogenous variables in explaining the variation on the exogenous variables (employee satisfaction) , as the squared multiple correlations (SMCs) value equals 0.35.

Figure 2: The Structural Model

Table 2 Result Of The Structural Model
Hypotheses		Beta (ß)	C-R (T-value)	SMC	Hypotheses results
H1	Vision                               Employee commitment	0.37***	8.545	----	Supported
H2	Hope/Fairh                        Employee commitment	0.40***	10.563	----	Supported
H3	Altruistic Love                  Employee commitment	0.41***	11.871	----	Supported
H4	Vision                                  Employee satisfaction	0.21***	4.767	----	Supported
H5	Hope/Fairh                           Employee satisfaction	0.25***	4.987	----	Supported
H6	Altruistic Love                    Employee satisfaction	0.27***	5.005	----	Supported
H7	Employee commitment       Employee Satisfaction	0.47***	12.425
Employee satisfaction		-----------	------------	0.35	------------
“Model fit: (?2 (317, N=650) = 1272.755, p <0.001, normed ?2 =4.015, RMSEA = 0.040, SRMR=.043, CFI = 0.951, TLI = 0.952, NFI = 0.951, PCFI = 0775 and PNFI = 0.756)”. “Beta (ß): effect size; C-R (T-value): critical ratio; SMC: squared multiple correlation; ***: P>0.001”.

Table 2 and figure 2 shows the impacts of spiritual leadership three dimensions (vision, hope/faith, and altruistic love) on employee satisfaction through the mediating role of employee commitment. The SEM results show that vision (as a dimension of spiritual leadership) has a positive and significant impact on employee commitment (β = 0.37, t-value= 8.545, p < 0.001), and employee satisfaction (β = 0.21, t-value= 4.767, p < 0.001), thus supporting for hypotheses H1, and H4. Similarly, hope/faith (as a dimension of spiritual leadership) positively and significantly impact employee commitment (β = 0.40, t-value= 10.563, p < 0.001), and employee satisfaction (β = 0.25, t-value= 4.987, p < 0.001), supporting hypotheses H2 and H5. Likewise, altruistic love (as a dimension of spiritual leadership) positively and significantly impacts employee commitment (β = 0.41, t-value= 11.871, p < 0.001), and employee satisfaction (β = 0.27, t-value= 5.005, p < 0.001), supporting hypotheses H3 and H6. Finally, the results shows that employee commitment has a high direct positive and significant impact on employee satisfaction (β = 0.47, t-value= 12.425, p < 0.001), thus supporting hypothesis H7.

Discussion

In this research paper, the relationships between spiritual leadership as a multidimensional construct contains three sub-dimensions: vision, hope/faith and altruistic love, and employees’ job satisfaction was tested through the mediating role of job commitment. To sum up, the findings are three-folds. First, all spiritual leadership dimensions: vision, hope/faith and altruistic love were significantly and positively impact employees’ job commitment. Second, vision, hope/faith and altruistic love were significantly and positively improving job satisfaction. Third, job commitment partially mediates the relationship between the three dimensions of spiritual leadership and job satisfaction.

Implications for Theory and Practice

This research paper introduces four main theoretical contributions to the spiritual leadership literature as well as job commitment and job satisfaction. First various scholars have investigated the relationship between spiritual leadership, job commitment, and job satisfaction (e.g. Fry, 2008; Krishnakumar and Neck, 2002), however, empirical evidence to support these relationships are remarkably rare. This paper presents a primary empirical evidence of how the three sub dimensions of spiritual leaderships: vision, hope/faith and altruistic love improve employees’ job satisfaction and commitment.

Second, since a leader is often regarded as a representative of the company in front of its employees (Eisenberger et al., 2010), the findings of this paper propose that when leaders show spirituality-based attitude, the organization’s employees will be more committed to their organizations, which in turn improve job satisfaction.

Third, this study employed spiritual leadership as a multidimensional construct and confirmed that spiritual leadership can enhance satisfaction and commitment in the context of Egyptian travel agents accordingly, these findings can open the doors for future research investigating whether the outcomes of spiritual leadership sub-dimension can be repeated in other context (industry, and country). When viewed from practical point of view, the study results give evidence that the leaders need to fully recognize the role of vision, hope/faith and altruistic love in structuring and improving employee’s commitment and satisfaction. To accomplish this, organisations need to design and execute spiritually based leadership training programmes. (Wang et al., 2019)

Fourth, to the authors knowledge, this is the first study that investigate the mediating role of job commitment in the relationship between spiritual leadership (as a multidimensional construct) and employees job satisfaction using structural equation modelling (SEM) as the main data analysis technique. SEM can test the direct and indirect causal relationships in one model taking into consideration the measurement error (Byrne, 2011). Practically, employing this data analysis technique can help travel agent leaders to allocate resources to those spiritual leadership practices that have the most significant impact on commitment and satisfaction.

Limitations and Suggestions for Future Research

There are some limitations in the current study. First, causality between the research variables cannot be confirmed due to a cross-sectional structure of this study. It's possible, for example, that highly committed, and satisfied employees temporarily view spiritual leadership as a favourable leadership style, especially after the COVID 19 pandemic. As a result, longitudinal research design is required to confirm the causality among the research variables. Second, collecting data from a single source with self-reported respondents may raise worries about common method bias (Podsakoff et al., 2012). Future research can employee multisource of data collection, such as reports from supervisors or ratings for employees’ commitment and satisfaction provided by supervisors.

Third, the findings are based on travel agent employees in Egypt, theoretically limiting the generalizability of the current study results to other cultural perspectives. As a result, future study should test whether the hypothesized relations may be affected by cultural differences in another context. Moreover, the current study investigated the role employee’s commitment as a mediating variable between spiritual leadership and job satisfaction, however more mediating variables can be further tested such as trust in the organization, distributive justice, and job security.

Finally, the current study employed spiritual leadership as a multidimensional construct and investigated the direct and indirect impact of its three subdimensions: vision, hope/faith, and altruistic love on commitment and job satisfaction, however study further investigate the possible two-way or three-way relationships between the three dimensions of spiritual leadership.

Acknowledgment

The authors acknowledge the Deanship of Scientific Research at King Faisal University for the financial support under Nasher Track (Grant No. 206057).

The corresponding author for the article “The impact of spiritual leadership on employees’ satisfaction: Mediating role of employees’ commitment” Ibrahim A. Elshaer, King Faisal University, Al-Hassa 31982, Saudi Arabia; ielshaer@kfu.edu.sa, and Suez Canal University

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