Leadership practices and job involvement: does workplace spirituality moderate the relationship?

Hilton, Sam Kris; Puni, Albert; Yeboah, Eric Article Leadership practices and job involvement: does workplace spirituality moderate the relationship? Cogent Business & Management Provided in Cooperation with: Taylor & Francis Group Suggested Citation: Hilton, Sam Kris; Puni, Albert; Yeboah, Eric (2024) : Leadership practices and job involvement: does workplace spirituality moderate the relationship?, Cogent Business & Management, ISSN 2331-1975, Taylor & Francis, Abingdon, Vol. 11, Iss. 1, pp. 1-15, https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2024.2316582 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/326072 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. 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Sam Kris Hilton, Albert Puni & Eric Yeboah To cite this article: Sam Kris Hilton, Albert Puni & Eric Yeboah (2024) Leadership practices and job involvement: does workplace spirituality moderate the relationship?, Cogent Business & Management, 11:1, 2316582, DOI: 10.1080/23311975.2024.2316582 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2024.2316582 © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group Published online: 29 Feb 2024. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 2291 View related articles View Crossmark data Citing articles: 5 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=oabm20 ManageMent | ReseaRch aRticle Cogent Business & ManageMent 2024, VoL. 11, no. 1, 2316582 Leadership practices and job involvement: does workplace spirituality moderate the relationship? sam Kris hiltona,b , albert Punic and eric Yeboahd aResearch Department, Kricet insight, London, uK; bCollege of Distance education, university of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, ghana; cDepartment of Business administration, university of Professional studies, accra, ghana; dschool of graduate studies, university of Professional studies, accra, ghana ABSTRACT as an emerging construct, workplace spirituality has gained credence in organisational management literature due to its effect on work-related behaviours. this paper examines the moderating effect of workplace spirituality on the relationship between transformational, ethical leadership and employee job involvement (eJi) in a developing country. We adopt quantitative approach and cross-sectional survey design to collect data from 416 employees in 10 selected public and private universities in ghana. We analysed the data using descriptive statistics, correlation and hierarchical regression model. the results indicate that the transformational leadership dimensions and ethical leadership have strong significant positive relationship with eJi. We further establish that workplace spirituality moderates the relationship between ethical leadership and eJi. Regarding transformational leadership, workplace spirituality moderates only the relationship between idealized influence and eJi. the paper provides new findings to bridge the gap in the leadership literature by presenting original evidence that workplace spirituality is an effective moderator in the association between ethical leadership, idealized aspect of transformational leadership and eJi. additionally, the outcome of this research sparks new discourse, and contributes to organizational practices and policies in ghana and beyond. 1. Introduction the unstable economic conditions in which organisations operate, characterised by intense competition, downsizing, globalisation, restructuring, etc. (Van der Walt & swanepoel, 2015) have brought with it numerous employee work-related challenges such as employee dissatisfaction, disengagement and less involvement (adnan et al., 2020). to address this situation, organisations are keen on promoting organisational climate that encourages overall motivation, commitment and employee well-being through effective leadership styles (Pawar, 2009; Puni etal., 2021). similarly, organisational researchers are expanding the fringes of their research to encompass the effect of leadership style on various work outcomes, as well as examining cogent predictors such as workplace spirituality on the relationship between leadership style and eJi. leadership style is the collection of traits, skills and behaviour displayed by the leader, which differentiate one leader from others through the exercise of this relatively small range of skills or competent areas (Ohemeng et al., 2018). eJi refers to the ‘degree to which one psychologically identifies with one’s job, that is, a cognitive or belief state of psychological identification with a particular job’ (Kanungo, 1979, p. 342). eJi utilises the knowledge and skills of the employees to create efficient and dynamic organisations, make employees more valued and committed to the organisation, minimise conflict at all levels of the organisation thereby resulting in higher job satisfaction and lower staff turnover (Bayraktar et al., 2017). Workplace spirituality is the fusion of spiritual principles and values such as community, © 2024 the author(s). Published by informa uK Limited, trading as taylor & Francis group CONTACT sam Kris Hilton [email protected] Research Department, Kricet insight, London, uK this article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction (http://dx.doi.or g/10.1080/23311975.2024.2355042). https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2024.2316582 this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. the terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. ARTICLE HISTORY Received 9 May 2023 Revised 23 July 2023 accepted 2 February 2024 REVIEWING EDITOR len tiu Wright, De Montfort University Faculty of Business and law, United Kingdom KEYWORDS transformational leadership; ethical leadership; workplace spirituality; job involvement SUBJECTS leadership; Business ethics; human Resource Management 2 s. K. hiltOn etal. connectedness, belonging, purpose, altruism, and virtue into the work (Kolodinsky et al., 2008), thereby creating a spirituality climate. Despite the substantial volume of research on leadership style and employee outcomes, such as employee involvement (nazem & Mozaiini, 2014), job satisfaction (hilton et al., 2023), employee commitment (Puni et al., 2021), employee engagement and turnover intention (suifan et al., 2020), and in-role performance (Kia et al., 2019), there still remain much uncertainty about the relationship between leadership style and eJi (Breevaart et al., 2014). Previous literature have described the relationship between these two variables as positive, negative or neutral (thamrin, 2012; Wan Omar & hussin, 2013; al-sada etal., 2017). aside the prevailing inconsistencies, majority of the studies are concentrated in the advanced economies with relatively few from the developing context. this study therefore intends to investigate the relationship between leadership styles (transformational and ethical) and eJi from a developing country perspective. additionally, due to the volatile nature of organisations environment which has affected employees’ commitment and well-being (Pawar, 2009), workplace spirituality is now receiving increasing attention as one of the plausible variables that could influence the relationship between leadership style and employee outcomes like job involvement. the argument is that workplace spirituality is said to inspire employees to focus on the vision of the organisation and be loyal to the organisation since employees experience psychologically a state of belonging and connectedness at the workplace (Rego & cunha, 2008). however, empirical evidence on the mechanism by which workplace spirituality influences the relationship between leadership styles and eJi is still evolving and limited in developing country context. For this reason, it is important to expand the body of knowledge regarding workplace spirituality to gain a more understanding of this phenomenon, and how it can enhance or obstruct the relationship between transformational, ethical leadership and eJi. Within the developing context of africa, workplace spirituality is a relatively new concept which has not yet been adequately investigated. apart from some few works such as Van der Walt and De Klerk (2014) which investigated workplace spirituality and job involvement using cross-sectional study of 412 employees chosen from two organisations in Welkom, south africa, acheampong and agyapong (2015) which examined workplace spirituality, job involvement and deviant behaviour, and ajala (2013) which studied the impact of workplace spirituality on employees’ well-being in the industrial sector of nigeria, we have observed that there is a paucity of research concerning workplace spirituality within the developing setting, particularly ghana. therefore, we assess the moderating effect of workplace spirituality on the relationship between transformational, ethical leadership and eJi using cross-sectional data from public and private universities’ employees in ghana. this study is germane since it is overlooked not just in africa but other developing context. this study also adds to existing knowledge by exposing the positive contributions of transformational and ethical leadership toward making employees become psychologically identified with their jobs, as organisations are exploring ways of leveraging on their human resource capabilities for competitive advantage, growth, and sustainability (Wood, 2020). Furthermore, this study contributes to leadership literature by suggesting that workplace spirituality climate serves as a psychological moderating mechanism that strengthens the relationship between transformational, ethical leadership and eJi from a developing country perspective. the succeeding sections entail the literature and hypotheses development, methodology, results and discussion, implication and conclusion. 2. Literature review and hypotheses development 2.1. Transformational leadership and employee job involvement transformational leadership portray leaders who use their charismatic personality and behaviours to influence subordinates to focus on higher ideals such as the vision of the organisation (stock & schnarr, 2016). transformational leadership stimulates followers’ values, beliefs and consciousness to achieve extraordinary heights for superior collective interest (hilton et al., 2023). since transformational leadership stands for mutual support for common purpose, Burns (1978) predicts that ‘transformational leadership ultimately becomes moral in that it raises the level of human conduct and ethical aspiration of both leader and led, and thus has a transforming effect on both’. cOgent BUsiness & ManageMent 3 transformational leadership comprise of four behavioural components: idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualised consideration. Idealized influence – is a dimension of transformational leadership where the leader shares emotional connection with followers’ to the extent that followers’ emulates the noble ideals of the leader. idealized transformational leadership style produces respect, appreciation, and trust among followers (Rasheed etal., 2020). Inspirational motivation – involves the formulation of inspiring vision, and the communication of the goals in various ways to capture the emotions of followers’ without necessarily identifying with them physically (Molodchik et al., 2020). Intellectual stimulation – is where the transformational leadership offer to followers’ intelligent concepts with the view of stimulating in followers’ new ways of tackling organisational problem (cortes & herrmann, 2019). the intellectual stimulation behaviour is accomplished by seeking ideas, opinions and inputs from followers’ thereby promoting creativity, innovation, and experimentation in followers’ which bring out novelty problem solving skill to tackle organisational challenges. Individual consideration – is concern with the personal development of the followers. Whereas the leader’s charisma may attract followers to the mission and vision of the organization, the leader uses the individual consideration to transform each follower individually. this transformational leader is able to accomplish goals by actively heeding to and accommodating followers’ personal needs for growth, learning and recognition (Puni et al., 2021). an aspect of employee outcomes that has attracted the attention of researchers is job involvement. eJi is a situation where employees throughout an organization have authority to act and make decisions, have the information and knowledge needed to use their power effectively, and are rewarded in doing so (Wood, 2020). eJi is originally coined by lodahl and Kejner (1965) as a protestant work ethic emanating from unwavering employee who sees the job as part of their self-concept as oppose to an employee who is not job-involved, who is ‘living off the job’ and whose identity is determined by neither the type nor the quality of his/her work. eJi is considered a multifaceted construct which is associated with organisational outcomes such as absenteeism, employee turn-over and financial performance (hettie & Robert, 2005; Wood, 2020). eJi research has become increasingly important because organisational policies and practices in themselves do not translate into organisational outcomes unless such policies have been converted in some way by employees into activities and actions. hence, organisational researchers and practitioners believe that leveraging on the competencies and skills of employees by making them involved in various organisational tasks creates competitive advantage (Wood, 2020). theorists have long emphasised that transformational leadership affect eJi. Particularly, Bass (1985) asserts that transformational leadership has the ability to inspire followers’ to focus on higher intrinsic needs thereby translating into greater identification and employee involvement at both the work unit and the organisational strategic levels. shamir et al. (1993) also submit that the transforming effect of the transformational leader inspire employees to surpass their own interest for the groups’ interest thereby creating an involvement climate. the involvement climate energises employees to assume greater identification with the work, which ultimately affect group objectives. shamir etal. (2000) again contends that transformational leadership creates an inspiring homogenous employee involvement climate across organisation to the extent that the transforming effect is felt at the unit as well as the organisation level. Under a transformational leader, the whole work environment assume an involving climate where the leaders, followers’, and the organisation as a whole work together to achieve goal congruence. empirically, studies (such as cheng et al., 2012; Dwirosanti, 2017; nazem & Mozaiini, 2014) indicate that transformational leadership behaviour is associated with eJi. For instance, cheng etal. (2012) investigated the moderating effect of emotional contagion, on the relationship between transformational leadership and subordinates’ job involvement among 210 soldiers from eight companies of the taiwanese army. they established that leaders with high emotional contagion had positive moderation effect on relationship between transformational leadership and subordinates’ job involvement than leaders with low emotional contagion. again, using structural equation modelling in a sample of 167 work units, Richardson and Vandenberg (2005) indicated that transformational leadership positively influence subordinate involvement perceptions. Dwirosanti (2017) also reveals that transformational leadership has a direct significant positive effect on job involvement, meaning that the practice of transformational leadership dimensions is more likely to result in eJi. assessing the relationship between transformational leadership and eJi at a higher education institution, nazem and Mozaiini (2014) employed multivariate 4 s. K. hiltOn etal. linear regression to show that transformational leadership dimensions have significant relationship with eJi. Based on the foregoing findings, we hypothesize that: h1a: transformational leadership (idealized influence) is significantly related to eJi h1b: transformational leadership (inspirational motivation) is significantly related to eJi h1c: transformational leadership (intellectual stimulation) is significantly related to eJi h1d: transformational leadership (individualised consideration) is significantly related to eJi 2.2. Ethical leadership and employee job involvement ethical leadership is referred to as leadership embedded in the display of normatively proper behaviour exhibited through individual actions and interactive relationship as well as the encouragement of such behaviour among followers through two-way communication, support, and decision-making (Brown et al., 2005). it follows that ethical leadership style stresses on ethics (morality) (toor & Ofori, 2009). Mainly, ethical leadership characteristics are founded on aristotle’s philosophy of leadership, which argues that ‘leadership is more than a skill, more than the knowledge of theories, and more than analytical faculties. it is the ability to act purposively and ethically as the situation requires on the basis of the knowledge of universals, experience, perception, and intuition. it is about understanding the world in a richer and broader sense, neither with cold objectivity nor solipsistic subjectivity’’ (p. 464). likely reasons for the interest of morality in leadership are due to recent corporate scandals which are basically connected to unethical and sometimes toxic leadership (hilton & arkorful, 2021; treviño & Brown, 2004). Research demonstrates that ethical leadership predicts several work outcomes such as job satisfaction, commitment and especially eJi (Brown et al., 2005). Brown et al. (2005) reveal that ethical leadership associates with consideration behaviour, honesty, trust in the leader, interactional fairness, and socialized charismatic leadership. consistently, these attributes predict employee outcomes such as eJi and satisfaction. Piccolo et al. (2010) also found that ethical leadership impacts employee job involvement characteristics such as job autonomy and task significance which ultimately affect employee task outcome. sharif and scandura (2014) submitted that subordinates who value the continuous ethical behaviour of the leader reciprocate by being highly involved in the job. subordinates are more involved in organisational task because they feel confident that the leaders will make legitimate decisions. again, Mayer et al. (2009) exposed that top management who are perceived to be ethical, positively affect group job involvement of employee. We, therefore, hypothesize that: h2: ethical leadership style is significantly related to eJi. 2.3. Moderating effect of workplace spirituality Workplace spirituality is an emerging concept in organisational management. Workplace spirituality refers to the inclusion of spirituality principles (community, connectedness, belonging, purpose, altruism, and virtue) into work activities (Pawar, 2009). the spiritual principles are intrinsic to an individual and they reflect in the individual’s behaviour and work activities. Kolodinsky et al. (2008) posit that workplace spirituality is in two levels: micro-level (i.e. the fusion of the individual spiritual principles and values into the work), and macro-level (i.e. the totality of individual spirituality at the workplace and how these spiritual value influence ethical-related and unethical-related issues to determine the level of corporate spirituality and how it influence outcomes). Workplace spirituality is more of a macro-level view of the organisation spirituality in the form of ‘spiritual climate’ (Parboteeah & cullen, 2003). Whereas individual spirituality is the personal spiritual values employees bring to the workplace, workplace spirituality is the perception of the spiritual climate of the organisation (garcia-Zamor, 2003). spirituality at the workplace is the expression of a sense of belonging, community, wholeness at the individual level, which culminates into organisation spirituality (Krnjerski & skrypnek, 2004). cOgent BUsiness & ManageMent 5 Workplace spirituality has gained recognition in contemporary times due to the over reliance of financial metrics in determining corporate success, coupled with the managerial greed of the 1980s (lennick & Kiel, 2005). these happenings have created job insecurity among employees and a non-humanistic work environment where leaders do whatever it takes to keep up the pace and positively affect the organizational bottom line without taking into consideration employee spiritual values. however, many employees believe that work life is just an important existential requirement, but not an end in itself. a significant relationship was found between workplace spirituality and eJi, suggesting that spirituality is a significant predictor of job involvement among employees (Mahipalan & sheena, 2019). given that transformational and ethical leadership styles influence eJi and workplace spirituality also affect job involvement, we predict that workplace spirituality will moderate the relationship between transformational and ethical leadership styles and eJi on the basis that leadership spirituality principles i.e. the sense of community, connectedness, belonging, purpose, altruism, and virtue creates a spirituality climate which influence eJi. hence, we hypothesize that: h3a: Workplace spirituality moderates the relationship between transformational leadership (idealized influence) and eJi h3b: Workplace spirituality moderates the relationship between transformational leadership (inspirational motivation) and eJi h3c: Workplace spirituality moderates the relationship between transformational leadership (intellectual stimulation) and eJi h3d: Workplace spirituality moderates the relationship between transformational leadership (individualised consideration) and eJi h4: Workplace spirituality moderates the relationship between ethical leadership and eJi the conceptual framework in Figure 1 illustrates the hypotheses. 3. Research design 3.1. Study designs and approach this study adopted descriptive and cross-sectional survey designs to examine the association between the independent variables (transformational and ethical leadership) and the dependent variable (eJi), moderated by workplace spirituality. a descriptive study describes a phenomenon and conclusions while a cross-sectional study involves the collection of data at a single moment from the population of interest (Zikmund et al., 2010). the cross-sectional survey design was employed because apart from enabling data to be collected at a single moment from the population of interest (Zikmund et al., 2010); Figure 1. Conceptual framework: authors (2023). 6 s. K. hiltOn etal. it facilitates the planning of data collection to achieve the research objectives (altinay et al., 2015). in investigating the relationship, the quantitative research approach, which is usually employed under survey design was adopted (saunder et al., 2016). this approach is helpful to collect numeric data to test the research hypotheses. 3.2. Population and sampling the population of interest for this study was employees of private and public universities in ghana. the target population included operational level employees (non-teaching staff) of ten (10) selected universities (i.e. five each from private and public universities) within the accra, tema and Kumasi metropolises. these metropolises constitute the main tertiary education hub of ghana and virtually all the universities have their main and/or satellite campuses located within these areas, making these metropolises a fair representative of the tertiary education workers in ghana. the universities were purposively selected using the homogenous purposive sampling technique while the respondents were conveniently selected in accordance with Patton’s (2002) sample size selection criterion (i.e. for non-probability study, the sample size depends on the objectives with a minimum consideration not less than 100 participants), which has been widely applied in similar studies (such as hilton et al. 2021; hilton et al., 2023; Martins, 2023; Puni et al., 2021, etc.). the sampling techniques allowed the researchers to select respondents with rich information (i.e. have direct supervisors and have been working consistently with the same supervisor or manager for not less than three academic years) (etikan et al., 2016). in all, 500 respondents were chosen from the ten (10) selected universities with fifty (50) respondents from each selected university. 3.3. Instrumentation and data collection cross-sectional data were collected using a questionnaire. the questionnaire contained adapted items from the Multifactor leadership Questionnaire (MlQ) 5X short (avolio & Bass, 2004), ethical leadership scale (Brown etal., 2005), eJi scale (Kanungo, 1979; Fletcher, 1998) and workplace spirituality scale (Petchsawanga & Duchon, 2012). a five-point likert scale ranging from strongly agree (5) to strongly disagree (1) was provided for the measuring items. the first section of the instrument collected demographic data from respondents (i.e. gender, age, marital status, and educational level). the second section of the instrument collected data on the dimensions of transformational leadership (idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration). sample items from the MlQ 5X short include the following: idealized influence (e.g. ‘consider followers’ needs over his or her own needs’), inspirational Motivation (e.g. ‘arouses individual and team spirit’), intellectual stimulation (e.g. ‘approaches old situations in new ways’), individual consideration (e.g. ‘pay attention to individual needs for achievement and growth’). the third section of the instrument gathered data on the behaviours of ethical leadership. sample item from the ethical leadership scale is ‘my supervisor conducts his/her personal life in an ethical manner’. the fourth section collected data on workplace spirituality. sample item from the workplace spirituality scale is ‘employees can easily put themselves in other people’s shoes’. the final section collected data on eJi, with a sample item: ‘the most important things that happen to me involve my present job’. in order to ensure non-response bias, we employed the procedural strategies prescribed by Podsakoff et al. (2003). We kept the surveys short and simple (it took 5–10 minutes to complete a questionnaire), separated the variables (i.e. independent, dependent and moderator), provided instructions on how to respond to increase the probability of response accuracy, assured the respondents of confidentiality and anonymity, developed a relationship with the respondents, and sent reminders to respond (hair et al., 2015; Podsakoff et al., 2012). at the end of the survey, which lasted for six weeks, 416 questionnaires were validly retrieved. however, since the validly retrieved questionnaires constituted 83.2% of the sample size, we proceeded with the analysis as the sample size satisfied the tabachnick et al. (2001) criteria for determining adequate sample size. although the items were adapted from existing instruments, the researchers carried out validity and reliability tests to verify whether there were invalid items in the scales and to ensure that the instrument cOgent BUsiness & ManageMent 7 validly measures the research objectives (Dawson, 2009). inter-construct correlation analysis was then conducted and the results in table 3 show that the scales are predictively valid. Furthermore, cronbach alpha was calculated to confirm the internal consistency of the instrument (i.e. the reliability). the results in table 3 indicate that the scales in the instrument are strongly reliable as the cronbach’s alpha coefficients exceeded the 0.7 prescribed threshold by Field (2015), meaning that the instruments are valid and reliable for the study. 3.4. Data analysis We analysed the data using descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation and cohen etal.’s (2003) hierarchical regression model. Before we carried out the regression analysis, we first conducted a normality test to confirm that the data was normally distributed to proceed with a parametric analysis. this was done using the skewness and kurtosis as recommended by tabachnick etal. (2001), supported by Fields (2009), and applied by scholars such as hilton et al. (2023), hilton et al. (2021), Puni et al. (2021), etc. the descriptive statistics analysis reported the mean, standard deviations, skewness, and kurtosis. the correlation matrix analysis presented the inter-construct correlation. the hierarchical regression analysis established the following: (1) predictive effect of the transformational and ethical leadership on eJi; (2) controlling effect of workplace spirituality; and (3) moderating effect of workplace spirituality on the relationship between the transformational, ethical leadership and eJi. Finally, hayes’ (2018) Process was employed to draw scatter plots for the interaction effects. 4. Empirical findings table 1 presents the demographic characteristics of the respondents. the table indicates that the sample had more males (51%) than females (49%). in a descending order, 40% of the respondents were aged between 31and 40 years, 26% of respondents were aged between 21 and 30 years, 25% of respondent were aged between 41 and 50 years, and 9% of respondents were aged between 51 and 60 years. Regarding marital status, more than half of the respondents were married (60%). in terms of educational background, majority of the respondents hold first degree (44%); followed by holders of masters’ degree (33%), with the least holding hnD/Diploma certificate (11%). table 2 presents the means, standard deviations, skewness, and kurtosis of the study variables. First, the mean results show that all the dimensions of transformational leadership are practiced in the selected universities, with idealized influence being the dominant dimension. Furthermore, the mean score for ethical leadership indicates that it is also practiced by supervisors or managers in the selected universities. comparing the means of the two leadership constructs, it can be concluded that all the dimensions of transformational leadership are practiced more than ethical leadership. the result suggests that because universities want to remain centres of innovation, transformational leadership behaviours are Table 1. Demographic characteristics of respondents. Variables Frequency (n = 416) Percent gender Male 212 51 Female 204 49 age 21–30 108 26 31–40 167 40 41–50 104 25 51–60 37 9 Marital status single 125 30 Married 250 60 Divorced 41 10 educational level HnD/Diploma 46 11 First degree 183 44 Masters 137 33 Professional certificate 50 12 14 s. K. hiltOn etal. Mayer, D. 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