Spirituality and Leaders Effectiveness: An Islamic Perspective

Abstract

This research was conducted to bring to light leadership concepts from the Qur’an. Religious elements, especially from the Qur’an have been ignored as a source of knowledge despite decades of ongoing inquiry and increasing interest. Based on the characteristics of the Motaqeen according to the Qur’an, the concept of Taqwa has been operationalized as having two distinct components, Spirituality and Responsibility. This study attempts to examine the relationship between the first instance spirituality, and leader’s effectiveness. The research utilized a cross-sectional field study in which spirituality was a self-constructed measurement while leadership effectiveness was constructed based on already established scales in the literature. Multiple regression and hierarchal regression techniques using SPSS were used to test the hypotheses. More than 200 companies were sampled. The results show that the leaders’ effectiveness is influenced by the leaders’ level of spirituality where one element of Spirituality, Belief, was found to predicate business leadership effectiveness. In light of the findings of the present research several recommendations are made to improve the Spirituality of leaders within organizational culture.