NOURISHING THE WORKPLACE:THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SPIRITUAL LEADERSHIP, ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIOR, AND EMPLOYEE WORK SATISFACTION

Abstract

This study was conducted to find out the relationship between Spiritual Leadership (SL) and Employees’ Job Satisfaction (EJS) in Information Technology (IT) Sector. This study also investigated the role of Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) as a mediating variable in the relationship between spiritual leadership and employees’ work satisfaction in information technology sector of Lahore, capital city of Punjab. Researcher adopted a positivist research paradigm that assumes that reality is objective and can be explored through observable phenomena using evidence-based data. A correlational research design was utilized to examine the direct and mediated relationships among variables in a non-experimental setting. A survey method was chosen to collect data from research participants. Population consisted of all the employees working in IT industry of Pakistan. The researcher collected online as well as offline data from IT sector of Pakistan through convenience sampling Technique. 550 participants were approached for data collection, from which 490 returned the filled questionnaire, and response rate was 89%. The 17-item questions’ scale was adopted to assess spiritual leadership. To measure the OCB of employees working in IT industry 8 items scale was utilized the employees job satisfaction was measured by utilizing a shorten version of Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire developed by Weiss et al. (1967) was utilized. SPSS was used to calculate mean scores and standard deviation, correlation coefficients, and hierarchical regression models to determine direct, indirect, and mediating effects among variables. The descriptive analysis revealed that employees in the IT sector reported high levels of spiritual leadership (M = 3.77, SD = 0.71) and job satisfaction (M = 3.79, SD = 0.78) on a 5-point Likert scale. Correlation results showed that spiritual leadership was significantly and has a positive relationship with job satisfaction (r = 0.307, p < 0.01) and OCB (r = 0.274, p < 0.01). Mediation analysis demonstrated that spiritual leadership is a significant predictor of job satisfaction (β = 0.31, p < 0.001), and when OCB was introduced into the model, the effect of spiritual leadership decreased from β = 0.31 to β = 0.12, while OCB showed a strong effect (β = 0.65, p < 0.001), explaining 46% of the variance in job satisfaction. Based on findings, it is suggested that future researchers may conduct studies to expand the scope of this study beyond Lahore to include multiple cities and diverse sectors for broader generalizability.