The Relationship between Spiritual Leadership and Issues of Spirituality and Religiosity: A Study of Top Turkish Managers

In recent years, research focusing on intangible issues in business contexts has flourished. The authors of the current study aimed to contribute to this research by considering managers in terms of their spiritual leadership, spirituality and religiosity. This study addresses these concepts and tests a model that assesses the relationships between the spiritual leadership attributes of top Turkish managers and the spirituality and religiosity of those individuals. The results reveal four key elements. First, the spiritual leadership of top Turkish managers depends upon their wisdom and altruism. In addition, their spirituality is comprised of their approach to immateriality and their spiritual awareness. Furthermore, there are no common factors among spiritual leadership, spirituality and religiosity. Finally, although the factors that form spiritual leadership, spirituality and religiosity have very weak and positive relationships, no statistically significant relationship was found between spiritual leadership and the issues of spirituality and religiosity.


Introduction
In the current business environment, various abstract concepts play a prominent role. Intangible subjects such as emotionality, emotional intelligence, emotional capital, intellectuality, intellectual assets, intellectual properties, religiosity, religious capital, spirituality, spiritual intelligence, spiritual resources and spiritual leadership have been incorporated into business discussions and relationships. This inclination toward immateriality is also evident in scientific research on such topics. Some gaps, however, still remain in the relevant literature. Emotional, intellectual and spiritual topics in business contexts have been addressed in various studies, but religiosity has not been fully explored. Another gap results from insufficient analyses of the relationships among these topics. Some studies have considered the relationships among emotional, intellectual, spiritual and religious topics within the work environment (e.g., Delbecq, 2005;Martin & Hafer, 2009;Tischler, Biberman, & McKeage, 2002;Trott, 1996), but such research has not yet addressed the full implications of these issues.
The authors of the current study aimed to fill these gaps by analyzing the relationships among top Turkish managers' spirituality, spiritual leadership and religiosity. To do this, the authors utilized multiple instruments. To examine spiritual leadership, the authors drew upon the Spiritual Leadership Scale (Fry, Vitucci, & Cedillo, 2005). The authors applied Boorom's (2009) updates to this scale and also rephrased some of its elements. Another instrument, derived from the INSPIRIT scale (Kass, Friedman, Laserman, Zuttermeister, & Benson, 1991), was used to appraise religiosity. Spirituality was assessed by the items of Amram and Dryer's (2008) integrated spiritual intelligence scale (ISIS). The participants in this research are the top managers of Turkey's leading 500 industrial enterprises as of 2009.
(1999) defined workplace spirituality as having a positive mood in the work context, while Wheaton and Baird (2002) focused on the spiritual values of people in the workplace. Meanwhile, Mohamed, Wisnieski, Askar and Syed (2004) insisted that spirituality is a part of the personality of people in work contexts. Ashmos and Duchon (2000) favored the separation of workplace spirituality and religiosity, but they still mentioned religious rules. The two scholars claimed that workplace spirituality is not about religion but is a cognitive acceptance of common rules that do not conflict with any religious belief systems.
With or without religiosity, workplace spirituality may be summarized as the awareness that workers have inner lives that must be fed by meaningful work for the good of society (Duchon & Plowman, 2005;Kubicek, 2005).

From spirituality to spiritual leadership
The relationships between (workplace) spirituality and religiosity have been summarized thus far. Connections between spirituality and leadership will be explored next. The authors conclude that the literature review reveals three different approaches to these connections. In the first approach, spirituality is injected into leadership to describe specific leadership types. A good example of this approach is servant leadership. This type of leadership, introduced by Greenleaf (1977), is exemplified by a leader who follows spiritual values to serve other people, both in his or her own organization and in the community. Spears (1996) and Hale and Fields (2007) claimed that servant leadership is simply helping other people to discover their spirituality in order to promote altruism and trust in others. Some scholars (e.g., Beazley, 2002;Beazley & Gemmill, 2005) have found that the spirituality of leaders and their servant-leader behaviors have positive relationships. Covey (1989Covey ( , 1991 also contributed to the discussion of spirituality in leadership. The scholar coined the term principle-centered leaders to identify those who are willing to serve others while obeying natural rules and universal principles. These leaders help and believe in other people, encourage optimism, establish inner (spiritual) balance in their lives, try to unleash talent and creativity in others in the workplace and seek to rejuvenate themselves in order to cope with environmental changes and pressures. Fleming (2004) provided another useful example of infusing spirituality into leadership. The researcher examined the spirituality of historical and modern leaders, including Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, Moses, Muhammad, the Dalai Lama, Gandhi, Khomeini, King and Mandela. Fleming's study led to a discussion of soulful leadership, which considers ways to use spirituality to transform oneself in order to achieve greater meaning in life.
The second approach to relating spirituality and leadership requires an acceptance that these two concepts are distinct and that therefore their relationships should be analyzed while presuming that they do not share any common points. This second approach is different because the first method assumes that spirituality is found within specific kinds of leadership. When the two concepts are viewed as separate entities, scholars approach them differently. Spirituality is asserted to increase leadership effectiveness (Peters & Waterman, 1984), and spirituality and transformational leadership are inter-related (Marinoble, 1990). A leader's spirituality affects his organization and workers (Geaney, 2003). Transformational leadership is linked with a leader's spirituality, and spirituality also fosters mutual trust between a leader and his followers (Conger, 1994). The leader may also depend on his or her own spiritual resources to develop an environment in which others can feed on spirituality (Konz & Ryan, 1999).
The third approach to evaluating the connections between spirituality and leadership is the formation of spiritual leadership. The concept of spiritual leadership is different from the models summarized previously because it is not a leadership type with spirituality injected into it. That is, the aforementioned leadership types use spirituality as a means to reach specific goals such as increased efficiency and profitability in a business context (Hicks, 2003;Swayne, Duncan, & Ginter, 2006). Spiritual leadership, however, claims that spirituality is not a means, but is rather an attribute of the leader. Therefore, the spiritual leader need not affect others with spirituality, but instead should move on with others (Blanchard, 1999). Thus, spiritual leadership is not simply a type of leadership. The very mind of the leader has shifted, and this shifted mind affects the leader and others (Fairholm, 1998). The spiritual leader, therefore, may depend on the spiritual resources of his or her shifted mind while leading followers (Korac-Kakabadse et al., 2002) and while uniting workers towards a mission and vision (Fairholm, 1998). This mental shift may also create a shift in the leader's role from manager to spiritual guide (Konz & Ryan, 1999).

The connections between religiosity and spiritual leadership
As mentioned previously, the relationship between religiosity and spirituality has been the subject of considerable debate. The literature reveals a similar debate between religiosity and spiritual leadership. Some studies have used religiosity to consider spiritual leadership. For example, Fry (2003) argued that spiritual leaders deploy spiritual resources in social contexts; they follow God's will by obeying divine or higher laws (values) in their daily lives. Blackaby and Blackaby (2001) argued that most people who consider themselves spiritual leaders are not truly spiritual. These individuals are too concerned with secularity and thus do not comprehend that spiritual leadership is not a job. Spiritual leadership is, in fact, leadership according to God's calling. Focusing on God with more eagerness, Sanders (1988) claimed that the criteria for becoming a spiritual leader include confidence in and acknowledgement of God, obedience to God, adherence to God's path and motivation based on the love of God. Many other scholars (e.g., Barton & Ford, 2008;Sparks, 2008;Wilson & Cresswell, 2001) have also advocated this emphasis on religion in the discussion of spiritual leadership.
On the other side, some studies have used secularity to define spiritual leadership. One proponent is Fairholm (1998), who claimed that an individual's core values and high levels of inner moral standards lie at the heart of that person's spiritual leadership. The scholar also set out components of spiritual leadership and contended that these components do not include any specific religion. Hicks (2003) emphasized that workplaces may contain many leaders and followers of different faiths and that therefore the leaders must discard religion in order to become spiritual guides. This view is also shared by Cavanagh (1999), who suggested that religiosity distracts people, such that individuals in the workplace must reduce their religions to core values in order to communicate. Cavanaugh suggested that this leads management and leadership to appeal to people's spirituality rather than the rules and dogma of religion. Goethals and Sorenson (2006) moved one step further and argued that the use of religion to manage or lead people in the workplace may easily result in conflict. Emphasis on a specific religion can cause people of the same religion to feel privileged, while those of other religions feel marginalized. This inequality may be corrected only by respecting people with different religions and considering their shared values (Goethals & Sorenson, 2006). These cautionary statements imply that the separation of religiosity and spiritual leadership is not only a necessity but that it may also be an imperative for the good of the company. This secular approach to spiritual leadership is shared by many other scholars (e.g., Roka, 2006).
Instead of taking a stand on the use of religiosity to consider spiritual leadership, some scholars have assumed that spiritual leadership can exist with or without pointing to religiosity. Fernando (2007) suggested that three distinct types of spirituality may be considered when referring to spiritual leadership. The spiritual resources of a spiritual leader may be based on religion, values or self-growth. From a broader perspective, Fryling and Peterson (2010) described spiritual leadership as an ellipse. The ellipse has two focal points: one point represents inner spiritual life and relation to God; the other point signifies one's physical existence and actions in the world. House and Durham (1997) argued that spiritual leadership has historically been related to God, but it is also increasingly being related to secular success in today's world.

Intersections of religiosity and spirituality
The studies in this section demonstrate that religiosity, spirituality and spiritual leadership have some connections. The authors also understand that the literature includes some concepts that serve as intersections of religiosity and spirituality. In other words, the relevant literature supports the notion that religiosity and spirituality are related (as explained previously), but the literature also references some concepts that are actually mixtures of religiosity and spirituality. An appropriate example is religious human capital, a concept introduced by Iannaccone (1990) that is defined as a person's religious knowledge level and feeling of connectedness with other worshipers. This definition resembles the definition of spirituality put forth by Mitroff and Denton (1999) in terms of feeling connected. Stark and Finke (2000) modified religious human capital by downplaying social relationships with other worshipers and by focusing on connectedness with a divine being. This modification does not separate religious human capital from spirituality, as some definitions of spirituality (e.g., Benefiel, 2005) include a connection with a higher being. Some studies (e.g., Finke, 2003;Miller, 2002) have summarized religious human capital as the combination of religious knowledge, connection with both a higher being and a person's inner-self and a set of religious applications. Connection with a higher being is also a part of spirituality (Benefiel, 2005;Bregman & Thierman, 1995;Mitroff & Denton, 1999), and a focus on one's inner-self is also a feature of the spirituality of spiritual leaders (Fairholm, 1998;Fryling & Peterson, 2010).
Another related concept is spiritual human capital. Spiritual human capital (or spiritual capital) resembles religious human capital in terms of connectedness (Iannaccone & Klick, 2003;Marler & Hadaway, 2002). Yet some scholars (e.g., Liu, 2008;Zohar & Marshall, 2004) have suggested that these two capitals differ in terms of spiritual belief, knowledge and closeness to God. Iannaccone and Klick (2003) reasoned that spiritual capital is a superset of religious capital but also a subset of human capital. According to a similar view, spiritual capital is a combination of power, influence, knowledge and dispositions gained via a religious tradition (Berger & Hefner, 2003). Liu (2008) defined spiritual capital as the power and influence that are created by a person's or organization's spiritual and religious beliefs and knowledge.

A summary about the mentioned relationships and the current situation of the relevant Turkish literature
In summary, the literature review reveals that there are relationships between religiosity, spirituality and spiritual leadership. These relationships may be between two equivalent concepts (e.g., the relationship between leadership and spirituality), or they may include one concept that is used to define or construct another concept (e.g., using religiosity to explain spirituality). Alternatively, the relationship may take the form of a connection between a superset and a subset (e.g., seeing spirituality as a wider concept that also includes religion). Moreover, the concepts of religious and spiritual human capital imply that some elements of religiosity and spirituality may be combined.
At this point, the authors proceed with an examination of relevant Turkish studies, as the current study was performed in Turkey. Our Turkish literature review indicates that religiosity has not been considered in a Turkish business context, but a few studies have considered spirituality and leadership. A good example was provided by Bekis (2006), who examined the relationship between spirituality and leadership and found that managers' spiritual abilities can affect charismatic, transformational, visionary and team leadership styles. Meanwhile, Kurtar (2009) reviewed Fry's spiritual leadership survey and contended that the survey is applicable to Turkish cases with some minor revisions. Akar (2010) stated that spiritual leadership can be applied in educational organizations. A study by Dogan and Sahin (2009) revealed that emotionality and spirituality can affect transformational leadership. Aydin and Ceylan (2009) researched spiritual leadership in Turkish metalworking firms and concluded that such firms are finance-focused, rendering spiritual leadership ineffective as an organizational strategy. Baloglu and Karadag (2009) also reviewed spiritual leadership literature and described it in relation to Fry's spiritual leadership theory. In short, empirical Turkish studies have reported some relationships between leadership and spirituality, while theoretical Turkish studies have focused on the assessment and possible applications of spiritual leadership theory.

Population, sample, data collection and measures of the research
Any business manager may possess certain forms and degrees of religiosity, spirituality and leadership abilities. For this reason, the authors conclude that this research could apply to any business. However, the vast number of businesses in Turkey makes it impossible to consider all Turkish businesses as the population.
Despite this fact, the authors sought to establish a population that could be sufficiently representative of the Turkish business environment. The Istanbul Chamber of Industry (ISO) publishes a list of the top 500 Turkish industrial enterprises each year. The authors elected to use the latest list, released in 2009, to establish the study population. In this case, the population consists of the top managers of the top 500 industrial enterprises in Turkey.
The questionnaires used to gather data included items from three different scales. The items of spiritual leadership were drawn from the spiritual leadership scale (Fry et al., 2005). The authors applied Boorom's (2009) updates to the spiritual leadership items and also revised some items for clarity. Religiosity was assessed using some items from the INSPIRIT scale (Kass et al., 1991), and spirituality was evaluated using elements from the ISIS (Amram & Dryer, 2008).
To increase the response rate, the authors distributed the questionnaires by both e-mail and mail. The authors also worked with a consulting company to physically distribute and collect questionnaires from top managers who did not respond to e-mailed or mailed questionnaires.

Statistical structures and reliabilities of religiosity, spirituality and spiritual leadership
Some managers refused to complete the questionnaires, and some completed questionnaires included a high number of errors. For these reasons, 408 questionnaires were deemed acceptable at the end of the data-gathering process. Data collection began on 2 August, 2010, and ended on 24 September, 2010. correlation table of the variables was analyzed to omit variables with problematic relationships (Field, 2005). The exploratory factor analysis showed that the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure was 0.871 and that Bartlett's test was significant, suggesting that the data are suitable for factor analysis. Five factors were extracted, and they can explain 70.87% of the total variance. Table 1 shows these factors and their respective items. The five factors were named by the authors.
Please note that the items in Table 1 were written in Turkish on the questionnaires; translation into English may have produced slight changes in meaning. The five factors are summarized as: •Wisdom: Significance of the work and leadership activities to the leader; leader's honesty, pride and faith; spiritual concerns of the leader; feeling of connection to the business; and assessment of one's own life.
•Altruism: Devotion to and effort for the business; the acts of guarding, appreciating and inspiring employees; being loyal, trustworthy, kind and considerate to workers; leader's consistency in the workplace; and the struggle to make a difference via leadership.
•Immateriality: The connection and affinity of the person with the metaphysical world.
•Spiritual awareness: Being aware of a higher being; harmonizing with a higher being; and feeling like a part of a greater wholeness.
•Religiosity: Feeling religious; being close to God; and engaging in religious or spiritual activities. Table 2 presents the results of the reliability analyses of the factors described above. According to this table, all of the factors and the items as a whole are statistically reliable. Some facts are revealed by the results of the factor and reliability analyses. Two factors, wisdom and altruism of the leader, can be formed using modified items from the spiritual leadership scale. In this case, the authors conclude that spiritual leadership is actually a reflection of a leader's wisdom and altruism. Two other factors, immateriality and spiritual awareness, include items from the integrated spiritual intelligence scale. Therefore, the participants' spirituality is a reflection of their consciousnesses of a higher being, a whole entity, as well as their interest in the immaterial world. Religiosity is represented by only one factor, whose items are drawn from the INSPIRIT scale.
In summary, spirituality and spiritual leadership each have two factors and religiosity has only one factor. Significantly, these concepts have no common factors.

The relationships between religiosity, spirituality and spiritual leadership
This study includes three concepts, and one of its main concerns is understanding the relationships among them. For this reason, the authors reviewed the relevant literature to determine whether a model including these concepts together has been used before. As previously stated, few studies have considered these three concepts together, and those studies did not provide any models. Therefore, the authors propose a model (Figure 1) employing structural equation modeling (SEM). According to the model displayed in Figure 1, spiritual leadership is a second-level factor, composed of two factors (wisdom and altruism of the leader). The authors grouped the factors of spirituality and religiosity together and formed another second-level factor, "spirituality and religiosity," because the connections between spiritual leadership and the two other concepts (spirituality and religiosity) are a primary concern in this study. Using SEM, the relationships between each concept's factors can be analyzed.
The model is realistic (RMSEA [Note 1]: 0.083), and the relationships among items and factors were all statistically significant, with one exception. The relationship between spiritual leadership and spirituality and religiosity is very weak (correlation value = 0.02) and is not statistically significant (t-value = 1.81), suggesting that no meaningful connection exists. In other words, the first result produced by this research shows that spiritual leadership is not related to spirituality and religiosity, if spirituality and religiosity are grouped as one concept -spirituality and religiosity. Table 3 shows the contribution of each factor to its respective concept. According to Table 3, wisdom of the leader is the main contributor to spiritual leadership. The other concepts, spirituality and religiosity, are linked most strongly with immateriality, followed by spiritual awareness and religiosity, respectively. Notably, all factors contribute positively to their respective concepts.
Finally, Table 4 shows the correlations between the factors and the concepts. The results show that the relationship between the two concepts -spiritual leadership and spirituality and religiosity -is not statistically significant. The situation, however, is different when the relationships between each factor and each concept are analyzed (Table 4). This analysis reveals positive and statistically significant relationships. The altruism of the leader has a strong correlation with spirituality and religiosity; while a similar, although weaker, relationship connects the wisdom of the leader with spirituality and religiosity. The factors of spirituality (immateriality and spiritual awareness) and religiosity also have weak relationships with spiritual leadership.

Conclusions and Discussion
One of the concerns of this study is the connection of top managers' spiritual leadership with issues such as their spirituality and religiosity. The results show that these issues together are not significantly related to top managers' spiritual leadership. This result may stem from many issues. The authors grouped the factors of spirituality and religiosity; the relationship between this grouping and spiritual leadership was considered in building the research model. This grouping may explain the insignificant relationship, as religiosity may not be as relevant to spiritual leadership issues. At this point, one might consider isolating religiosity and analyzing the relationship between spiritual leadership and spirituality alone. Because this study included religiosity within its scope, however, that examination is impossible.
The result herein may also arise from the distinctions employed. As stated previously, some studies have distinguished between spiritual leadership and spirituality. In other words, some scholars have posited that spiritual leadership is not equivalent to leadership with an injection of spirituality. To explore this distinction, a proper approach requires an analysis of the relationships among the factors of spirituality and spiritual leadership. Such an analysis revealed that the factors of spirituality (immateriality and spiritual awareness) do have statistically significant relationships with spiritual leadership, but these relationships are very weak. In this case, the authors of this study conclude that the research favors the third approach to the relationship between spirituality and leadership, which holds that spirituality and spiritual leadership are two distinct concepts.
A similar result was achieved when the relationship between the one factor of religiosity and spiritual leadership was examined: a statistically significant, yet very weak, relationship exists between these two. This relationship is weaker than those between the factors of spirituality and spiritual leadership, which suggests that there is a greater distance between spiritual leadership and religiosity.
If the relationships are examined from a spiritual leadership perspective, some differences emerge. In other words, the relationships between the factors of spiritual leadership (the wisdom and altruism of the leader) and the issues of spirituality and religiosity differ from the relationships explained in the previous paragraph. Both the wisdom and altruism of the leader have positive and significant relationships with spirituality and religiosity. These relationships are also stronger than those between spiritual leadership and the factors of spirituality and religiosity. This means that the top managers' wisdom and altruistic leadership properties are close to spirituality and religiosity. Notably, altruism has the strongest relationship; i.e., the more willing the top manager is to transfer his or her own benefits to others, the more committed that person is to religiosity, immateriality and spiritual awareness.
Among the relationships between the factors and the concepts, the weakest ones include religiosity. Not only does religiosity have the weakest connection with spiritual leadership, it also has the weakest connection with its own concept -spirituality and religiosity. This implies that top Turkish managers are inclined to separate issues of spirituality and religiosity.
In conclusion, this research found that spiritual leadership is a distinct concept. Spiritual leadership is not significantly related to spirituality and religiosity, although the factors that make up these concepts have some positive and weak relationships. The results also reveal that religiosity is not closely connected to spirituality or spiritual leadership.
The authors believe that the relationships between the concepts addressed in this study represent a new contribution to the literature, and therefore, some recommendations regarding future studies should be made. This study was not limited to a single religion in considering religiosity, but future studies may focus on specific religions. Such studies may try to analyze how possible variations among religions impact religiosity and how this affects its relationships with spirituality and spiritual leadership. The authors of this study have generalized the approaches to conceptualizing spiritual leadership, explaining that this leadership is defined through three different approaches in the literature. Future studies may also analyze these approaches or may try to find new approaches to spiritual leadership. Understanding the possible effects of different approaches on the connections of spiritual leadership with the issues of spirituality and religiosity may also prove interesting. Another recommendation concerns spirituality. As mentioned previously, the literature is divided on whether religiosity should be included when studying spirituality. The authors of the current study performed an exploratory factor analysis in searching for common factors between spirituality and religiosity. The results indicate that these two concepts are not mixed. This result may, however, reflect the manner in which spirituality was assessed. Similar studies in the future may benefit from different approaches to spirituality in order to relate it to religiosity and spiritual leadership. The authors also recommend the selection of different participants in future studies. This study included data from the top managers of Turkey's greatest industrial enterprises in an effort to understand the relationships between spiritual leadership and issues of spirituality and religiosity. In the future, the same relationships may analyzed using data from entry-level or mid-level managers. These relationships might also be considered with comparisons between different management levels. As a final recommendation, the authors suggest the development of new instruments concerning the concepts of spiritual leadership, spirituality and religiosity. Such new instruments may focus on only one of these concepts, or they may include multiple concepts simultaneously. For example, an instrument may assess the spirituality of people with partial reference to religiosity. These instruments may also be imbued with different issues, such as cultural or social attributes, while assessing the aforementioned concepts.