Spirituality and leadership - examining the relationship between spiritual intelligence and project success: the roles of self-leadership and psychological capital

Spirituality and its relationship to leadership in an organizational context is a fascinating issue for both management practitioners and researchers. While the notion of spirituality in the workplace has generated a considerable amount of attention and debate in the last decade, there has been little research looking at the important link between spiritual intelligence and performance. Using the job demands-resources theory as a theoretical basis, the present study examined the role of a leader’s personal resource of spiritual intelligence in a project context and the mediating mechanisms that relate it to project success. While examining self-leadership as a motivational mechanism in this relationship, the study further examined the role played by the leader’s personal resource of psychological capital as a mechanism that links spiritual intelligence to self-leadership. In addition, by drawing on the conservation of resources theory, the study investigated the moderating effects of project complexity and team size on the relationships between both spiritual intelligence and psychological capital and self-leadership, as well as the relationship between self-leadership and project success. Structural equation modelling was performed utilizing survey data from 191 leaders managing projects in Indian firms. Results showed a positive relationship between spiritual intelligence and psychological capital. Both the leader’s personal resources of spiritual intelligence and psychological capital were positively related to self-leadership. It was found that self-leadership acts as a mediating mechanism between the leader’s spiritual intelligence and project success. In addition, psychological capital was found to mediate the association between spiritual intelligence and self-leadership. There was a significant moderating effect of project complexity on the relationship between self-leadership and project success in that the relationship between self-leadership and project success was stronger for projects higher in complexity.