Spiritual leadership is a holistic leadership approach through which organizational members can experience their connection with their spiritual realities. With the help of spiritual leadership, employees can find the inner motivation to show the necessary altruism to serve for the common good and vision. Thus, they find the opportunity to experience meaning in their workplace. This study has focused on spiritual leadership and its possible effects on person-organization fit and turnover intentions among Turkish academicians. Moreover, in this study, the mediator effect of person-organization fit in the relationship between spiritual leadership and turnover intentions has been examined. The research model has been investigated among academicians from various Turkish universities. In the related field research, 190 usable surveys were obtained, and the research data has been examined in SPSS 20. Results showed spiritual leadership has a negative effect on turnover intentions and person-organization fit acts as a mediator in this relationship.
Top1. Introduction
Dissatisfaction with materialism and ever increasing number of problems and ills of modern world, gave birth to new expectations regarding corporate managers. Modern people are overwhelmed by many social, psychological and economic problems having their roots in excessive greed and a lack of love and compassion (Cacioppe, 2000). Thus as Moxley (2000) claims a renewed search for integrity in life, harmony and peace in the minds of people, namely a new spiritual journey is quite important for modern individuals. In this point, spiritual leadership theory is seen as a significant help in solving the problems of contemporary business environment and attracts attention of several management scientists (Moxley, 1999; Fry, 2004).
The previous leadership models often focus on subordinates' internal motvation and they mostly ignore higher order requirements. Moreover, they often ignore the fit between organizations’ value systems and individual kevel values (Fry, 2003; Reave, 2005). In contrast to previous leadership styles, spiritual leaders are good at understanding the relationship between individual values and organziational values, hence, they give importance to integrity.
In this study, spiritual leadership is accepted as the focal point since it acts as an intrinsic motivator motivating employees and making them hopeful and creating alignment with their surrounding (Narcıkara and Zehir, 2016). In this study, we assumed that spiritual leadership behavior of the leaders will effect turnover intentions of followers positevely and this relationship will be mediated by the person-organization fit perceptions of the employees. Without doubt, in order to understand spiritual leadership, understanding the construct of spirituality is very important.