An assignment
on
Spiritual Motivational Theory
and
Love and Affection Motivation Theory
Prepared for
Dr. Md. Mosharraf Hossain
Professor
Department of Management
University of Dhaka
Prepared by
Tarikul Islam
Id no.: 253
Sec.: B
HRM
Department of Management
University of Dhaka
Date of Submission
February 19, 2020
Spiritual leadership theory
Spiritual leadership theory is an emerging paradigm for organization development and
transformation that draws from these two areas and has the potential to guide the evolution of
positive organizations where human well-being and organization-level performance can not only
coexist but can also be optimized. Fry (2003, 2005a) and Fry and Matherly (2005) have
developed a causal theory of spiritual leadership and performance excellence which discusses in
some detail the implementation process using an intrinsic motivation model that incorporates
vision, hope/faith and altruistic love, theories of workplace spirituality, and spiritual survival/
well-being. Spiritual leadership taps into the fundamental needs of both leader and follower for
spiritual survival through calling and membership. It seeks to create vision and value congruence
across the individual, empowered team and organization levels and, ultimately, to foster higher
levels of organizational commitment and productivity. A major proposition of spiritual
leadership theory is that spiritual leadership is necessary for the transformation to and continued
success of learning organizations. Operationally, spiritual leadership comprises the values,
attitudes and behaviors that are necessary to intrinsically motivate oneself and others so that they
have a sense of spiritual well-being through calling and membership This entails (Fry 2003,
2005b):
creating a vision wherein leaders and followers experience a sense of calling in that their life has
meaning and makes a difference;
establishing a social/organizational culture based on the values of altruistic love whereby leaders
and followers have a sense of membership, feel understood and appreciated, and have genuine
care, concern and appreciation for both self and others.
Fry (2005a) extended spiritual leadership theory by exploring the concept of positive human
health and well-being through recent developments in workplace spirituality, character ethics,
positive psychology and spiritual leadership. These areas provide a consensus on the values,
attitudes and behaviors necessary for positive human health and well-being. Ethical well-being is
defined as authentically living one’s values, attitudes and behavior from the inside out in creating
a principled center congruent with the universal, consensus values inherent in spiritual leadership
theory (Cashman, 1998; Covey, 1991; Fry, 2005a). Ethical well-being is then seen as necessary
but not sufficient for spiritual well-being, which, in addition to ethical well-being, incorporates
transcendence of self in pursuit of a vision/purpose/mission in service to key stakeholders to
satisfy one’s need for spiritual survival through calling and membership. Individuals practicing
spiritual leadership at the personal level will score high on both life satisfactions in terms of joy,
peace and serenity and the Ryff and Singer (2001) dimensions of well-being. In other words,
they will:
experience greater psychological well-being
have fewer problems related to physical health in terms of all static load (cardiovascular disease,
cognitive impairment, declines in physical
functioning, and mortality). More specifically, they will have a high regard for themselves and
their past life, good-quality relationships with others, a sense that life is purposeful and
meaningful, the capacity to effectively manage their surrounding world, the ability to follow
inner convictions, and a sense of continuing growth and self-realization.
Effect of Spiritual leadership theory
Fry (2003) incorporated spirituality, a long-neglected aspect, into leadership theories, and
ultimately proposed the concept of spiritual leadership, which emphasizes intrinsically
motivating one’s self and others through the leader’s values, attitudes, and behaviors.
Conceptually, spiritual leadership comprises three principal components, vision, hope/faith, and
altruistic love, as the leader’s values, attitudes, and behaviors, respectively. Vision refers to a
meaningful future, causing employees to feel intrinsic self-value and life purpose. Hope/faith
reflects the leader’s confidence in the achievability of the vision, high levels of which can inspire
subordinates to accomplish the organizational mission. Altruistic love exhibits a series of leader
behaviors valuing mutual care and respect and producing a sense of being understood and
appreciated by organizational members, based on which a favorable organizational culture is
likely to be forged. Vision in the spiritual leadership model gives intrinsic purpose to life (Chen
and Yang, 2012) and is spiritually grounded when employees have a sense of hope/faith that the
common vision will engage them in achieving future goals (Fry et al., 2005; Fry and Cohen,
2009). At its best, this feeling is the intrinsic reward for employees to create firm beliefs and
encourage the pursuit of a meaningful organizational vision (Chen and Yang, 2012).
Spiritual Leadership Theory
Although spiritual leadership theory is deeply rooted in Western culture, several scholars have
argued for the transportability of the leadership construct and organizational practice to the
Confucian cultural context. For instance, high levels of spirituality in leaders is positively
associated with the achievement of organizational goals in South Korea (Kang et al., 2017).
Furthermore, spiritual leadership provides a unique approach to protect company resources and
decrease subordinates’ wrongdoing in the Confucianism context (Wang et al., 2017).
Spiritual Leadership and Task Performance
Task performance involves a specific pattern of behaviors that orient toward completing a work
task and make a unique contribution to supervisor’s judgment of an employee’s overall worth to
the organization (Motowidlo and Van Scotter, 1994; Conway, 1999; Johnson, 2001). There are
reasons for the positive relationships between spiritual leadership and individual task
performance. First, spiritual leadership is viewed as an effective way to fuel employees’ intrinsic
motivation. Spiritual leadership not only meets the psychological needs of both leaders and
followers (Guillén et al., 2015) but also taps into fundamental needs for spiritual survival, which
include spirituality values and management practices, such as inspiring people to seek interesting
and meaningful work (Fry, 2003).
Second, followers of leaders with spiritual leadership are more likely to have better performance
because of the common and clear vision. Spiritual leadership entails motivating followers by
articulating a long-term challenge and different future. Clear and sufficiently challenging goals
are more likely to improve an individual’s task performance (Locke et al., 1981). Specific and
challenging goals lead to higher output than those assigned no specific goals (Locke et al.,
1981; Corgnet et al., 2015). Spiritual leadership delivers faith/hope both in spirituality-grounded
vision and the process of creating vision for followers.
Spiritual Leadership and Knowledge Sharing Behaviors
Knowledge sharing behaviors are defined as a series of actions in which individuals disseminate
and diffuse valuable information with others within organizations (Bartol and Srivastava, 2002).
These behaviors represent a process of mutually exchanging relevant information, and it implies
synergistic collaboration among individuals who work toward a common goal (Boland and
Tenkasi, 1995). Empirical studies have identified that leadership is an important factor that
influences knowledge sharing attitudes and behaviors (Gagné, 2009). Consistently, Bock and
Kim (2002) found that having leaders who expected to improve subordinates’ relationships and
to recognize employees’ contribution to organizational performance was positively related to
sharing behaviors. Spiritual leadership is a type of leadership characterized by defending
integrity, goodness, teamwork, knowing, wholeness, and interconnectedness (Aydin and Ceylan,
2009). The purpose of spiritual leadership is to paint a desirable vision and value congruence
across the strategic plan (Fry, 2003), and this shared vision vividly portrays a picture that
followers should solve problems and share valuable knowledge to fulfill a common goal, when
encountering complex challenges. Sharing professional knowledge is viewed as a personally
worthwhile realization for employees who have internalized the organizational vision into their
value systems (De Vries et al., 2006).
Spiritual Leadership and Innovation Behaviors
Innovation behaviors refer to the intentional creation, introduction and application of new ideas
within a work role, group or organization (De Jong and Den Hartog, 2010). Researchers have
regarded leadership as pivotal in innovative processes (Rosing et al., 2011; Donate and de Pablo,
2015), but to the best of our knowledge, there is still a scarcity of research that demonstrates a
clear link between spiritual leadership and innovation behaviors. Organizations that are rich in
spirituality generate creativity among team members, since spirituality is a key element of
creativity and innovation processes. Spiritual leadership is an effective approach to nourishing
spirituality within the workplace (Fry, 2008), ultimately facilitating followers’ innovation
behaviors. Specifically, spiritual leaders value followers’ meaningfulness at work and motivate
them to go beyond the call of duty, such that followers will have a sense of self-transcendence.
This experience is an important antecedent of innovation behaviors (Jung et al., 2003). In
addition, spiritual leaders are characterized as having integrity, honesty, altruism and genuine
care for others (Fry, 2003; Reave, 2005). Those characteristics are typically embedded in
spiritual leaders who are preoccupied with followers’ development. The focus on followers’
development is a result of meeting their foundational psychological need for safety. Followers
who see themselves as significant in the workplace and have a strong sense of psychological
safety will be more likely to generate new ideas and experiment with the ideas (Hogan and
Coote, 2014).
Drawing from spiritual leadership theory, spiritual leadership develops a compelling vision that
articulates the road to fulfilling followers’ ideas in the workplace since providing a shared vision
is believed to inspire innovation behaviors (Weng et al., 2015). In the vision-creating process,
spiritual leadership entails subordination of their own goals and followers’ most desirable
elements for the common greater future of the organization while also keeping followers’ trust
and belief in the organization’s vision through fueling their hope/faith. Spiritual leaders directly
affect cognitive-based trust and affect-based trust through the process of identifying vision and
motivating faith/hope, which in turn increases followers’ intrinsic motivation to implement
creative ideas to pursue organizational vision (Yoshida et al., 2014). In addition, spiritual leaders
engage in establishing a sustained organizational culture based on altruistic love (Fry, 2003).
AFFECTION MOTIVATION
Love or affection is a very complex form of general drive. Affection motive is very closely
associated with primary sex motive on one hand and with the secondary affiliation with the
other. ‘Love makes the world go round’ and ‘love conquers all’. In a world where we suffer from
interpersonal, intra-individual and national conflict, where quality of life, family values, and
human rights increasingly important to modern society, the affection motive takes on added
importance everywhere.
Love, as a source of motivation and energy, transforms us into a better version of ourselves.
Being loved makes you feel safe; it gives you a reason to believe in yourself. Unconditional love
starts an engine inside you, opening all kinds of doors. Being loved is so good for your well-
being since it means that someone appreciates you just the way you are.
Love gives your life and makes you shine. Love enables you to reach your potential. It makes
you a better person.
The scientific community says that “human attachment employs a push-pull mechanism which
overcomes social distance by deactivating networks used for negative emotions and critical social
assessment. It also bonds individuals through reward circuitry, explaining the power of love as a
source of motivation and enthusiasm.
This is why we can say that love makes us better people. Love gives you the strength to face new
challenges, since it gives you someone by your side who trusts you. It gives you power to move
forward and keep striving.
