Predicting the Psychological Empowerment of Faculty Members Based on the Spiritual Leadership Model

Abstract

Background: Academic faculty members of universities are the main element of science transfer and development of societies whose empowerment is an inevitable necessity. Therefore, the main purpose of this study was to predict the psychological empowerment of employees based on the model of spiritual leadership. Method: The method of the present study was descriptive-correlational in terms of implementation method and applied in terms of purpose. The statistical population of the study was 162 professors and lecturers of Farhangian University of Isfahan in 2009-2010. Based on Morgan and Krejcie (1970) table, 110 of them were selected by simple random sampling method. The research instruments were the standard questionnaires of Fry Spiritual Leadership (2005) and Spreitzer Job Empowerment (1995), the reliability of which was obtained by Cronbach's alpha test of 0.89. Pearson correlation test with SPSS23 software and structural equation approach with Amos20 software were used to analyze the data. Results: Data analysis showed that spiritual leadership has a significant relationship with psychological empowerment of employees (r = 0.44 and P <0.01). Spiritual leadership also predicts 0.45 variance of variable psychological empowerment of Farhangian University faculty members. Among the dimensions of spiritual leadership, perspective (0.83), altruism (0.81) and faith and hope (0.80) had the highest path coefficient on empowerment, respectively. Conclusion: Considering the effect of spiritual leadership on the psychological empowerment of faculty members, it is necessary to review the patterns of leadership in cultural universities and the appointment of individuals as the president of universities should be done more with the style of spiritual leadership.

Keywords

• empowerment
• spiritual leadership
• altruism