Developing a Model of Spiritual Leadership among Academic Managers
Keywords:
Spiritual leadership, academic administrators, structural equationsAbstract
This study aimed to identify, validate, and prioritize the components of spiritual leadership among academic managers of Islamic Azad University in Tehran in order to develop an applicable model for university management. This study was basic-applied in purpose and qualitative-quantitative in nature. In the first phase, the components of spiritual leadership were extracted through a review of the literature and qualitative content analysis, and then evaluated by a panel of 30 academic managers and university faculty members as experts. The statistical population consisted of senior, middle, and executive managers of Islamic Azad University branches in Tehran. The sample was selected through stratified random sampling from the North, South, East, West, Central, and Science and Research branches. Based on Cochran’s formula, the required sample size was estimated at 148 participants. To obtain an adequate response rate, 180 questionnaires were distributed, and 150 completed questionnaires were finally collected and analyzed. Data analysis was conducted using structural equation modeling. The results of structural equation modeling indicated that, out of 53 initially identified components, 35 components of spiritual leadership were confirmed in five dimensions: cognitive capacities, social capacities, personality characteristics, behavioral characteristics, and other characteristics. The t-values for all relationships in the model were greater than 1.96, confirming the statistical significance of the relationships. Standardized factor loadings showed that other characteristics had the strongest relationship with spiritual leadership among academic managers, with a coefficient of 0.88, followed by behavioral characteristics with 0.83, social capacities with 0.72, personality characteristics with 0.67, and cognitive capacities with 0.44. The reported goodness-of-fit indices also supported the acceptable fit of the proposed model. The findings indicate that spiritual leadership among academic managers is a multidimensional construct composed of cognitive, social, personality, behavioral, and contextual elements, and the proposed model can serve as a practical basis for leadership development and managerial empowerment programs in higher education.
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Copyright (c) 2025 Fatemeh Habibollah Moosavi (Author); Narges Hasanmoradi (Corresponding author); Mahmood Abolghasemi , Mohammad Ghahremani (Author)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
