Mediating Role of Workplace Spirituality and Protean Career in Modeling the Employee Career Success through Spiritual Leadership

Abstract

Career success, though a subjective construct, has always been the most cherished goal of all employees. The present study focuses on the role of spiritual leadership in attaining the career success while workplace spirituality and protean career acts as catalyst to enhance the underlying psychological processes. Subjective evaluation of career success may include life, career and job satisfaction which can be enhanced through spiritual leadership. Workplace spirituality is the very essence for prevalence of spiritual leaders which can boost up the morale of employees and help meet their personal as well as organizational objectives by nourishing different streams of their careers. A protean career employee generally focuses on personal development of his skills and competencies at his own in order to attain career success instead of being dependent on organizational career arrangements. However, enabling work environment in the presence of work place spirituality and spiritual leaders will augment this process. There exists significant literature how workplace spirituality affects the performance of employees in the organization, but this study is a prime effort to investigate how workplace spirituality and protean career can be used to explain the relationship between spiritual leadership and subjective career success of employees. Current stream of research that calls for pragmatism philosophy, which is being used in present research, dwells the need for testing framework through qualitative as well as quantitative perspectives which is known as mix-method research design. This design helps to overcome the weaknesses/shortcomings of quantitative and qualitative studies. Using structured questionnaire and interview guide, data were collected from x faculty members of universities, doctors of hospitals and officer grade employees of banking industry from five major cities of Punjab, Pakistan. Service sector industries have been chosen because of its major contribution to the national GDP (more than 60%). Respondents were selected through convenience sampling and sample size was 1920. Different statistical tools such as correlation analysis, confirmatory factor analy sis, structural equation modeling and hierarchical regression analysis have been applied for analyzing the data which provided significant support for the hypothesized relation ships. Results showed that spiritual leadership positively impact subjective career suc cess of employees. Similarly, workplace spirituality and protean career act as the cata lysts between spiritual leadership and subjective career success of employees. This study open new horizons for future research. The study in hand will provide guidelines and applications for researchers as well as practitioners.