Community Leadership at a Hindu Non-Profit Organization Leads to Outperforming in Indian Microfinance Market

Abstract

There are isolated streams of research in spiritual capital, spiritual leadership, and community leadership. We put together these three notions and indicate that taken together, a spiritual leader with a community leadership style can use his spiritual capital to boost both the social and financial performance of the organization and reduce risk. We document a case where a Hindu non-profit organization is more resilient compared to the other top Indian firms which are for-profit organisations. This challenges the popular belief that creating sustainable organizations with social impact requires a purely business logic. This case study reports the results of interviews with the top management of the organization explaining how religion is related to management inputs, the social business model, and financial performance outcomes. We add to the meager literature on Hinduism in social business leadership. We generate five propositions that expand the extant theoretical conceptualization of community leadership with a case example from a non-profit Hindu spiritual leadership domain. They serve as lessons that managers can reflect on while working with their community and building trust.