Spiritual leadership and job burnout: Mediating effects of employee well-being and life satisfaction

Abstract

Life satisfaction is an emerging intervening mechanism to explain the effect of work experiences on organizational performance. However, the mechanism has been largely ignored in the management field. The results of this study increase our understanding of how an organizational culture that embraces spiritual leadership and engages the spiritual well-being and life satisfaction needs of employees can help alleviate the symptoms of job burnout. The purpose of this study was to examine how life satisfaction, working in combination with spiritual well-being, influences the relationship between spiritual leadership and job burnout. This study was an explanatory research exploration of the causal relationship between spiritual leadership and job burnout. Research results confirmed that supervisory support, as measured through spiritual leadership, inversely influenced job burnout, as measured through worker exhaustion. Additionally, results revealed that the intervening, serial effect of spiritual well-being and life satisfaction on job burnout was significant. Moreover, results revealed that employees’ life satisfaction fully mediated the relationship with employee vigor while partially mediating that with employee exhaustion.