A systematic literature review of spiritual leadership within African management philosophies

Abstract

Orientation: Spiritual leadership has been proposed as an alternative to lead a generation where personal values and beliefs are central to employee contentment and organisational success.

Research purpose: To critically analyse organisational spiritual leadership (SpL) from an African Management Philosophies (AMP) perspective and whether these are secular or non-secular.

Motivation for the study: Knowledge would be drawn from two bodies of scholarly literature, namely SpL and AMP.

Research design, approach and method: Literature will be systematically reviewed, focusing on three aspects of the body on knowledge, namely concepts, definitions and typologies (elements).

Main findings: The concept of SpL seems empirically much more operationalised than AMP. Central to organisational spiritual leadership are the leader’s values, attitudes and behaviours that intrinsically motivate followers to have a sense of spiritual survival through membership and calling, while AMP emphasise traditionalism, communalism, co-operative teamwork and mythologies.

Practical/managerial implications: The research seeks to highlight the existing gaps in literature of a contextualised African measure of SpL.

Contribution or value add: A secular and non-secular approach to spirituality emerges, which looks at AMP as emboldened by Ubuntu ideality that is contrary to extant literature on organisational spiritual leadership.