pirituality in workplace of university and academic group leadership effectiveness

As universities and higher education institutions nurture productive human capital, they are pressured by educational policymakers and society to function, be accountable, to achieve justice, and to transform society. This necessitates the reconstruction of a new concept of leadership and its ethics. Higher education is a complementary institution to systematic primary and secondary public education and a product of the revival of civilization. Higher education can serve the development of the infrastructure and structures of society in all dimensions and facilitate the preservation and protection of the achievements and ideals of society. The higher education system has a significant share and importance in economic, social and cultural development due to its role in training skilled and specialized human resources needed by the economic and social sectors. Efficient higher education increases the efficiency of all institutions and organizations in society and, due to limited resources, increases the productivity and efficiency of individuals and organizations; Important factors such as spirituality in the workplace can play a role in the productivity of this institution. The purpose of this study was to investigate the predictive role of spirituality on the leadership effectiveness in the workplace of the university.

By purposes, this research is practical and on the base of data collection, the quantitative research method is descriptive. By stratified random sampling method, 115 faculty members of Shahid Rajaee Teacher Training University were selected in the academic year of 2014-2015. Spirituality in the workplace Milliman et al.’s questionnaire and Ramsend's questionnaire of "Leadership Effectiveness" were used. The factual and content validity of the questionnaires was confirmed by five professors in the subject area. The obtained Cronbach's alpha, by SPSS software 22 version, was 0.889 and 0.88, respectively, for the reliability of the tools.

The findings showed that the coefficient influence of spirituality on leadership effectiveness is 0.75, at the level of 0.05. Also, according to the results of the standard coefficients, the meaningful work and Alignment with the organization’s values, respectively, 0.26 and 0.31 at the level of 0.05 are significant. The Alignment with the organization’s values component by itself can be as the strongest predictor of leadership effectiveness in the workplace of the university and can significantly explain 0.54% of total variance of leadership effectiveness in the workplace of the university.

The results of this study indicate that attention to the two components of meaningful work and alignment of values ​​in the workplace as a predictor of leadership effectiveness can improve the effectiveness of leadership in management departments. For this purpose, it is suggested that at the level of the officials of the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology, compiling the regulations in line with the educational and research duties of the professors should be included. First, it is considered valuable in terms of its value principles, and the expected expectations are in line with the spiritual values, so that the university decision-makers and policy-makers by setting strategies and goals in the upstream documents of the university, as well as defining their operation by drafting new regulations should take practical measures regarding educational and research activities to produce basic ethics knowledge among faculty members in order to create a meaningful sense of work in terms of value.