Predicting the Psychological Empowerment of Faculty Members Based on a Spiritual Leadership Framework: A Case Study of Farhangian University of Isfahan

Faculty members of universities are the main element for transferring science and developing the society, and their empowerment is an inevitable necessity. Therefore, the present study aimed to predict the psychological empowerment of faculty members based on a spiritual leadership framework.

This was a descriptive-correlational research in terms of methodology and an applied study regarding the objective. The statistical population included 162 professors and instructors in Farhangian University of Isfahan, Iran in 2019-2020. In total, 110 individuals were selected by simple random sampling based on the Krejcie & Morgan Table (1970). The research tools included the standard spiritual leadership questionnaire by Fry (2005) and Spritzer’s empowerment questionnaire (1995), the reliability of which was confirmed at a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.89. In addition, data analysis was performed in SPSS version 23 using Pearson’s correlation and Amos version 20 applying the structural equation model.

In this study, there was a significant relationship between spiritual leadership and psychological empowerment of employees (r=0.44, P<0.01). Moreover, spiritual leadership predicted 0.45 of the variance of the faculty members’ psychological empowerment. Regarding the dimensions of spiritual leadership, vision (0.83), love of altruism (0.81), and faith and hope (0.80) had the highest path coefficient.

Given the effect of spiritual leadership on the psychological empowerment of faculty members, it seems necessary to revise the leadership patterns in Farhangian University and appoint individuals as the president of universities more based on the spiritual leadership style.