How spiritual leadership leads to employee followership behavior: the role of relational identification and spiritual intelligence

The study of the antecedents of employee followership behavior is one of the hot topics in management psychology research. Based on self-determination theory and using a questionnaire method, this research investigated the relationship between spiritual leadership and employee followership behavior, and explored the roles of relational identification and spiritual intelligence in this relationship. A Chinese sample of 372 paired leader-employee data was used to verify the proposed theoretical model. The findings suggested that spiritual leadership had a positive relationship with employee followership behavior, and that relational identification played a mediating role in this positive relationship. In addition, the positive relationship between spiritual leadership and relational identification was more significant when employees’ spiritual intelligence was high than when it was low. Also, the indirect effect of spiritual leadership on employee followership behavior through relational identification relied on employees’ spiritual intelligence, such that the indirect effect was stronger when employees’ spiritual intelligence was high than when it was low. Our research further provided several theoretical and practical implications for future research.