Editorial summary. This is our text summary of an article published by frontiers-orgpsych. Charts, figures, and the author’s full voice are at the original — read it there .
Editorial verdict
Methodologically credible but contextually narrow — the spiritual leadership → flourishing → organizational commitment pathway is well-supported, but the flourishing → productivity null finding undermines a key hypothesis, and convenience sampling from a single South African province limits generalizability.
Executive summary
This study examines the relationships among perceived spiritual leadership, flourishing, organizational commitment, and productivity among nurses during the COVID-19 crisis period. The authors argue that spiritual leadership — operationalized through five dimensions (vision, hope/faith, altruistic love, calling, and membership) — serves as a critical organizational resource for nurses' optimal functioning during high-stress healthcare conditions. Using a quantitative, cross-sectional survey design with a sample of 407 nurses in the Free State province of South Africa, data were analyzed via PLS-SEM in SmartPLS 4.0. Key findings indicate that spiritual leadership positively and significantly predicted flourishing (β = 0.697), organizational commitment (β = 0.626), and productivity (β = 0.350). Flourishing significantly enhanced organizational commitment but did not directly influence productivity. Mediation analyses revealed that flourishing partially mediated the spiritual leadership–organizational commitment relationship, while the spiritual leadership–productivity relationship was mediated by organizational commitment alone and via a serial pathway through flourishing and organizational commitment. The study extends Fry's spiritual leadership theory to a nursing crisis context, with findings suggesting that values-based leadership approaches emphasizing meaning, belonging, and altruistic love are associated with both individual well-being and organizational outcomes in healthcare settings.
Key insights
- 1Spiritual leadership demonstrated a strong positive effect on nurses' flourishing (β = 0.697) and organizational commitment (β = 0.626), with a weaker but significant direct effect on productivity (β = 0.350), supporting Fry's spiritual leadership theory in a crisis healthcare context.
- 2Flourishing did not directly influence productivity (p = 0.821), suggesting that well-being attributes translate into productivity only indirectly — specifically through the mediating mechanism of organizational commitment, which itself significantly predicted productivity.
- 3The model explained 48.5% of variance in flourishing, 55.9% in organizational commitment, and 40.5% in productivity, indicating moderate in-sample predictive accuracy, with the spiritual leadership → organizational commitment pathway as the strongest structural relationship in the model.
Practical takeaways
- Organizational commitment appears to function as a necessary mediating mechanism between nurses' flourishing and their productivity, indicating that well-being initiatives alone may be insufficient to drive performance outcomes without also cultivating commitment.
- The PERMA framework is proposed in the article as a positive psychology tool that organizations could embed into workplace culture to enhance nurses' flourishing, alongside psychological safety climates and regular assessments of emotional, psychological, and social well-being.
Frameworks mentioned
Spiritual Leadership Theory
A leadership model proposed by Fry that posits leaders foster intrinsic motivation by addressing employees' spiritual needs for calling (meaningful work) and membership (belonging) through vision, hope/faith, and altruistic love, with organizational commitment and productivity identified as key outcomes.
PLS-SEM
Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling — a variance-based statistical technique used to estimate relationships between latent and observed variables in complex measurement models, applied here using SmartPLS 4.0.
PERMA
A positive psychology framework associated with Seligman that identifies five elements of well-being — Positive emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment — referenced in the article as a basis for organizational flourishing interventions.
References
- Leadership Quarterly (2003).Toward a theory of spiritual leadership.
- Journal of Health and Social Behavior (2002).The mental health continuum: from languishing to flourishing in life.
- Social Indicators Research (2013).Flourishing across Europe: application of a new conceptual framework for defining well-being.
- Journal of Human Values (2023).Spiritual leadership and organizational commitment: a 21-year systematic literature review.
- Journal of Nursing Management (2020).The influence of spiritual leadership on the subjective well-being of Chinese registered nurses.
- North-West University (Doctoral dissertation) (2015).Flourishing of employees in a fast-moving consumable goods environment.
- SAGE Publications (2017).A Primer on Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM).
- International Journal of Nursing Studies (2023).What makes nurses flourish at work? How the perceived clinical work environment relates to nurse motivation and well-being.
- Journal of Management, Spirituality and Religion (2018).The role of spiritual leadership in reducing healthcare worker burnout.
- Management Science Letters (2019).Spiritual leadership and job burnout: mediating effects of employee well-being and life satisfaction.
- Journal of Clinical Nursing (2020).COVID-19: supporting nurses' psychological and mental health.
- SA Journal of Human Resource Management (2024).Workplace spirituality and its relevance to workplace flourishing.
- Free Press (2011).Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being.
- Frontiers in Organizational Psychology (2024).Compassion, secure flourishing, and organizational commitment of managers.
- Leadership in Health Services (2021).An explanatory model of authentic leadership, flourishing and work–family balance of nurses in French hospitals.
Source & Provenance
frontiers-orgpsych
Malefetsane Ephraim Thasi
May 14, 2026
Research Study
Africa
Original source metadata is preserved. AI analysis is generated separately.
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