The relationship of health-care managers' spirituality to their self-perceived leadership practices

This exploratory survey examines the relationship between selected dimensions of spirituality and self-perceived effective leadership practices of health-care managers. Kouzes and Posner's Leadership Practices Inventory and Beazley's Spiritual Assessment Scale were administered to a sample of health-care managers. Significant statistical relationships were found between and among the dimensions of both subscales. Analysis of variance revealed a statistically significant difference in three effective leadership practices by 'more spiritual than non-spiritual' managers. The confirmatory factor analysis of our theory-based model revealed a moderately positive correlation between spirituality and leadership (r = 0.50). The paper concludes with a conceptual theory postulating a rationale for the relationship between spirituality and effective leadership.