Gender and spiritual leadership: examining sustainable performance

Purpose: Drawing on the social exchange theory, the social role theory and the expectation states theory, this study aims to explore the direct and indirect effect of spiritual leadership on a company’s sustainable performance through workplace spirituality and the conditional role of the leader’s gender. Design/methodology/approach: The study adopted a time-lagged research design and collected data from 253 employees of small and medium-sized enterprises in Saudi Arabia. Findings: The results indicate that spiritual leadership both directly and indirectly (through workplace spirituality) influences sustainable performance and that the gender of the leader significantly moderates the indirect effect of spiritual leadership on sustainable performance. In addition, a male leader’s impact is higher than that of a female leader. Originality/value: This study is among the pioneer studies which enriched the sustainability literature by unraveling the role of spirituality and the leader’s gender. By examining the research framework in Saudi Arabia, this study also fills the country-specific research gap.