THE PROSOCIAL AND MORAL CHARACTER OF THE

SPIRITUAL LEADER
YUEH-CHUEN HUANG AND HUI-CHUAN SHIH
National Taichung Institute of Technology, Taichung, Taiwan, ROC
Using a case study the authors explored a spiritual leaders value differences, focusing on his
prosocial orientation and moral character by using the Q-sort template-matching technique
(Bem & Allen, 1974). Using 511 employees working in the company as the experimental
control group, the researchers found that the spiritual leaders value system was very different
from all others. Results demonstrate that a spiritual leaders values are more prosocial and
concerned with morality compared to the control groups material and practical values. Also,
through the same case study, the trends for the industry of department stores.
Keywords: spiritual leadership, department stores, values system, prosocial orientation, moral
character.

Spirituality and spiritual leadership have become topics of interest recently.
The research on spiritual personalities (Lawler-Row & Piferi, 2006), its model
applicability (Gomez & Fisher, 2005), scale and construct validity (Mascaro,
Rosen, & Morey, 2004; van Dierendonck, 2004), and properties (MacDonald
& Holland, 1993) are developing. Spiritual leaders have been found to have
extroverted (Maltby & Day, 2001), social, excitement-seeking, carefree, and
optimistic personality traits (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1975).
SOCIAL BEHAVIOR AND PERSONALITY, 2011, 39(1), 33-40
Society for Personality Research (Inc.)
DOI 10.2224/sbp.2011.39.1.33
33
Yueh-Chuen Huang, PhD candidate in the Graduate School of Management, National Yunlin
University of Science and Technology and Lecturer, Department of Business Administration,
National Taichung Institute of Technology, Taichung, Taiwan, ROC; Hui-Chuan Shih, PhD, formerly
of the National Taichung Institute of Technology, Taiwan, ROC, now part-time Assistant Professor,
Department of Marketing Management, Central Taiwan University of Science and Technology,
Taichung, Taiwan, ROC.
Appreciation is due to anonymous reviewers.
Please address correspondence and reprint requests to: Yueh-Chuen Huang, Department of Business
Administration, National Taichung Institute of Technology, 129, Sec. 3, Sun-Min Road, North
District, Taichung City, 404, Taiwan, ROC. Phone: +886-919-079-898; Fax: +886-4-2236-1846;
Email: ychuang@ntit.edu.tw
SOCIABLE AND MORAL CHARACTER
34
Spirituality has expanded the scope covered by religion (Hatch, Bury, Naberhaus,
& Hellmich, 1998). Religious spiritual leaders such as Christ, Bodhisattva, and
Mahomet were all born in harsh environments; their spirituality and intelligence
led their followers to go through testing and difficult times in those early years.
But they still conquered great difficulties, attracted hundreds of followers, and
built great religions. They needed strong willpower and confidence in what they
believed. Spiritual leaders seem to have very different characters from others. In
this paper we investigated the spiritual leaders personality differences using the
Q-sort method.
Combined with the case study research methods, quantitative questionnaires,
and Q-sort analytical techniques, we explored a spiritual leaders values
differences within an organization (in this case a department store) as well as his
point of view regarding managing and reforming an organization. The spirituality
of the leader was identified by two professors and one PhD student during their
work in the department store as consultants who processed qualitative (especially
interviewing more than 20 managers including the president and vice president)
and quantitative research in order to evaluate the outcome of an organizational
reform within the department store. The spiritual leader is the president of the
department store. All the top managers interviewed indicated that the contents of
organizational changes the president tried to pass on to them are truly spiritual,
especially Lou-Tsus ideas. Lou-Tsu, the inventor of Taoism, was a representative
and famous ancient spiritual guru. Thus, we tried to use the Q-sort method to
discover the spiritual values of the leader and the specific values contained within
the perspectives of spirituality and organizational change.
We used 511 employees within the department store as the empirical control
group for comparison. We found the spiritual leaders value priorities and
contents were very different from others. The spiritual leaders value contents
were more prosocial and morally oriented. By contrast, the content of employees
values were more materialistic and practical regarding the management of the
department store. The research results are consistent with the results of other
studies (Argyris & Schon, 1996; Eysenck & Eysenck, 1975). Moreover, in this
study, the sociable orientation of spirituality is specifically discovered in an
organization that has aimed to maximize its profitability for its shareholders.
Results indicate that the sociable and moral orientation of spirituality does not
change due to environmental differences.
Moreover, we provide a qualitative description of the process of individual
spiritual transformation. In this case, from the process of individual spiritual
transformation, it can be seen that, like most other spiritual leaders, the spiritual
leader in this study also went through hard times and acquired wisdom from
written records of other spiritual leaders.

SOCIABLE AND MORAL CHARACTER
35
LITERATURE REVIEW
Spiritual matters involve humankinds ultimate nature with a unique relationship
which goes beyond time and the material world. The spiritual is traditionally
contrasted with the material and may include an emotional experience of religious
awe and reverence (Conn, 1986; Heschel, 1997). Spirituality carries with it a
worldview that refers to the framework of ideas and beliefs through which an
individual interprets the world and interacts with it. The aim of spirituality is
to increase ones wisdom or remove ones false ideas of the senses. That means
spiritual leaders are more intelligent than most other people.
Spirituality is also an important topic for the theoretical development of
leadership (Batstone, 2003; Bolman & Deal, 1995; Burns, 1978; Fairholm, 1997;
Fry, 2003). Scholars have started to think about spiritualitys significance in
relation to organizational learning (Argyris & Schon, 1996), and organizational
transformation, and have developed ways to measure it (Ashmos & Duchon,
2000; Beazley, 1997). But few scholars have explored a spiritual leaders
personal differences regarding their prosocial and moral orientations, especially
in an organization in which the main target is to maximize profitability for
shareholders.
THE PROCESS OF INDIVIDUAL SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION
The president of the department store has dealt with many difficulties in his
life, including the financial crisis in 1999 and 921 earthquakes on 21 September
2000, in Nantou, Taiwan. He started to question himself, and looked for help
from outside resources reading written records of saints lectures, such as
Lao-tzu (a Chinese philosopher in the spring and autumn period, that is, from
8th Century BC to the first half of the 5th Century BC), and tried to view the
world from a new perspective: in a more prosocial and morally oriented way.
This is also the natural law that saints in old China used to describe how the
world functions, or even, the manifestation of Gods will. Integrated with the
old wisdom, the leaders spirituality was then enlighted. Unlike general leaders
in the practical world, the president cared about human relations, development
of wisdom, communication, and the individual spiritual transformations of his
employees.
METHOD
Bem and Allen (1974) used Stephensons (1953) Q-method to develop Q-
sort template-matching techniques, which help to indicate differences and
correlations between two value systems, such as the conceptual fitting situation
SOCIABLE AND MORAL CHARACTER
36
(Chatman, 1989; OReilly, Chatman, & Caldwell, 1991) or value fitting (Staw
& Clausen, 1986) of an individual to an organization. The Q-sort method has
proven effective at measuring ability and validity. In this research, we used Q-
sort template-matching techniques to compare differences in the value systems
of the spiritual leader and his employees.
The organizational culture profile (OCP) was originally developed by OReilly
et al. in 1991 to investigate person-culture fit. It contained a set of value
statements that ideographically assess the values characterizing an individual
or organizational preference. Person-culture or person-organization fit can
also be calculated by correlating the profiles of organizational and individuals
preferences (OReilly et al., 1991). Using this method we measured the spiritual
leader and his employees preferences, and their ideal views about managing the
department store.
The OCP contains 40 value statements and can generically capture individual
and value trends in preferences. The 40 OCP items used for this study were
developed by Cable and Judge in 1996 and 1997, and were a modification of the
50 items developed by OReilly et al. in 1991.
Each individual was asked to sort out 40 cards containing value statements in
order of their preferences about an ideal organization. The spiritual leader and his
employees were asked to sort the 40-item deck into 10 categories by responding
to the question, In your opinion, how important is it for this characteristic (the
value statements appeared on the sorting cards, with each card containing one
statement) to be a part of your ideal values of the organization that you work
for? First respondents sorted the 40 cards into 10 categories of values according
to how important they considered each value category to be. Thus there were four
cards placed in 10 value categories with the categories arranged in descending
order of importance. Respondents then sorted the sets of four cards in each
category into order of importance from the characteristic they considered most
important to the one they considered least important. The 511 employees and the
spiritual leader all completed this assessment.
To ensure consistency, the employees value system was integrated as an
organizational unit for comparison with the spiritual leader; the organizations
consistency of values was measured by the intercorrelations among raters and
modified by the Spearman-Brown General Prophecy Formula to adjust the
variations (Nunnally, 1978).
RESULTS
DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS
There were 511 employees in total, including 109 (23.6%) males and 352
females (76.4%). Of the sorting results, 49 contained missing values and were
SOCIABLE AND MORAL CHARACTER
37
not counted. In total 462 respondents data were valid. There were 224 (48.5%)
employees with less than three years job experience; 69 (14.9%) employees had
job experience of between three and five years; 67 (14.5%) employees had job
experience of between five and ten years; 102 (22.1%) employees had more than
10 years of job experience. The organization had a high seniority in development
so the organizational consistency in its core value system was high.
CORRELATION ANALYSIS
A total of 462 effective data records were collected. It would be an impossible
task to compare 462 employees with the spiritual leader. Thus, the 462 employees
data were analyzed as one organizational unit. The correlation between the
spiritual leaders and employees ideas about an ideal organization was evaluated.
After modification by Spearman Brown Prophecy Formula (SBPF), except
General Operations Department 3 and the Department of Planning, none of the
departments had over 70% correlation with the president; all correlations were
significant.
ANALYSIS OF THE EMPIRICAL CONTROL GROUPS CONSISTENCY
Reliability analysis was used to find the consistency of each departments value
system. It was demonstrated that each department shared strongly similar values
(see Table 1); the only two departments that had weaker shared values were the
Department of Product Development and the Department of Auditing.
TABLE 1
DEPARTMENTAL CONSISTENCY BY RELIABILITY ANALYSIS, AND CORRELATION OF THE PRESIDENTS
AND EMPLOYEES IDEAL ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE VALUES
Departments No. of Reliability Correlation of Modification Significance
respondents president-employees by SBPF
Business Dept. 1 49 0.9409 0.477 0.6459 0.002
**
Business Dept. 2 56 0.9417 0.523 0.6868 0.001
**
Business Dept. 3 44 0.8187 0.604 0.7531 0.000
**
Business Dept. 4 35 0.9357 0.482 0.6505 0.002
**
Business Dept. 5 30 0.9014 0.516 0.6807 0.001
**
Financial Dept. 31 0.9263 0.3980 0.5694 0.011
**
Administrative Office 78 0.8959 0.4660 0.6357 0.001
**
Dept. of Planning 49 0.9546 0.5930 0.7445 0.000
**
Customer Services 44 0.8903 0.3310 0.4974 0.037
*
Operation Center 17 0.8947 0.5200 0.6842 0.001
**
Grand total and
average reliability 458 0.9936
**
p < 0.01;
**
p < 0.05
Note: Dept. = Department.
SOCIABLE AND MORAL CHARACTER
38
Finally, in the spiritual leaders mind, the 10 most important values for
the department store were, in order of importance: (1) taking individual
responsibility, (2) having a clear guiding philosophy, (3) enthusiasm for the job,
(4) being socially responsible, (5) being easygoing, (6) being people-oriented, (7)
being organized, (8) being team-oriented, (9) being reflective, and (10) having a
good reputation.
For all organizational employees the 10 most important values for the
department store were, in order of importance: (1) being people-oriented, (2)
having a clear guiding philosophy, (3) high pay for good performance, (4)
being team-oriented, (5) stability, (6) opportunities for professional growth, (7)
having a good reputation, (8) being easygoing, (9) predictability, and (10) being
innovative.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
From the above results we can see that the value of consistency in each
department for the case organization was quite high (over 95%). That might be
because 51.5% of the employees had worked in the same organization for more
than three years, and 22% of the employees had worked more than 10 years in the
same department; they shared the same value system for a long time.
Through this detailed examination of values we can understand the spiritual
leaders value priorities, and how his thinking is different from people who
worked in the same social and organizational contexts. We can see that a spiritual
leader is more concerned than others about social and moral matters. The spiritual
leader cares about self-growth followed by psychic energy. The five items of
individual responsibility, enthusiasm, socially responsibility, being organized,
and being reflective were not reflected in the 10 values of most concern to
employees, but only in the spiritual leaders. By contrast, the four items high pay
for good performance, stability, opportunities for professional growth, and being
innovative reflected only in the values of most concern for employees, but not
the spiritual leaders. These four items are related to being more self-centered and
caring less about society and psychic growth. In the other words, they are more
materialistic values.
A research limitation of this study is that that the number of spiritual leaders
is too small; the representativeness of the research results is therefore low.
However, the implementation of the Q-sort techniques was stable and reliable,
as over 450 employees showed a consistent value system. It was hard to find a
spiritual leader in the business context because the most significant concerns for
leaders is usually profit maximization. Therefore, in the future, it is suggested
that the value contents of the spiritual leader should be compared with other
representative spiritual leaders to find their similarities and differences in
SOCIABLE AND MORAL CHARACTER
39
different contexts. Also to be examined are the advantages and disadvantages of
the spiritual leaders influence upon different organizations: profit and nonprofit.
Outside of the business context, spiritual leaders positive influence on peoples
social and family lives are foreseeable, as evidenced by many great religious
leaders like the Dalai Lama and the Pope. However, the spiritual leaders impact
upon the organizational lives of the business world has rarely been discussed and
checked. Still, the organizational lives of the business world are very influential
to peoples daily lives.
Finally, we also examined a successful department stores value system. An
ideal value system of a department store was determined by the spiritual leader
and more than 450 employees, who had worked in the industry for a number of
years. This should help the department store industry to determine the contents of
their own value systems. This was the first time Q-sort techniques were applied
to examining a spiritual leaders value contents. Future researchers could also
use similar analytical techniques in examining and comparing the value content
of some influential people, such as the decision makers of a country, a religion,
or an organization.
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