How spiritual leadership engenders resilience to mitigate employee burnout in crisis: a multi-study moderated-mediated investigation

The COVID-19 pandemic crisis had an unprecedented enduring impact on the psychological and mental well-being of employees across the globe. This study extends our understanding of spiritual leadership as an important resilience-engendering leadership style that mitigates employees’ burnout in crisis situation. Drawing on the conservation of resources theory (COR), this study aims to conceptualize and validate a comprehensive model which delineates resilience as a psychological mechanism and intrinsic spirituality as a boundary condition by which spiritual leadership mitigates followers’ burnout. To test our framework, we employed a multi-study approach by designing a vignette-based experiment (N= 351) followed by a three-wave field survey (N = 207). Findings of experiment and survey collectively support our assertion that spiritual leadership mitigates follower’s burnout directly, and indirectly by promoting psychological resilience. Findings also indicate that followers’ intrinsic spirituality negatively moderates the indirect effects of spiritual leadership on burnout, which highlights the possibility of intrinsic spirituality as a potential substitute for spiritual leadership to combat burnout.