Spirituality at Work as a Catalyst: Mediating the Relationship Between Spiritual Leadership and Employee Creativity

This study investigates employee creativity as a vital force behind organizational innovation by focusing on how spiritual leadership influences creative outcomes. It further examined the mediating role of workplace spirituality in the relationship between spiritual leadership and employee creativity, offering insights into how deeper purpose-driven leadership can unlock employees’ creative potential. Data were assembled from 400 middle-level employees engaged in the information technology (IT) sector across the NCR region and metropolitan cities. Workplace spirituality was measured using Indian spiritual constructs, namely swadharma, lokasangraha, sense of community, authenticity, kritagyata and karma capital. Structural equation modelling was adopted to examine the proposed mediation model. Age and gender were incorporated as control variables to evaluate their impacts on employee creativity. These findings indicate that workplace spirituality partially mediates the relationship between spiritual leadership and employee creativity. Additionally, age had a significant influence on creativity, while gender did not exhibit a meaningful effect. This study is one of the earliest to empirically examine this triadic relationship in the Indian IT sector, offering a novel integration of leadership, spirituality and creativity within an aligned theoretical framework.