Research On The Influence Mechanism Of Spiritual Leadership On Employee Boundary-spanning Behavior

With the trend of digital economy,enterprise transformation is imminent.Between convergence and collision,horizontal integration and vertical reshaping of the industry are taking place,and enterprises rely on internal resources of the organization alone are not enough to meet external challenges.In order to gain sustainable competitive advantages,enterprises need to engage in boundary-spanning activities and interact with the outside world in terms of resources and knowledge.boundary-spanning activities,whether at the enterprise or team level,are essentially the aggregation of individual behaviors.Therefore,employees build the bridge for boundary-spanning activities of enterprises.But the massive depletion of self resources in boundary-spanning activities tends to cause employees emotional exhaustion and role stress.In contrast,spiritual leadership focuses on employees’ spiritual needs,satisfies employees’ pursuit of self-actualization,self-transcendence and other spiritual existence,and helps employees find the meaning and mission of their work.Therefore,this paper introduces this concept and tries to motivate employees to gain the value and meaning of their work from the spiritual level,alleviate their psychological anxiety and stress,and promote their participation in more boundary-spanning activities,i.e.,to explore the mechanism of the role of spiritual leadership on employee boundary-spanning behavior from the individual level.Based on social cognitive theory and social exchange theory,this paper constructs a research model with spiritual leadership as the independent variable,employee boundaryspanning behavior as the dependent variable,self-efficacy as the mediating variable,and leadership-member exchange as the management relationship context as the moderating variable,and proposes corresponding research hypotheses.The questionnaires were distributed through a combination of online and offline methods,and the reliability of the questionnaires was tested based on the pre-study,and the contents of the scales were modified according to the suggestions of the research team members and professionals.In the formal research stage,312 valid questionnaires were obtained,and SPSS26.0 and AMOS28.0 statistical analysis software were used to conduct descriptive statistical analysis,reliability test,common method bias test,correlation analysis,and hierarchical regression to test the research hypotheses proposed in this paper.The findings of this paper indicate that(1)Spiritual leadership has a significant positive effect on employee boundary-spanning behavior;(2)Spiritual leadership positively promotes self-efficacy;(3)Self-efficacy positively promotes employee boundary-spanning behavior;(4)Self-efficacy plays a partially mediating role in the relationship between spiritual leadership and employee boundary-spanning behavior;(5)Leader-member exchange positively moderates spiritual leadership acting on the process of self-efficacy;(6)Leadership-membership exchange positively moderates the indirect effect of spiritual leaders influencing employee boundary-spanning behavior through self-efficacy.The contributions of this paper are mainly in two aspects: at the theoretical level,this paper focuses on individual-level boundary-spanning behavior,enriches the research on boundary-spanning behavior at the individual level,expands the research on the results of spiritual leadership and the antecedents of employee boundary-spanning behavior,and discovers the role of self-efficacy and leadership-membership exchange in the process of spiritual leadership influencing employee boundary-spanning behavior,which provides a path for other scholars’ research.At the practical level,based on the findings of this paper,the following three suggestions are made for managers in organizations:(1)Managers should change their leadership style and strengthen spiritual leadership;(2)Managers should pay attention to employee psychology and improve employee self-efficacy;and(3)Managers should pay attention to individual differences and create high-quality leader-member exchange environment.