The Effect of Spirituality on Islamic Leadership Effectiveness

Islamic studies have sparked a lot of interests among different cultural backgrounds and no longer foreign to the world community. Among issues that have gained attention among scholars was spirituality from the Islamic standpoint. Therefore, this study attempts to explore the connection between Islamic spirituality (belief, rituals and repentance) and its influence on Islamic leadership effectiveness. The study contributes to the new knowledge pertaining to Islamic leadership in management by integrating the Islamic tradition with contemporary literature whereby Islamic spirituality constructs were developed from the Islamic tradition sources that correspond to leadership studies from contemporary literature. Using a purposive sampling of non-probability technique, the survey data used for this empirical research was drawn from Muslim employees working in uniform bodies in Sarawak, Malaysia. Most of the respondents hailed from support group scheme of service and there are three uniform bodies involved in this research namely the Malaysia Royal Customs Department, Malaysia Royal Police and Malaysia Royal Navy. Employing multiple regression analysis and using SPSS and SmartPLS software, the study tests several hypotheses that the components of Islamic spirituality were exerted to have statistically mixed influences on Islamic leadership effectiveness. The study found four out of seven hypotheses were indeed supported. The findings did provide a better understanding of the roles of Islamic spirituality on Islamic leadership effectiveness amongst three uniform bodies in Malaysia.