The moderating role of resonant leadership and workplace spirituality on the relationship between psychological distress and organizational commitment

Abstract

The ongoing pandemic has brought the world into a paralytical scenario except for the health care workers, which turned their ‘nights into nightmares’. The pervasiveness of stress, anxiety, and depression among the frontline healthcare fraternity is a significant concern for the stakeholders in the healthcare sector. The physical, mental, and emotional well-being of these COVID warriors are at stake due to the protracted period of exposure to the pandemic. This study explores the moderating roles of resonant leadership (RL) and workplace spirituality (WPS) on the constructs, psychological distress (PD), and organizational commitment (OC). Current research employs an exploratory research design. It used the purposive sampling technique and obtained data from various hospitals of four states in India, which experienced the biggest impact from COVID-19. Researchers analyzed the responses from 415 nurses and tested the hypothesis using structural equation modeling AMOS; moderating effects are tested using interaction term and slope test methods. Results show that psychological distress is inversely correlated to organizational commitment, but the impact of the moderating effect of resonant leadership and workplace spirituality decrease psychological distress and increase organizational commitment. The results suggest specific performance implications for HR theory and practice, especially within healthcare organizations.

Keywords:

• COVID-19
• healthcare
• psychological distress
• organizational commitment
• resonant leadership
• workplace spirituality

Acknowledgments

Open Access funding provided by the Qatar National Library. Authors hereby thank the nurses for voluntarily participating in this research even though they have work overload and stress due to the emergency caused by COVID-19 pandemic.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, upon reasonable request.