Spiritual Leadership in Public Management: Insights from Moroccan Public Sector Leaders

This study examines the challenges faced by public institutions in countries with strong cultural roots. It proposes a conceptual framework for integrating spiritual leadership within public organizations, with the aim of strengthening ethics and the moralization of public service. Adopting a qualitative approach, the study is based on 22 semi-structured interviews conducted with public managers. For the analysis of the collected textual data, we opted for a dual approach: a lexical analysis carried out using the IRAMUTEQ software (version 0.7), as well as a thematic content analysis. The results of the study highlighted four fundamental components of spirituality in public leadership: vision, faith and altruism, with religiosity added as a fourth significant element. This research thus validates existing theories on spiritual leadership while emphasizing the importance of considering cultural particularities in studying this phenomenon, thereby demonstrating the relevance of a contextual approach in analysing spiritual leadership. Overall, the study contributes to a better understanding of spiritual leadership in the Moroccan context, highlighting the central role of cultural context while acknowledging potential biases and limitations of the research. Future research should further explore the intersection of spirituality and leadership in other sociocultural contexts.