Influence Mechanism of Spiritual Leadership on R&D Personnel’s Innovation Behavior in China

Spiritual leadership is found to be an effective factor affecting employees’ innovation behavior, but in the Chinese context, this process may be affected by organizational and group factors. In this study, a moderated mediating model was constructed to explore the influence mechanism of spiritual leadership on innovation behavior of R&D staff in the Chinese context from the dual perspective of calling and organizational support. Based on the paired questionnaire survey of 513 employees and their line leaders from many innovative organizations in Beijing, Shenzhen, Harbin and Xi’an, this paper used spss22.0 and lisrel8.5 software to analyze the data. The results show that: spiritual leadership has a positive impact on the innovation behavior of R&D staff; career calling plays a mediating role between spiritual leadership and innovation behavior of R&D staffs; compared with low relational energy and low perceived organizational support for creativity, when relational energy and perceived organizational support for creativity are high, the impact of spiritual leadership on the innovation behavior of R&D staffs is significantly stronger through career calling.