{
  "id": 7238552,
  "title": "Hidden key to leadership? It may be spirituality",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/14/hidden-key-to-leadership-it-may-be-spirituality",
  "topic": "world",
  "section": "World",
  "published": "2026-09-14T04:02:03.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "The Korea Times",
    "slug": "the-korea-times",
    "url": "https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/opinion/20260914/hidden-key-to-leadership-it-may-be-spirituality"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "In 2005, a trio of management scholars embarked on a groundbreaking study, exploring a subject that business schools had traditionally shunned. Eric Dent, Eileen Higgins, and Deborah Wharff scoured 87 academic papers on spirituality in the workplace, not to preach but to construct a comprehensive dataset. Their findings were nothing short of astonishing: a clear majority of the papers that took a definitive stance on performance found evidence linking spirituality to enhanced results.\n\nThis revelation was a stark contrast to the prevailing trend of the time. Business schools had long steered clear of spirituality, focusing instead on metrics like revenue, employee retention, and quarterly earnings. Spirituality, with its intangible nature, had struggled to find its place in the corporate world. Surveys and interviews, even when employed, rarely yielded clear results, relegating spirituality to the sidelines of leadership theory.\n\nFor decades, spirituality had been seen as the awkward family member of leadership research, mentioned during commencement speeches but never taken seriously in academic circles. The 2005 review, however, challenged this narrative by categorizing the scholarship into eight distinct areas, examining how spirituality was defined, its connection to religion, and whether it could be taught, measured, or linked to performance outcomes. This study, therefore, not only overturned the long-standing prejudice against spirituality in leadership but also opened up new avenues for future research in the field.",
  "summary": "In 2005, three management scholars set out to study something business schools had long treated as taboo. Eric Dent, Eileen Higgins, and Deborah Wharff read 87 academic papers on spirituality in the workplace. They were not writing a sermon, but building a dataset. The findings were striking. Among the papers that took a clear position on performance, 48 found evidence linking spirituality to it.…",
  "key_points": [
    "Study by Dent, Higgins, and Wharff in 2005 examined spirituality in workplace leadership.",
    "Found majority of papers linked spirituality to improved performance outcomes.",
    "Challenged long-standing prejudice against spirituality in academic leadership research."
  ],
  "editors_take": "This development suggests that spirituality may have a legitimate place in leadership theory, challenging the traditional focus on metrics like revenue and employee retention.",
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 2,
    "also_reported_by": [
      {
        "outlet": "The Korea Times",
        "title": "Hidden key to leadership? It may be spirituality",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/14/hidden-key-to-leadership-it-may-be-spirituality-7240651",
        "published": "2026-09-14T04:12:03.000Z"
      }
    ]
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}