Effective Change Management, Spiritual Leadership and Work Self-Efficacy during COVID-19 in the South African Private Sector.

Abstract

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a disruption within the workplace leading to increased levels of uncertainty among the workforce. The success to overcoming immediate threats to organisational performance and sustainability depends mainly on the way changes are managed. It is essential that management pursue ways to enhance an employee’s belief in their ability to perform and manage tasks and challenges within the workplace, therefore, ultimately improving workplace performance by improving work self-efficacy.

Aim: The aim of the study was to investigate how effective change management and spiritual leadership could affect work self-efficacy in the South African private sector during the COVID-19 pandemic. Employees across 29 organisations were sampled with 1733 respondents making up the total sample size.

Methods: At a metatheoretical level, this research was positivist. For the empirical investigation, quantitative research was conducted using a pre-established questionnaire. The research design was descriptive and cross-sectional in nature and correlation and regression analyses were used to present the main findings of the study.

Results: It was determined that there were statistically significant positive correlations between effective change management, spiritual leadership and work self-efficacy.

Conclusions: Effective change management was shown to have a medium effect on work self-efficacy in the South African private sector. Further to this, spiritual leadership was shown to have positively influenced the relationship between effective change management and work self-efficacy.

Recommendations: Recommendations were made to management on improving effective change management and spiritual leadership to enhance work self-efficacy. These included ascertaining change management processes and procedures that can be effectively implemented, together with enhancing specific leadership attributes and values, to improve overall work self-efficacy.