Development and Initial Validation of the Benedictine Leadership Questionnaire
Alvin M. Nieva | Noel D. Santander | Annabel D. Quilon
Discipline: psychology (non-specific)
Abstract:
To assess spiritual leadership empirically, this study developed and validated the Benedictine Leadership Questionnaire (BLQ). While contemporary organizational literature heavily emphasizes corpo- rate strategy, monastic traditions-such as the Rule of St. Benedict- prioritize humility, stewardship, and community. Despite growing in- terest in these principles, they remain largely unquantified in empiri- cal research. Following a deductive literature review, an initial pool of 108 items was generated and subsequently evaluated by expert psy- chometricians to establish content validity. The instrument was then administered to 244 university students in Manila, Philippines. Using Exploratory Factor Analysis via Principal Axis Factoring with Oblimin rotation, the survey was refined into a 54-item instrument across five distinct dimensions: The Visionary, The Empowerer, The Culture- Builder, The Humble Leader, and The Problem-Solver. Internal con- sistency across all subscales was exceptionally high, with Cronbach's alpha and McDonald's omega coefficients ranging from .93 to .97. Ul- timately, the BLQ provides a psychometrically sound scale that effec- tively bridges ancient monastic traditions with modern organiza- tional governance.
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