Caring for relations and organizational success: Conceptualization of an Augustinian leadership scale

While making great strides in recent decades to connect leadership and human
flourishing, the positive leadership literature has yet to focus on the aspect of the
communal. Based on a close reading of Augustine’s works, this paper examines
Augustinian leadership and emphasizes the importance of a view on leadership
that aims at community building and contains an ethical framework characterized
by veracity. This leadership style is founded on caritas (Gr.: agape, Eng.: love)
as the main motive for leaders. Based on Augustine’s thinking, this kind of love
is defined as a way to attain knowledge. We identify four subconstructs to
constitute an Augustinian leadership scale: Centrality of the community, Veracity,
Empathy and Success (through temperance). We provide theoretical grounds for
the distinctiveness of this leadership construct as compared with neighboring
constructs. Finally, we propose a testable framework of Augustinian leadership
with a direct effect on affective commitment as well as a mediated effect,
and with a sense of belonging as the mediating variable. We provide ideas for
future research and present practical implications of the theoretical insights on
Augustinian leadership.