Leadership style, conflict management behavior, and self-regulation among Uzbek managers: differential prediction by intrinsic and extrinsic religious orientation in a post-Soviet Muslim-majority workforce.

BACKGROUND: Religious orientation is an understudied individual difference predictor of managerial behavior in organizational psychology with particular application to contexts outside of Western Christianity. Uzbekistan, a unique setting where a sustained post-Soviet Islamic revival and rapid professionalization of the workforce converge, is valuable for examining whether Allport's intrinsic-extrinsic religiosity distinction predicts leadership style, workplace conflict handling, and self-regulation among practicing managers. METHODS: A cross-sectional correlational study was conducted with an anonymous online convenience sample of 286 managers and supervisors in educational, private and state organizations. The participants filled in the Santa Clara Strength of Religious Faith Questionnaire (SCSORF), the Shcherbatykh Individual Structure of Religiosity Scale, the Ilin Management Style Inventory (abridged 33-item version), the Nikiforov integral self-control scale, and the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument. Analysis was by bivariate correlation, One-way ANOVA, and multivariate regression with demographic covariates. RESULTS: Religious belief was positively related to accommodating conflict style (r = +0.17, p = 0.004) but this bivariate association was not significant after multivariate adjustment for age which was the most dominant predictor (β = 0.24, p = 0.004). At the dimensional level, the facets of intrinsic religiosity (inner need, recognition of a Creator) were the main correlates of accommodation, whereas extrinsic religiosity (attention to outward religious markers) exhibited only a marginal, non-significant trend toward authoritarian leadership style (β = 0.16, p = 0.051). Religious belief was not directly linked to democratic or liberal leadership styles or to integral self-control. In general, the demographic variables (age, gender) were better predictors than was religiosity. CONCLUSION: The findings provide the first empirical evidence in a Central Asian Muslim managerial sample that Allport's intrinsic-extrinsic distinction yields differentiated organizational behavioral correlates: intrinsic orientation correlates with conflict-handling accommodation; extrinsic orientation shows a non-significant trend toward authoritarian leadership tendencies that deserve replication. The findings add to cross-cultural organizational psychology by showing that religious orientation is a significant individual-difference predictor of workplace behavior in a post-Soviet Muslim-majority context with practical implications for leadership development and conflict management training.