Examining the influence of servant and entrepreneurial leadership on the work outcomes of employees in social enterprises

Abstract

The present study examines the relative influence of two distinct leadership styles, servant leadership and entrepreneurial leadership, on the organizational commitment and innovative behavior of employees working in social enterprises. Analyzing data from 169 employees and 42 social entrepreneurs, we found that, although servant leadership was positively related to followers’ organizational commitment, the relationship between entrepreneurial leadership and organizational commitment was insignificant. In contrast, whilst we found evidence that entrepreneurial leadership was positively related to followers’ innovative behavior, the relationship between servant leadership and employees’ innovative behavior was insignificant. Our research contributes to the underdeveloped literature on leadership in social enterprises by exploring the relative effectiveness of different leadership styles (namely an entrepreneurial leadership style and a servant leadership style) in promoting follower work attitudes and behaviors in social enterprises. In addition, our research demonstrates the importance of leadership over and above followers’ individual differences such as pro-social motivation and creative self-efficacy

Does Entrepreneurial Leadership Foster Creativity Among Employees and Teams? The Mediating Role of Creative Efficacy Beliefs

“…Baron 2002;Leitch and Volery 2017;McGrath and MacMillan 2000;Renko et al 2015;Roebuck 2011). We still have only a limited understanding of how entrepreneurial leadership may stimulate employees' creativity (Ensley et al 2006;Hmieleski and Ensley 2007;Newman et al 2017). Following Renko et al's (2015) conceptualization of entrepreneurial leadership, we argue that this style enables a firm to be more entrepreneurial by motivating employee creativity (Breugst et al 2012;Lichtenstein and Plowman 2009;Swiercz and Lydon 2002).…”

“…Entrepreneurial leaders who pursue innovation and creativity (Covin and Slevin 1991;Hitt et al 2011;Newman et al 2017) meet the challenges of creating a vision and influence employees to foster its realization (Ruvio et al 2010). Specifically, entrepreneurial leaders serve as role models for employees (Jaussi and Dionne 2003;Renko 2017).…”

“…While several studies have touched upon the entrepreneurial leadership-creativity link (e.g. Chen 2007;Hitt et al 2011;Newman et al 2017), these studies seem to target macro-level creativity (e.g. Frese and Gielnik 2014;Renko 2017) and have not sufficiently demonstrated the distinctiveness and effectiveness of entrepreneurial leadership in relation to follower creativity (e.g.…”

“…Frese and Gielnik 2014;Renko 2017) and have not sufficiently demonstrated the distinctiveness and effectiveness of entrepreneurial leadership in relation to follower creativity (e.g. Newman et al 2017). To further examine the relationship between entrepreneurial leadership and workplace creativity in organizations, we follow the compatibility principle (Ajzen 2005).…”

Servant Leadership, Innovative Capacity and Performance in Third Sector Entities

“…Literature on servant leadership has focused on achieving a unanimous definition and on how to measure it (Grisaffe et al, 2016;Newman et al, 2018;Lee et al, 2019). We agree with Eva et al (2019) that the majority of definitions of servant leadership only offers partial descriptions of servant leaders' behavior (what, why and how they behave with employees).…”