Impact of Servant Leadership on Ethical Climate, Supervisor Conflict, and Organizational Outcomes

Abstract

Precepts from servant leadership theory are used to tests a model that links servant leadership with interpersonal conflict with the supervisor, ethical climate, and organizational outcomes. Study findings show that servant leadership is conducive to lower levels of interpersonal conflict with the supervisor and higher ethical climate perceptions. Conflict with the supervisor affects work-family conflict and felt stress, eventually impacting job satisfaction and turnover intention. The model was tested with survey responses from 85 frontline employees working for an airline in South America.Research findings demonstrate that servant leadership helps create an environment conducive to employee wellbeing. Employees who think that their supervisor engages in servant leadership behaviors are less likely to participate in conflict with their supervisor which is shown to affect work-family conflict and felt stress. Servant leadership can thus be beneficial for the employee and her or his family. Reducing work-family conflict is not only the right thing to do but is also beneficial to the firm due to its impact on job satisfaction, felt stress, and eventually turnover. Results linking supervisory conflict with work-family conflict also add credence to the spillover hypotheses which posits that strain resulting from a person's job can cross work boundaries and affect the employee-family relationships. The indirect effect of servant leadership on workfamily conflict brings support to the notion that the benefits of servant leadership go beyond what happens inside the organization as it positively affects other organizational stakeholders. Study findings have important implications for theory development as proponents of servant leadership have recently proposed that the positive impact of servant leadership occurs through high quality leader-follower relationships.References available upon request 5

Whom to serve? Exploring the moral dimension of servant leadership: answers from operation Valkyrie

“…In addition, serving is understood as a general effort to treat people well (Keith, 2013). This view finds support by numerous scholars who found evidence for the positive influence of SL on an organization's ethical climate (Jaramillo and Noboa, 2015).…”

“…How the leader serves the common good, in turn, depends decisively on their value system. Therefore, SL is not necessarily inherently "ethical" or a guarantor for ethical action, as is claimed by numerous authors (Jaramillo and Noboa, 2015;Keith, 2013Keith, , 2015. On the contrary, SL (especially a too narrow view of SL) bears several risks and limitations that leaders should be aware of.…”

“…2.3.1 Nimbus of being ethical. SL is predominantly associated with ethical behavior (Jaramillo and Noboa, 2015;Keith, 2013). We identified various reasons explaining this association.…”

“…Firstly, the nature of the SL elements themselves is described as ethical. Secondly, numerous scholars argue that SL positively influences the ethical climate [4] in organizations (Jaramillo and Noboa, 2015;Johnson, 2019). Third, some authors consider "ethical behavior" as an integral component of SL, even integrating an ethical dimension into SL-measuring instruments (Liden et al, 2014).…”

“…2.3.2 Why does servant leadership lead to a higher ethical work climate? Various academics argue that the leader develops and significantly influences an ethical work climate (Jaramillo and Noboa, 2015). Leaders may equally set or undermine values by serving as role models (Burton et al, 2017).…”