Same difference? Exploring the differential mechanisms linking servant leadership and transformational leadership to follower outcomes

Linking servant leadership to individual performance: Differentiating the mediating role of autonomy, competence and relatedness need satisfaction

“…Empirically, studies are also providing increasing evidence that servant leadership is distinct from other leadership styles. First, these studies show that servant leadership explains unique variance in outcomes, such as follower in-role performance or follower commitment, beyond that accounted for by transformational leadership (TL: Bass, 1985;Burns, 1978) and leader-member exchange models (e.g., Ehrhart, 2004;Liden et al, 2008;Parolini, Patterson, & Winston, 2009;van Dierendonck et al, 2014). Second, two comparative studies demonstrated how servant leadership influences outcomes through distinctive mediating mechanisms (Neubert et al, 2008;van Dierendonck et al, 2014).…”

“…Because one distinguishing and fundamental characteristic of the servant leader is the explicit focus of the servant leader's attention on followers' need satisfaction, research should expect to find a link between servant leadership and satisfaction of employees' specific basic psychological needs. So far, two empirical studies have investigated this link, but regrettably, both have gone no further than establishing a link between servant leadership and overall need satisfaction (Mayer et al, 2008;Van Dierendonck, Stam, Boersma, De Windt, & Alkema, 2014), an aggregate of the three basic psychological needs. First, Mayer et al (2008) found that servant leadership was only related to overall need satisfaction through the mediating effect of justice perception, and that servant leadership did not directly predict overall need satisfaction.…”

Leveraging transformational and transactional leadership to cultivate the generation of organization-focused ideas

“…There is indeed quite some literature that suggests that transformational leadership is strongly related to commitment. For instance, prior research has shown that transformational leadership enhances organizational commitment (Avolio, Zhu, Koh, & Bhatia, 2004;Bono & Judge, 2003;Dvir, Eden, Avolio, & Shamir, 2002;Van Dierendonck, Stam, Boersma, De Windt, & Alkema, 2014) and related concepts such as work engagement (Van Dierendonck et al, 2014;Zhu, Avolio, & Walumbwa, 2009) and (intrinsic) motivation (Charbonneau, Barling, & Kelloway, 2001;Judge & Piccolo, 2004). In a different context, Hill, Seo, Kang, and Taylor (2012) found that transformational leadership is effective in mobilizing people's commitment to change.…”

The Relationship between Transformational Leadership and Organizational Commitment: A Study on the Bank Employees

“…Studies have revealed lots of positive effects of transformational leadership. Sense of transformational leadership indicates a multi-dimensional leadership style, which puts emphasis on common values and needs rather than individual values and needs of followers, and which encourages its followers to perform beyond expectations [4]. Transformational leadership with its focus on change and transformation appeals to emotions of its followers.…”