Servant leadership and employee prosocial rule-breaking: The underlying effects of psychological safety and compassion at work

Abstract

The study intends to investigate the impact of servant leadership on pro-social rule-breaking directly and through the intervening mechanism of psychological safety. More, the study also plans to investigate whether compassion at work moderates the effect of servant leadership on psychological safety and pro-social rule-breaking and the indirect intervening effect of psychological safety between servant leadership and pro-social rule-breaking. Responses were collected from 273 frontline public servants in Pakistan. Using social information processing theory, the results revealed that servant leadership positively influences pro-social rule-breaking and psychological safety and that psychological safety influences pro-social rule-breaking. Results also revealed that psychological safety acts as an intervening mechanism in the relationship between servant leadership and pro-social rule-breaking. Moreover, compassion at work significantly moderates the relationships of servant leadership with psychological safety and pro-social rule-breaking, and that compassion at work ultimately alters the size of the intervening effect of psychological safety between the connection of servant leadership and pro-social rule-breaking.

Linking public leadership and public project success: the mediating role of team building

“…For example, the accountability dimension may alter employees' attitudes to sharing their actions and ways of working openly and honestly among themselves, which may improve their mutual accountability and information sharing in setting goals and identifying ways to achieve those goals. Employees' open commutations may improve their interpersonal relationships and may help them in clarifying individuals and shared roles and responsibilities (Pollack and Matous 2019) and may enable them to resolve problems (Bane 2004) and improve team functioning (Katzenbach and Smith 2005;Khan et al 2023). The rule-following dimension of public leadership may alter employees' attitudes to adhere to individual and shared roles and responsibilities and organizational norms to achieve team outcomes (Yukl 2012).…”

Examining the dynamics of pro-social rule-breaking among grassroots public servants

“…Santoso et al (2020) highlighted that coworker support and organizational support mitigate the negative effects of incivility and promote effective knowledge-sharing among employees. Using social information processing theory Khan, Zada and Estay (2023) highlighted that servant leaders' subordinate care and support encourage them to engage in PSRB in the similar context of public welfare organizations in Pakistan.…”

“…According to (Kaufmann et al 2022), there is limited research on rule-breaking in public management literature, which might be due to the paradox that rule-breaking is both appreciated and criticized simultaneously. Moreover, challenges such as organizational access and social desirability can make it challenging to research this topic (Khan, Zada, and Estay, 2023). currently, there is increasing research interest in rule behavior.…”

“…Social support networks provide individuals with valuable informational resources. Using social information processing theory, Khan, Zada and Estay (2023) highlighted that servant leadership promotes immediate subordinate PSRB through providing care and support. They discussed that subordinates of servant leadership stay confident, that there will be no negative repercussions for breaking rules for prosocial reasons, and that the motives behind engaging in PSRB can be communicated to servant leaders, because of the close leaderfollower inter relationships.…”

“…These employees, referred to as grassroots civil servants (Duan and So, 2022), resemble street bureaucrats (Brockmann, 2017;Lipsky, 2010) or frontline workers (Ding et al 2023) who are responsible for delivering services at the interface between government and citizens. Grassroots civil servants often exercise PSRB because, on one side, they are bound to follow the rules, but on the other side, they require a high degree of work discretion as well to work independently and to exercise moral ways (Khan, Zada, and Estay, 2023). These employees make workplace decisions in limited time and with incomplete information and often must balance conflicting rules and work pressures (Duan and So, 2022;Lipsky, 2010;Strønen, 2017).…”