Servant Leadership and Innovative Work Behavior in Chinese High-Tech Firms: A Moderated Mediation Model of Meaningful Work and Job Autonomy

Abstract

Scholars acknowledge the critical role of employee innovative work behavior (IWB) in facilitating organizational innovation in high-tech industries. However, the current knowledge is far from complete to paint a clear picture of how to evoke employee IWB in the Chinese high-tech industry. Many Chinese high-tech firms face a challenge moving from hierarchy-based leadership toward more employee-centered leadership styles, as the styles have different effects on employees’ IWB. This perspective may complement and sharpen the incomplete picture. Drawing on a dynamic componential model of creativity and innovation, this study proposes and tests a moderated mediation model that examines the hypothesized positive influence of servant leadership on employee IWB via meaningful work as well as the moderating role of job autonomy in this process. We collected data (N = 288) from three Chinese high-tech firms and found that employees’ perceptions of meaningful work mediate the relationship between servant leaders and IWB. We also found that this mediating relationship is conditional on the moderating role of job autonomy in the path from servant leadership to meaningful work. The results further show that the indirect effect of servant leadership on employee IWB via meaningful work exists only when job autonomy is high.

Linking Leaders’ Voluntary Workplace Green Behavior and Team Green Innovation: The Mediation Role of Team Green Efficacy

“…Based on the findings of this study, it can be concluded that future research is needed to further study the supporting role of leadership styles and supervisory behaviors in their team's green activities, processes and results. For example, according to the reported positive influence of servant leadership on innovation [71], scholars recently suggest that green servant leadership can predict a wide range of desirable ecologically friendly outcomes [72]. Green servant leadership may specifically convey a prominent signal to followers showing that green activities are highly important and encouraged by leaders; thus, studies in the future can extend this line of literature by examining whether and how green servant leadership can support green innovative outcomes.…”

How Servant Leadership Leads to Employees’ Customer-Oriented Behavior in the Service Industry? A Dual-Mechanism Model

“…With the development of servant leadership literature, scholars have suggested that the theory of servant leadership responding to resolving the challenges of leadership approaches in the twenty-first century specifically highlights leaders providing service to others and reinforcing recognition of building a better tomorrow for all the employees [24]. We follow this line of research to argue that servant leadership as serving followers by caring and putting subordinates first is consistent with the changing requirements of current and future employee management (e.g., concerning employee development) [25].…”

“…Leadership researchers have found that leadership styles can act as a prominent situational indicator to dynamically activate employees' cognition and affect system concurrently [30], because employees usually use their cognition and affect to process information from their leaders. Although some studies have found evidence that servant leadership can boost followers' motivational elements [25], affect and cognition mechanisms receive less empirical attention [9], and considering both the mechanisms simultaneously is relatively rare. In order to extend the well-examined mechanisms (e.g., motivation) in explaining the servant leadership influences, this current research adopts both the cognitive and affective system from the CAPS perspective.…”

Servant Leadership, Innovative Capacity and Performance in Third Sector Entities

“…(Yuan and Woodman, 2010;Goepel et al, 2012). As a result, the servant leader can encourage innovative behavior amongst employees (Liden et al, 2008;Panaccio et al, 2015;Williams et al, 2017;Cai et al, 2018) so as to achieve a positive impact on innovation (García-Morales et al, 2008;Gumusluoglu and Ilsev, 2009;Panaccio et al, 2015) and on innovative capacity (Neubert et al, 2008;Schaubroeck et al, 2011;Yoshida et al, 2014). Previous researches show that companies led by servant leaders tend to improve their innovative capacity (Yoshida et al, 2014;Ruiz-Palomino et al, 2019).…”