Servant Leadership and Machiavellian Followers: A Moderated Mediation Model

Abstract

Despite promoting positive employee outcomes, servant leaders may become the victim of manipulation by followers. The current study investigates this underexplored side of servant leadership by examining the employee-related outcomes of the interaction between servant leadership and follower Machiavellianism through mediating mechanism of exploitative manipulative behavior. It is argued that employees high in Machiavellianism engage in exploitative manipulative behavior to achieve subjective career success and social power while working with a servant leader. We used PROCESS macro to analyze our mediation and moderated mediation hypotheses, respectively. We collected data in a time-lagged design (three-time lags) from 320 dyads (self and peer) responses from service sector organizations. The results fully supported our hypotheses. Limitations and future research directions are also presented.

How and When Perceptions of Servant Leadership Foster Employee Work Meaningfulness

“…Our adoption of P-J fit to unveil the psychological mechanism through which employees' perceptions of servant leadership was transmitted into their sense of work meaningfulness, thus enriching the existing theoretical foundation of servant leadership. Meanwhile, accumulated knowledge has been known about how servant leaders influence employees' behavioural outcomes and work performance (e.g., Arain et al, 2019;Fatima et al, 2021;Lemoine & Blum, 2021;Yagil & Oren, 2021). Our findings on their positive impact on employees' P-J fit and work meaningfulness thus add to our limited knowledge about how perceptions of servant leadership should affect employees' psychological well-being (Eva et al, 2019;Lee et al, 2020).…”

“…It can be achieved when one's needs are met by supplies in the job and when one's knowledge, skills, and abilities fit with what the job requires (Kristof-Brown et al, 2005). As servant leaders not only prioritize fulfilling followers' needs at work, but also emphasize followers' professional development for their own good (Fatima et al, 2021;Liden et al, 2015;Yagil & Oren, 2021), we expect that employees are more likely to experience P-J fit when they acknowledge their leaders as servant leaders. Moreover, employees' perceptions of fit with their jobs could lead to positive regard with themselves as well as their jobs, and encourage them to believe they can make a difference in organizations through their job (Greguras & Diefendorff, 2009), all of which would facilitate employees' experience of work meaningfulness (Fan et al, 2021;Rosso et al, 2010).…”

“…Second, with P-J fit as an underlying mechanism, we add new knowledge to the generating process of work meaningfulness and enrich the theoretical foundation of servant leadership. In particular, while prior research focused on revealing how servant leaders make a difference in influencing employees' behavioural outcomes and work performance (e.g., Arain et al, 2019;Fatima et al, 2021;Lemoine & Blum, 2021;Yagil & Oren, 2021), we took a nuanced look into how they would affect employees' psychological well-being (i.e., P-J fit and work meaningfulness). Third, by identifying a boundary condition-leader prototypicality-our study further enriches the current limited understanding about when servant leaders exert more influence on employee psychological outcomes (Eva et al, 2019;Lee et al, 2020).…”

“…For example, servant leaders might offer challenging tasks to enhance their abilities and skills (Liden et al, 2008) and encourage them to reflect on their performance (Wang et al, 2021;Yagil & Oren, 2021). They also help employees establish relational connections at work (Fatima et al, 2021;van Dierendonck, 2011) and empower employees to bring out the best of themselves (Greenleaf, 1977;Yang et al, 2019). As such, the enhanced knowledge, skills, abilities, work connections, and motivations should enable employees to meet their job demands and thereby perceive fit with their jobs.…”

“…Second, prior research was mostly based on theoretical lens of social information processing, social exchange, social power, and selfmotivation (Eva et al, 2019;Fatima et al, 2021;Yagil & Oren, 2021) to reveal the impact of servant leaders on employees. Our adoption of P-J fit to unveil the psychological mechanism through which employees' perceptions of servant leadership was transmitted into their sense of work meaningfulness, thus enriching the existing theoretical foundation of servant leadership.…”