Servant Leadership, Organisational Citizenship Behavior and Creativity: The Mediating Role of Team-Member Exchange

Abstract

Using a multi-source field study design with 184 unique triads of employees-supervisor dyads, this paper examines whether servant leaders install a serving attitude among employees. That is, servant leaders aim to encourage employees to take responsibility, to cooperate and to create high quality interactions with each other (team-member exchange; TMX). We hypothesise that servant leadership will have an influence on Organisational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) and creativity through team-member exchange. Two facets of OCB are distinguished: organisational citizenship behaviour towards individuals (OCBI), on the one hand, and taking up extra tasks that benefit the organisation (OCBO), on the other hand. The results show that servant leadership is positively related to team-member exchange, and that team-member exchange is positively related to OCBI, OCBO and creativity. The bootstrapping estimates indicated significant indirect effects of servant leadership on the three target variables through team-member exchange. The study’s findings add to the body of literature on servant leadership, OCB and creativity at the workplace, and underline the importance of creating favourable working conditions that foster positive and high quality team-member exchange. This study also broadens our understanding on the importance of co-workers on the relation between servant leadership and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and creativity.

Servant Leadership Stimulates Spiritual Well-Being Through Team Trust in a Female Religious Context

“…This result goes beyond the dominant literature on the trust of followers in leadership (Dirks and Ferrin, 2002;Schaubroeck et al, 2011), and underlines the role of trust in team members. Our finding confirms prior research highlighting trust and positive behaviors of leaders as triggers of the virtuous behaviors of the followers (Malingumu et al, 2016;De Carlo et al, 2020).…”

Leadership in specialist palliative home care teams: A qualitative study

“…Leadership in general is highlighted as crucial within health care due to diverging purposes and goals of various stakeholders in a complex environment (Trastek, Hamilton, & Niles, ). Servant leadership has been suggested as a way to help individual team members grow, to increase team collaboration and to strengthen creativity (Malingumu, Stouten, Euwema, & Babyegeya, ). This is in line with leadership approaches, rather than management, and the results imply that team members experiencing servant leadership will grow as individuals and as team members, to exponentially perform better and achieve more.…”

“…In specialist palliative home care, affirming values and enabling vision during times of fiscal strain and external pressures are challenging. For successful leadership that develops both individuals and the health care team, leaders are recommended to adapt the leadership style to the present situation surrounding the team (Malingumu et al, ; Pishgooie et al, ). If the team struggles with trust, conflict and structure, a more traditional manager is needed to show the way forward through focusing on roles and goals (Wheelan & Hochberger, ).…”

Customer Cooperation and Employee Innovation Behavior: The Roles of Creative Role Identity and Innovation Climates

“…To meet these needs, hotel employees make themselves more creative. Recent studies have shown that co-workers influence creativity through encouragement, support, open communication, and informational feedback ( Zhou and George, 2001 ; Malingumu et al, 2016 ). Customer cooperation entails the provision of service information, communication with frontline employees, and support and encouragement of creativity and better service.…”