Serving to Help and Helping to Serve: Using Servant Leadership to Influence Beyond Supervisory Relationships

Abstract

This study provides a new perspective on servant leadership research by examining the social influence of the servant leadership of individuals who are not in a supervisory position. Drawing on servant leadership and social learning theories, we examine how the servant leadership of managers in support roles can initiate a social learning process that shapes the leadership style of line managers and thereby influences employee outcomes throughout the organization. To facilitate the integration between servant leadership and social learning theories, we also examine the role of efficacy beliefs in enhancing the effectiveness of the social learning process. Using nested, time-lagged data from 667 store managers, 121 line managers, and 23 human resource managers (i.e., support managers), we find that support managers’ servant leadership positively influences organizational members’ perceptions of overall justice and leader-member exchange through line manager servant leadership. In turn, employees’ favorable perceptions stemming from line manager servant leadership enhance the employees’ organizational commitment and job satisfaction. The results also indicate that high leadership self-efficacy augments line managers’ effectiveness in emulating servant leadership behaviors from support managers and reinforces the indirect effects on organizational members’ favorable perceptions.

Effect of Chief Executive Officer’s Sustainable Leadership Styles on Organization Members’ Psychological Well-Being and Organizational Citizenship Behavior

“…Since it is based on the premise of serving others, it contrasts with traditional leadership, which focuses on the desire to lead others. While the leader's goal based on traditional leadership is to be served, the leader's goal based on servant leadership is to serve others [105][106][107][108]. A servant leader in an organization helps the members grow and develop with a serving attitude, rather than a controlling approach using commands or instructions, so that they can contribute to achieving the organization's goal [36,37,109].…”

Improving Teacher Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) through Servant Leadership, Justice and Self-efficacy: Indonesian Teacher Perspective

“…Why can the leadership of the principal's servants improve the OCB? Principals who use the Servant leadership style must respect every teacher, are committed to advancing teachers, form a learning community, and have insight into the future (Fatima et al, 2021;Kauppila et al, 2022;Zada et al, 2022). The principal's leadership behavior must encourage teachers to perform different roles or OCB, including altruism, civic virtue, conscientiousness, and courtesy (Kauppila et al, 2022;Newman et al, 2017;Song et al ).…”

How and When Perceptions of Servant Leadership Foster Employee Work Meaningfulness

“…While helping employees to craft their jobs has been proved to increase employee P-J fit (Verelst et al, 2021), servant leaders "create" jobs for employees that lead to more P-J fit. Moreover, leaders' focus on serving should boost employees' trust in management and commitment (e.g., Kauppila et al, 2022;Rai & Prakash, 2016),which would reduce employees' fear of communicating with leader about issues such as what they really need for better task performance. Servant leaders thus have higher chance to understand and meet employees' needs and subsequently increase employee P-J fit.…”