A multilevel study on servant leadership, job boredom and job crafting

The purpose of this paper is to examine cross-level effects of team-level servant leadership on job boredom and the mediating role of job crafting. Cross-level moderating effects of team-level servant leadership were also investigated.

This longitudinal study employed a multilevel design in a sample of 237 employees, clustered into 47 teams. Servant leadership was aggregated to the team-level to examine the effects of shared perceptions of leadership at T1 on individual-level outcome, namely job boredom, at T2. In addition, mediation analysis was used to test whether team-level servant leadership at T1 can protect followers from job boredom at T2 by fostering job crafting at T2. Cross-level moderating effects of team-level servant leadership at T1 on the relation between job crafting at T2 and job boredom at T2 were also modeled.

Job crafting at T2 mediated the cross-level effect of team-level servant leadership at T1 on job boredom at T2.

The findings suggest that team-level servant leadership predicts less job boredom by boosting job crafting.

This study is the first to assess the effects of servant leadership on job boredom and the mediating role of job crafting. This paper examines job boredom in a multilevel design, thus extending knowledge on its contextual components.