Servant leadership and engagement: a dual mediation model
Journal of Managerial Psychology
ISSN: 0268-3946
Article publication date: 2 October 2018
Issue publication date: 18 October 2018
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to compare two mediating mechanisms of servant leadership’s effect on followers’ work engagement: the social exchange mechanism (represented by leader-member exchange (LMX)) and the social learning mechanism (represented by public service motivation in Study 1 and prosocial motivation in Study 2).
Design/methodology/approach
In Study 1, the authors collected two-wave matched data from 216 public sector employees. In Study 2, the authors collected two-wave matched data from 178 private sector employees. The authors use hierarchical regression and bootstrapping to test the hypotheses.
Findings
Servant leadership is positively related to follower’s work engagement and this relationship is mediated by LMX, but not by public service motivation (Study 1) or prosocial motivation (Study 2). It suggests that servant leadership promotes followers’ work engagement mostly through the social exchange mechanism.
Research limitations/implications
The data were collected from Chinese employees, and future studies are necessary to verify the findings in other cultural contexts.
Originality/value
This study sheds light on a more nuanced picture of the effect mechanisms of servant leadership.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided by National Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos 71772171 and 71372159), the project of “985” in China and the Social Sciences planning projects from the Ministry of Education (Grant No. 17YJA630073). The three authors made equal contribution to this paper. The order of author names is presented by the alphabetical order of their family names.
Citation
Bao, Y., Li, C. and Zhao, H. (2018), "Servant leadership and engagement: a dual mediation model", Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 33 No. 6, pp. 406-417. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMP-12-2017-0435
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited