Servant Leadership and Employee Work Outcomes: Uncovering Underlying Mechanisms by Examining Moderator and Mediator Variables

Abstract

[eng] This thesis sought to address the underlying mechanisms through which servant leadership influences employees’ work outcomes, exploring the boundary conditions, mediators, and moderators related to followers’ individual differences. It consists of three independent empirical studies. Each study applies cross-sectional research design to test the research model in different sectors (Study 1, educational sector; study 2, Home electrical appliance manufacturing sector; and Study 3, the SMEs-small and medium enterprise) in Iran. Questionnaires were applied and results were returned directly to the researcher. The hypotheses were tested via structural equation modelling (SEM) and path modeling techniques, applying AMOS (v. 22) and the PROCES macro tool (Hayes, 2018). This thesis contributes to and extends the servant leadership field by showing its effects on followers’ work outcomes. It corroborates that the relationship between servant leadership and trust in the leader is conditioned by employees’ emotional intelligence, which serves to reinforce the effect on employees’ work outcomes (commitment and turnover intention). It also supports that the relationship between servant leadership and person-supervisor fit is conditioned by employees’ core self-evaluation traits, which in turn impacts their job satisfaction. Lastly, this thesis also provides evidence that employees’ job satisfaction and organizational commitment are two underlying mediating mechanisms between servant leadership actions and employees’ turnover intention. This thesis is not without limitations. First, the cross-sectional research design of the studies does not allow us to infer causality between the variables included in the research models. Future research could adopt a longitudinal or experimental research design to overcome this limitation. Second, the studies relied on self-reported measures which might raise the possibility of common method variance and inflate the coefficients. Third, the nature of the sample limits the generalizability of these results to other settings. Future research could obtain more robust findings by testing the model in other contexts (e.g., other industry sectors or additional countries). Finally, future research can also extend these studies’ conceptual frameworks by exploring the effects of a larger set of variables on other outcomes. This thesis contributes to the servant leadership field and provide practical insights for managers and organizations seeking to implement this approach. All three studies’ findings provide further support for the significance of servant leadership’s benefits and its role in enhancing employees’ work outcomes. The study findings suggest that servant leaders have a better impact on employees with higher levels of emotional intelligence and core self-evaluation. Also, findings show that, servant leaders impact employees’ work outcomes through enhancing employee’s Trust in Leader, Person-Supervisor Fit and Job Satisfaction. This has implications for organizations’ talent attraction and retention policies and their ability to improve employee’s work outcomes by selecting and developing servant leaders, as well as by recruiting employees with high core self-evaluation traits and high emotional intelligence. The value of this empirical PhD thesis is to be the first to explore and introduce the constructs of employee’s emotional intelligence and the core self-evaluation as moderating variables to gain insights on conditions related to servant leadership and its influence on employees’ work outcomes.