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How Servant Leadership Influences Organizational Citizenship Behavior: The Roles of
LMX, Empowerment and Proactive Personality
(Newman, A., G. Schwarz, B. Cooper, and S. Sendjaya)
Abstract
While the link between servant leadership and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) has
been established, the individual-level mechanisms underlying this relationship and its
boundary conditions remain poorly understood. In this study, we investigate the salience of
the mediating mechanisms of leader-member exchange (LMX) and psychological
empowerment in explaining the process by which servant leaders elicit discretionary OCB
among followers. We also examine the role of followers’ proactive personality in moderating
the indirect effects of servant leadership on OCB through LMX and psychological
empowerment. Analysis of survey data collected from 446 supervisor-subordinate dyads in a
large Chinese multinational firm suggests that while servant leadership is positively related to
subordinate OCB through LMX, psychological empowerment does not explain any additional
variance in OCB above that accounted for by LMX. Moderated mediation tests confirm the
moderating effect of proactive personality through LMX. By providing a nuanced
understanding of how and when servant leadership leads followers to go above and beyond
their job role, our study assists organizations in deciding how to develop and utilize servant
leaders in their organizations.
Keywords
LMX; Organizational citizenship behavior; Psychological empowerment; Servant leadership
This is the version of the article accepted for publication in Journal of Business Ethics published by Springer:
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-015-2827-6
Accepted version downloaded from SOAS Research Online: http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/21206
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Introduction
Over the last decade, growing empirical research has highlighted the utility of servant
leadership as a management technique that enables business organizations to develop and
maintain a competitive advantage. Servant leadership refers to a leadership approach by
which leaders set aside their self-interest and altruistically work for the benefit of their
followers, and the communities in which they operate (Avolio et al. 2009; Parris and Welty
Peachey 2013). Servant leaders invest in the development of their followers by acting as role
models who provide support, involve followers in decision-making, display appropriate
ethical behavior, and stress the importance of serving the wider community in which they are
embedded (Reed et al. 2011; Stone et al. 2004). Empirical evidence suggests that servant
leaders foster more satisfied, committed, engaged and better-performing followers (Carter
and Baghurst 2013; Liden et al. 2008; Mayer et al. 2008; Neubert et al. 2008).
Research has revealed that servant leaders make followers go beyond their job role to
exhibit organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) (Ehrhart 2004; Reed 2015; Walumbwa et
al. 2010), defined as discretionary behavior that is not recognized by the formal reward
system and promotes the effective functioning of the organization (Organ 1988). As
highlighted in a recent systematic review of the literature (Parris and Welty Peachey 2013),
prior research considering the effects of servant leadership has typically measured OCB at the
team level, and focused on team-level mediators such as procedural justice and service
climates (Ehrhart 2004; Hunter et al. 2013). There has, however, been limited examination of
the relative importance of the different psychosocial processes underlying this relationship at
the individual level of analysis. In addition, there has been a dearth of research on the
boundary conditions of the relationship between servant leadership and work outcomes. For
example, although exploratory work has begun to look at the relationship between followers’
personality dimensions and servant leadership (Reed 2005), prior research has not examined
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how followers’ personalities and other individual differences influence how followers
respond to servant leadership. Better understanding of how, and in which situations, servant
leadership leads followers to go above and beyond their job role is of critical importance to
managers when deciding how to develop and mobilize servant leaders in their organizations.
To address these gaps in the literature, the present study asks two main questions. First,
it asks whether servant leadership elicits followers to engage in greater OCB by enhancing
the quality of their relationship with their supervisor, as captured by Leader-Member
Exchange (LMX) and/or by heightening their psychological empowerment, defined as an
individual’s motivation to perform tasks. Although such mechanisms have been suggested as
possible explanations for the effects of servant leadership on followers’ OCB in the extant
literature (Henderson et al. 2009; Liden et al. 2008; Russell and Stone 2002; Van
Dierendonck 2011), they have not yet been examined in a single study. Understanding the
relative effects of LMX and psychological empowerment will allow us to make a theoretical
contribution by testing the salience of social exchange theory (Blau 1964) and intrinsic
motivation theory (Ryan and Deci 2000) as individual-level psychosocial processes by which
servant leadership leads followers to engage in OCB. Second, the present study asks whether
the proactive personality of followers strengthens the influence of servant leadership on OCB
by facilitating the building of strong relationships with their supervisor as captured by LMX,
and by motivating them to perform in the workplace. We chose to focus on proactive
personality, which has been defined as an individual’s behavioral tendency to identify
opportunities to enact change and manipulate the environment to act on such opportunities
(Crant 2000) because it has been shown to be a stronger predictor of employee OCB than
other personality measures (Fuller and Marler 2009) and influences the propensity of
employees to build productive relationships in the workplace and maintain high levels of
intrinsic motivation (Li et al. 2010; Thompson 2005; Yang et al. 2011; Zhang et al. 2012). By
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focusing on whether proactive personality moderates the influence of servant leadership
behavior, we address the calls of researchers for greater investigation into how individual
differences among followers, such as personality, influence how they perceive and respond to
different styles of leadership (Antonakis et al. 2012; Zaccaro 2012). Although previous work
has shown that personality characteristics influence how followers respond to leadership
behavior (Ehrhart and Klein 2001), limited research has investigated whether follower’s
personality may accentuate or attenuate the effects of servant leadership.
By investigating these issues, our work brings important practical benefits. As well as
providing an in-depth understanding of the process by which servant leaders engender greater
discretionary behavior amongst followers, our study also identifies which followers may
benefit most from being placed with servant leaders. This knowledge will allow organizations
to better deploy servant leaders to the maximum benefit of the organization. Figure 1
illustrates the research framework of our study.
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INSERT FIGURE 1 ABOUT HERE
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In the following sections, we review the literature on servant leadership and the mechanisms
linking servant leadership to work outcomes and their boundary conditions before presenting
our hypotheses. We then explain how the data were collected and analyzed, and present our
findings. Finally, we discuss our findings and their implications before presenting
suggestions for future research.
Literature Review
In this section, we review the literature on servant leadership and its relationship with
follower OCB. We then review the literature on LMX, psychological empowerment and
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proactive personality, and develop hypotheses concerning the mediating effects of LMX and
psychological empowerment, and the moderating effects of proactive personality.
Servant Leadership
Although servant leadership has been measured in numerous ways in prior empirical research
(Barbuto and Wheeler, 2006; Ehrhart 2004; Laub 1999; Liden et al. 2008; Sendjaya et al.
2008), and there is no overall consensus regarding the exact behaviors that constitute servant
leadership (Parris and Welty Peachey 2013), most empirical studies adopt Greenleaf’s (1977)
definition of a servant leader as one who focuses on developing and empowering his/her
followers, while at the same time encouraging the followers to act as servant leaders
themselves (Parris and Welty Peachey 2013). For the purposes of this study, we adopt
Ehrhart’s (2004) global measure of servant leadership, which highlights seven main
behaviors exhibited by servant leaders: putting subordinates first, forming relationships with
subordinates, helping subordinates to develop and succeed, having conceptual skills,
empowering subordinates, behaving ethically, and creating value for those outside the
organization. Ehrhart’s conceptualization of servant leadership is similar to that of other
widely adopted scales (e.g., Laub, 1999; Liden et al. 2008; Senjaya et al. 2008). For example,
the seven behaviors highlighted by Ehrhart (2004) overlap with six out of the seven
dimensions captured by Liden et al.’s (2008) multi-dimensional scale (i.e., putting
subordinates first, helping subordinates grow and succeed, having conceptual skills,
empowering subordinates, behaving ethically and creating value for the community). In
addition, Ehrhart’s measure shares some similarities with four of the six dimensions from
Laub’s (1999) multi-dimensional scale. It examines the extent to which the leader emphasizes
subordinate development (e.g., values and develops people), empowers subordinates (e.g.,
shares leadership), and creates value for the community (e.g., builds community). Ehrhart’s
(2004) measure also corresponds to four of six dimensions in Sendjaya et al.’s (2008) scale;
