Servant Leadership and School Performance: Mediating Effect of Teachers’ Organizational Citizenship Behavior

TLDR: In this article, the authors explored multiple indicators of servant leadership and investigated servant leadership's impact on the followers' level of organizational citizenship behavior and school performance and found that empowerment, standing back, accountability have a positive and significant effect on organizational citizenship behaviour.

Abstract: Problem Statement: Servant leadership is the natural feeling that one has of desiring to serve others. There are different styles of leadership and servant leadership is pillar to succeed in today’s challenging climate and to meet demands of the work place. Hence current study will address the need by exploring multiple indicators of servant leadership and investigate servant leadership and its impact on the followers’ level of organizational citizenship behavior and school performance. Purpose of the Study: This study sought to determine the relationship between servant leadership style and school performance. This study also examines the mediating role of teachers’ organizational citizenship behavior between school performance and servant leadership. Methods: The study was designed as cross-sectional relational survey. Through the random sampling technique, data were collected from 813 (i-e 272 head-teachers and 561 teachers) from public secondary within Punjab province. For data collection, two questionnaires were developed by the researcher. In data analysis phase, a t-test was used to compare the opinions of head-teachers and teachers in terms of the dimensions of servant leadership i-e empowerment, accountability and standing back variables; a one-way analysis of variance and simple linear regression analysis were conducted to test the formulated hypotheses. Findings and Results: According to the study results, it was found that empowerment, standing back, accountability have a positive and significant effect on organizational citizenship behavior. It was found that servant leadership style has effect on organizational citizenship behavior which in turn influences overall school performance. Therefore, we can say that organizational citizenship behavior significantly mediate the effect of servant leadership style on school performance. Conclusions and Recommendations: Significant effect of servant leadership style indicated that school managers who seriously embrace their role as a servant leader will endeavor to establish a school that will work in shared vision and in cooperation. It may be recommended that school heads need to edifice the necessary facilitation, empowering teachers and the cooperation to help in building pleasant work environment that will compel the teachers to exhibit organizational citizenship behavior which will positively affect on school performance.