How Does Servant Leadership Enhance Employee Outcomes? A Self-Determination Theory Perspective

Abstract

Drawing on self-determination theory, this research addresses the question of how servant leadership promotes employee affective organizational commitment and job performance. Consistently with the theoretically derived hypotheses, results from three multisource studies (cross-organizational sample of 362 leader-follower dyads, longitudinal sample of 219 leader-follower dyads, and longitudinal sample of 274 leader-follower dyads) provide general support for our theoretical model. Results indicate that competence need satisfaction fully mediates the relationship between servant leadership and job performance, while relatedness need satisfaction partially mediates the relationship between servant leadership and affective organizational commitment across three studies. Notably, these results were supported after (a) controlling for other related leadership styles such as transformational leadership and ethical leadership and (b) controlling for LMX and promotion focus as alternative mediators. Further, Study 1 and Study 2 show that servant leadership influences affective organizational commitment both directly and indirectly through autonomy need satisfaction, but the partial mediation is not supported in Study 3.