Reaching the Head Through the Heart: Servant Leadership, Decision- Making, and Financial Performance

Abstract

Like other forms of moral leadership, research on servant leadership tends to lean on attitudinal and motivational outcomes, and raises questions as to whether a focus on morality and others is compatible with financial organizational sustainability. To examine these issues, we integrate theory on servant leadership with motivated information processing theory via their mutual reliance on the idea of other-orientation. We hypothesize that servant leadership grows follower other-orientation, which in turn impacts the framing and depth of information processing – cognitive reflection – used by followers in making decisions. We further propose that this enhanced cognitive reflection would result in greater individual contributions to the organization’s financial performance. We test this model using objective cognitive reflection scores and financial data provided by our partner organization, examining a sample of 286 project managers. We find support for our theory in a serially mediated indirect effect of servant leadership on individual financial performance, acting through other-orientation (the heart) and cognitive reflection (the head). The implications of these findings for servant leadership and motivated information processing theory are discussed.