Servant leaders, ethical followers? The effect of servant leadership on employee deviance

Abstract

Purpose Leadership is considered to be a crucial situational factor in predicting and explaining employee deviance. The purpose of this paper therefore is to investigate the relationship between servant leadership on the one hand and employee deviance on the other. While previous studies on the impact of servant leadership on employee deviance typically aggregated all its dimensions into a single scale, this study also explores the impact of the various dimensions of servant leadership separately. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected via an online survey in two ministries of the Belgian Federal Government (n=3,445). The analyses were conducted using confirmatory factor analysis and multiple linear and negative binomial regression analysis. Findings The empirical results suggest that the generic servant leadership scale has the expected negative, protective effect on both self-reported and observer-reported employee deviance. As for the dimensions, the authors found that only the “putting subordinates first” dimension had a significant negative, protective effect on both self-reported and observer-reported employee deviance. The dimensions “behaving ethically” and “emotional healing” negatively impacted only observer-reported employee deviance and the dimension “creating value for society” negatively impacted only self-reported employee deviance. Surprisingly, the dimension “empowering” had a significant positive, strengthening effect on both self-reported and observer-reported employee deviance. Originality/value While most research assesses servant leadership’s impact on desirable behaviour, this study is about its impact on employee deviance. Also unlike most previous research, this study looks not only at the overall effect of servant leadership, but also at the impact of the various dimensions of servant leadership separately.