Abstract
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of servant leadership on employees' promotive voice behavior and prohibitive voice behavior by focusing on the mediating role of job engagement and the moderating role of proactive personality.Design/methodology/approachTime-lagged data were collected using a field survey research design. The participants included 216 employees and 23 supervisors in two commercial banks in China.FindingsPerceived servant leadership was positively related to employees' promotive and prohibitive voice behavior, and these relationships were mediated by enhanced job engagement. In addition, employees' proactive personality amplified the relationship between perceived servant leadership and job engagement, and the mediating effect of job engagement on the relationship between perceived servant leadership and voice behavior.Research limitations/implicationsThis study enhances understanding of the mechanisms underlying the servant leadership – voice model by identifying the mediating role of job engagement. The results also demonstrate the moderating role of proactive personality in enhancing the effects of servant leadership. However, the survey design was not longitudinal, which limits the study's ability to confirm causality.Practical implicationsThe findings reveal that servant leadership, employees' job engagement, and proactive personality can facilitate employees' promotive and prohibitive voice behavior.Originality/valueThis study addresses the unexplored mediating mechanism of the relationship between servant leadership and voice behavior, and offers new directions for servant leadership and voice research.
Highlights
The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of servant leadership on employees’ promotive voice behavior and prohibitive voice behavior by focusing on the mediating role of job engagement and the moderating role of proactive personality
We propose that proactive personality intensifies the mediating effect of job engagement on the relationships among servant leadership, promotive voice, and prohibitive voice, which can be represented by a moderated mediation model (Edwards and Lambert, 2007)
The results indicated that servant leadership indirectly affected both types of voice through job engagement, with an indirect effect 5 0.04 on promotive voice and an indirect effect 5 0.04 on prohibitive voice
Summary
The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of servant leadership on employees’ promotive voice behavior and prohibitive voice behavior by focusing on the mediating role of job engagement and the moderating role of proactive personality. Findings – Perceived servant leadership was positively related to employees’ promotive and prohibitive voice behavior, and these relationships were mediated by enhanced job engagement. Research limitations/implications – This study enhances understanding of the mechanisms underlying the servant leadership – voice model by identifying the mediating role of job engagement. There is a lack of research exploring antecedents that elicit these two forms of voice in a single model (Chamberlin et al, 2017) This issue is important and timely in the Chinese context (Duan et al, 2014; Yan and Xiao, 2016), as China is transforming from a centrally planned economy to a market economy, and its social and legal economic systems are undergoing tremendous change
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