Servant leadership and healthcare professionals’ outcomes during COVID19: The role of safety climate

Abstract

The negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic open the door to investigate what leadership practices are needed to guarantee positive work-related outcomes among employees in organizations. This research proposes, building on the norm of reciprocity, a model to examine the role of servant leadership in stimulating task performance and risk-taking behaviors among healthcare professionals during the pandemic. In this model, safety climate was theorized to serve as a mediating variable between servant leadership, task performance and risk-taking behavior. Data in this study were collected from 237 healthcare professionals (Medial and Administrative Staff) working in Palestinian hospitals. Partial least-squares structural equation modelling was employed to analyze the data. The results of this study demonstrate that servant leadership is effective in fostering task performance and risk-taking behaviors in crisis times. Safety climate showed to exert a full mediating effect among the aforementioned relationships. Finally, results demonstrated that healthcare professionals with high experience are more willing to engage in risk-taking behavior. Discussion, implications, and limitations are discussed.