Servant leadership, ideology-based culture and job outcomes: A multi-level investigation among hospitality workers

Abstract

Although previous research has linked leadership, culture and work behaviors, scholars and practitioners lack an understanding of how servant leadership affects employees’ work meaningfulness, diversity-valuing behavior and community citizenship behavior by fostering an ideology-based culture within the hospitality sector. This study addressed these gaps by conducting a multi-level time-lagged field study among full-time employees and their supervisors (310 employees nested in 70 supervisors) working in a large hotel chain in Pakistan. The study examined the direct and indirect effects of supervisory-level servant leadership on individual-level meaningfulness, individual-level community citizenship behavior, and group-level diversity-valuing behavior through group-level ideology-based culture. The findings revealed that supervisors’ servant leadership style was positively related to ideology-based culture within each group. In addition, ideology-based culture was positively related to group’s diversity-valuing behavior as well as each member’s meaningfulness and community citizenship behavior. Finally, servant leadership had a positive indirect effect on all outcomes through ideology-based culture.