The Influences Of Servant Leadership On Employee Turnover Intention And Creativity

Given the important role of leaders in the workplace, leadership has been widely treated as a substantial factor that affect employee work attitude and behaviors at both the individual and team level. As one of the famous influential leadership theories in contemporary studies, servant leadership has received much attention of researchers in last decade. Servant leadership refers to leadership that focuses on putting followers’needs first, helping followers grow, and striving to bring out the full potential of followers. The literature shows that servant leadership has an important impact on individual and team outcomes. However, few studies have explored the various mediators in the relationship between servant leadership and outcome variables. In addition, some scholars argued that exploring the mediating mechanisms in the relation between servant leadership and individual and group outcomes is significant and necessary. Therefore, there is a need to conduct empirical research that explores the mediating mechanisms in the relationship between servant leadership and individual and team outcomes.Drawing from leadership theory and creativity theory perspectives, our study choose turnover intention, employee creativity and team creativity as outcome variables, team identification, psychological empowerment, employee creative self-efficacy and team efficacy as mediators, cultural values (collectivism and power distance) and work-family conflict as moderators, then to build the effect mechanism model of servant leadership on employee turnover intention and creativity. First, we review the literature on the relevant constructs. Second, we elaborate the research design and data collection. Then, through using softwares of SPSS, HLM and LISREL, we analyze the collected data, and verify the related hypotheses. At last, the results of this study are discussed, and the theoretical and practical implications of this findings are also clarified. The main research contents and findings are as follows.First, we examine how servant leadership affects employee turnover intention through mediating mechanism of team identification, and the moderating effect of collectivism. Based on the social identity theory, we discovered that the relationship between servant leadership and employee turnover intention can be partially mediated by team identification. In addition, we found that collectivism moderates the relationship between servant leadership and team identification. our study also investigate the different moderating effects of horizontal collectivism and vertical collectivism. Our results indicate that horizontal collectivism can enhance the positive relationship between servant leadership and team identification, but vertical collectivism would reduce the positive relationship between servant leadership and team identification.Second, we investigate how servant leadership affects employee creativity through the mediating effect of psychological empowerment, and the moderating effect of work-family conflict. We find that the relationship between servant leadership and employee creativity can be partially mediated by psychological empowerment. Additionally, we discovered that family-to-work conflict moderates the cross-level relationship between servant leadership and psychological empowerment, the relationship was more positive when family-to-work conflict was low, rather than high. Work-to-family conflict did not significantly affect this relationship.Third, we explore the mediating role of self-and team efficacy on the effects of servant leadership on employee and team creativity at multiple levels simultaneously, and the moderating effect of team power distance. At the individual level, we found that the relationship between servant leadership and employee creativity can be partially mediated by employee creative self-efficacy. Meanwhile, at the team level, the relationship between servant leadership and team creativity can be partially mediated by team efficacy. Further, our results indicate that team power distance can reduce the positive relationship between servant leadership and team efficacy. However, we found that the interaction between servant leadership and team power distance on employees’creative self-efficacy is not significant.This study has several theoretical implications. First, our study extends the mediating mechanism by which servant leadership influences employee turnover intention and creativity. Second, this study has identified the conditions under which servant leadership may have its greatest effect. On the one hand, Our results help to deepen understanding of boundary conditions (e.g., personal factors and contextual factors) for the effects of servant leadership on individual and team outcomes. On the other hand, our findings enrich the cultural values (collectivism and power distance) and work-family conflict literature. Finally, our findings enrich research on leadership behavior affecting creativity at multiple levels. Therefore, our study extends the existing understanding of the different mechanisms between individual and team levels and provides support for further research on various mechanisms between individual and team creativity.The findings of our study also have some practical implications for managers. First, this research addresses the call for the utility’of promoting servant leadership in the work context. Practically, organizations can use servant leadership training programs for leaders to focus on developing their servant leadership behaviors. In addition, selection or promotion decisions may be informed through personality assessments, as agreeableness and introversion are traits that have been linked to servant leaders. Second, managers’understanding of the instrumental role of servant leadership in improving employees’team identification is valuable because it can be used to reduce employee turnover intention. Third, our results also provide insights into how servant leadership behaviors can be used to enhance the follower psychological empowerment and self-efficacy beliefs, thereby contributing to the improvement of creative outcomes. Moreover, the results highlight the importance of the differences in cultural values (collectivism and power distance) in the effectiveness of managerial practices. On the one hand, in order to decrease employee turnover intention, organizations should build horizontal collectivism cultural values within employee individuals. On the other hand, our findings suggest that to enhance the interaction among team members and improve team creativity, organizations should build more equal and lower power distance cultural values within the team. Further, organizations might create better practices regarding task management, staffing and scheduling, job design, and flexible work arrangement, which can be helpful in reducing work-family conflict.