Research On The Influence Mechanism Of Servant Leadership On Work Engagement Among Counselors

Counselors are the organizers,implementors and instructors of ideological and political education and daily management of students in colleges and universities.The working state of counselors is directly related to the quality of ideological and political education of college students and the realization of the mission of fostering virtue through education in colleges and universities.At present,a large number of researches on counselors’ working state focus on the counselors’ job burnout,however the research on the improvement of counselors’ working state from the perspective of work engagement,especially the empirical research,has just started.Work engagement refers to the active and perfect state of individuals at work.The researches shows that leadership styles and leadership behaviors are the important factors affecting employee’s work engagement.Servant leadership theory is a hot topic in the current academic research because it emphasizes on serving subordinates,giving priority to meeting their needs and aiding their growth and development,which fits the realistic call and logical approach of management practice.A small number of studies have explored the influence and mechanism of servant leadership on employees’ work engagement in the field of enterprise.However,in the field of college students’ affairs management and administration,is the servant leadership still affecting counselors’ work engagement? What are the mechanism and boundary conditions? The exploration of these problems not only can enrich the theory of servant leadership and the studies of the cause and mechanism of work engagement,but also provide a new research idea and practice plan to explore the improvement of counselors’ work state from the perspective of direct leadership.Based on servant leadership theory,self-determination theory,social cognitive theory,social exchange theory and social identity theory,using grounded theory,the key influencing factors of college counselors’ work engagement are extracted and a conceptual model of servant leadership which affecting college counselors’ work engagement is constructed,and then research hypotheses are presented.Treating prosocial motivation,job crafting,team cohesion as multiple mediators,and personal-supervisor values congruence as moderator variable,the paper tries to build a crosslevel model for servant leadership and counselors’ work engagement.Based on the questionnaire survey data,collected from 516 counselors in 105 departments in 20 colleges and universities in11 provinces of China,software like SPSS,MPLUS were used for statistical analysis and hypothesis testing.Based on the research results,this paper puts forward the practical path to behavior shaping of servant leadership which will improve the counselors’ work engagement.Finally,the paper summarizes the research conclusions,puts forward the research limitations,and to lay the foundation for further research.The main conclusions of this study are as follows:(1)Servant leadership has a significant positive impact on counselors’ work engagement;(2)Prosocial motivation,job crafting,team cohesion form a parallel and multiple mediating mechanism of servant leadership on counselors’ work engagement;(3)Personal-supervisor value congruence positively moderated the effect of servant leadership on prosocial motivation,that is,the higher degree of value congruence,the greater positive effect of servant leadership on prosocial motivation,and the stronger the mediating effect of prosocial motivation in servant leadership and counselors’ work engagement;(4)Personal-supervisor value congruence positively moderated the impact of servant leadership on team cohesion,that is,the higher degree of the value congruence,the greater positive impact of servant leadership on team cohesion,and the stronger mediating effect of team cohesion in servant leadership and counselors’ work engagement;(5)The moderating effect of personal-supervisor value congruence of servant leadership on job crafting is not significant,and the moderating effect on the mediating effect of job crafting in servant leadership and counselors’ work engagement is not significant as well.The main innovations of this study include:(1)Deepening the research on the mechanism of servant leadership and employee job engagement: By using grounded theory,the key influencing factors and logic of internal connection to counselors’ work engagement were explored,and a conceptual model was constructed.Three mediators are integrated through self-determination theory,the boundary conditions are also considered,and the construction and testing of the crosslevel model improves the reliability of the research conclusions further;(2)Deepening the research on the boundary condition of servant leadership on employee and team outcome,verifying the conclusion of social learning theory that the more similar the observer is to the demonstrator,the better the learning effect will be,again;On the other hand,it also responds to the call that the research on the value congruence between individuals and the organizations has been relatively rich while the research on the values congruence between individuals and supervisors needs to be further expanded;(3)Deepening the research on the cause and mechanism of work engagement,enriching the theoretical research framework of work engagement further,expanding the research on leadership types affecting job engagement.This is an earlier empirical study on the working state of counselors from the perspective of leadership behavior.The practical implications of this study are listed as follows:(1)It is important to promote and cultivate the servant leadership style among the deputy secretaries of school party committee;(2)The deputy secretary of school party committee should fully mobilize the counselors’ prosocial motivation,encourage and support job crafting,and build a cohesive team;(3)Administrators in colleges and universities should pay attention to the congruence between counselors’ personal values and servant leadership values.Deputy secretary of school party committee should focus on guiding counselors with altruistic service values,and cultivate these as core of team values.