IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijerp/v17y2020i13p4753-d379271.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How Servant Leadership Motivates Innovative Behavior: A Moderated Mediation Model

Author

Listed:
  • Jianji Zeng

    (School of Medical Business, Guangdong Pharmaceutical University, Guangzhou 510006, China)

  • Guangyi Xu

    (School of Business Administration, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510640, China)

Abstract

Drawing on social identity theory, this study examines the effect of servant leadership on university teachers’ innovative behavior through the self-concept constructs of perceived insider status and organization-based self-esteem, and the moderating effect of leader–member exchange (LMX). This moderated mediation model was tested with two waves of data from 269 university teachers in China. Results reveal that the self-concept constructs mediate the relationship between servant leadership and university teachers’ innovative behavior. Moreover, LMX strengthens the relationship between servant leadership and the self-concept constructs, as well as the indirect effect of servant leadership on university teachers’ innovative behavior through the self-concept constructs. Findings suggest that servant leadership is related to increased innovative behavior due to its positive influence on the self-concept of university teachers and it highlights the importance of developing a favorable supervisor–subordinate relationship.

Suggested Citation

  • Jianji Zeng & Guangyi Xu, 2020. "How Servant Leadership Motivates Innovative Behavior: A Moderated Mediation Model," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(13), pages 1-14, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:13:p:4753-:d:379271
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/13/4753/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/13/4753/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Boas Shamir & Robert J. House & Michael B. Arthur, 1993. "The Motivational Effects of Charismatic Leadership: A Self-Concept Based Theory," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 4(4), pages 577-594, November.
    2. Andrew H. Van de Ven, 1986. "Central Problems in the Management of Innovation," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 32(5), pages 590-607, May.
    3. Mavis Agyemang Opoku & Suk Bong Choi & Seung-Wan Kang, 2019. "Servant Leadership and Innovative Behaviour: An Empirical Analysis of Ghana’s Manufacturing Sector," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(22), pages 1-18, November.
    4. Raquel Rodríguez-Carvajal & Marta Herrero & Dirk van Dierendonck & Sara de Rivas & Bernardo Moreno-Jiménez, 2019. "Servant Leadership and Goal Attainment Through Meaningful Life and Vitality: A Diary Study," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 20(2), pages 499-521, February.
    5. Van de Ven, Andrew R., 1986. "Central Problems in the Management of Innovation," Agricultural Research Policy Seminar 139708, University of Minnesota Extension.
    6. Sea-Jin Chang & Arjen van Witteloostuijn & Lorraine Eden, 2010. "From the Editors: Common method variance in international business research," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 41(2), pages 178-184, February.
    7. Yoshida, Diah Tuhfat & Sendjaya, Sen & Hirst, Giles & Cooper, Brian, 2014. "Does servant leadership foster creativity and innovation? A multi-level mediation study of identification and prototypicality," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 67(7), pages 1395-1404.
    8. A. Newman & G. Schwarz & B. Cooper & S. Sendjaya, 2017. "How Servant Leadership Influences Organizational Citizenship Behavior: The Roles of LMX, Empowerment, and Proactive Personality," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 145(1), pages 49-62, September.
    9. Karen L Newman & Stanley D Nollen, 1996. "Culture and Congruence: The Fit Between Management Practices and national Culture," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 27(4), pages 753-779, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Giang Hoai Kieu Le & Phuoc Hoang Vo, 2024. "The relationships between servant leadership, job embeddedness, and turnover intention of information technology employees," HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF SCIENCE - ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION, HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF SCIENCE, HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY, vol. 14(4), pages 140-156.
    2. Mahvish Aslam & Imran Shafi & Jamil Ahmed & Mirtha Silvana Garat de Marin & Emmanuel Soriano Flores & Marco Antonio Rojo Gutiérrez & Imran Ashraf, 2023. "Impact of Innovation-Oriented Human Resource on Small and Medium Enterprises’ Performance," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(7), pages 1-23, April.
    3. Wayu Eko Yudiatmaja & Roy Valiant Salomo & Eko Prasojo, 2023. "Fostering Innovative Behavior of Millennial Public Employee Through Leadership Styles and Organizational Trust," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(2), pages 21582440231, June.
    4. Ling Hu & Tai-Wei Chang & Yue-Shi Lee & Show-Jane Yen & Chih-Wen Ting, 2023. "How Does Sustainable Leadership Affect Environmental Innovation Strategy Adoption? The Mediating Role of Environmental Identity," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(1), pages 1-12, January.
    5. Shoukat Iqbal Khattak & Muhammad Anwar Khan & Muhammad Iftikhar Ali & Hafiz Ghufran Ali Khan & Imran Saeed, 2023. "Relationship Between Servant Leadership, Leader-Member-Exchange, Organization Learning and Innovative Work Behavior: Evidence From High-Tech Firms," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(4), pages 21582440231, December.
    6. Naveed Ahmad & Miklas Scholz & Muhammad Zulqarnain Arshad & Syed Khuram Ali Jafri & Raja Irfan Sabir & Waris Ali Khan & Heesup Han, 2021. "The Inter-Relation of Corporate Social Responsibility at Employee Level, Servant Leadership, and Innovative Work Behavior in the Time of Crisis from the Healthcare Sector of Pakistan," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(9), pages 1-16, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mohamed Laid Ouakouak & Noufou Ouedraogo, 2017. "Antecedents Of Employee Creativity And Organisational Innovation: An Empirical Study," International Journal of Innovation Management (ijim), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 21(07), pages 1-26, October.
    2. Erumban, Abdul Azeez & de Jong, Simon B., 2006. "Cross-country differences in ICT adoption: A consequence of Culture?," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 41(4), pages 302-314, December.
    3. Janet Bercovitz & Maryann Feldman, 2008. "Academic Entrepreneurs: Organizational Change at the Individual Level," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 19(1), pages 69-89, February.
    4. Armand Hatchuel & Blanche Segrestin, 2019. "A century old and still visionary: Fayol's innovative theory of management," Post-Print hal-02441273, HAL.
    5. Zhang, Stephen X. & Chen, Jiyao & He, Liangxing & Choudhury, Afreen, 2023. "Responsible Innovation: The development and validation of a scale," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).
    6. Liu, Zhiqiang & Yan, Miao & Fan, Youqing & Chen, Liling, 2021. "Ascribed or achieved? The role of birth order on innovative behaviour in the workplace," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 480-492.
    7. Cécile Fonrouge & Cécile Ayerbe, 2005. "Les transitions entre innovations : études de cas et proposition d'une grille d'interprétation," Post-Print halshs-00696111, HAL.
    8. Jean-Philippe Denis & Frank Tannery, 2002. "L'architecture des systèmes de contrôle de la stratégie dans les groupes," Revue Finance Contrôle Stratégie, revues.org, vol. 5(3), pages 69-114, September.
    9. Anil K. Gupta & Paul E. Tesluk & M. Susan Taylor, 2007. "Innovation At and Across Multiple Levels of Analysis," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 18(6), pages 885-897, December.
    10. Brigitte Charles-Pauvers & Nathalie Schieb-Bienfait & Caroline Urbain, 2004. "La compétence du créateur d’entreprise innovante : quelles interrogations?," Post-Print hal-01416605, HAL.
    11. Simona Alfiero & Laura Broccardo & Massimo Cane & Alfredo Esposito, 2018. "High Performance Through Innovation Process Management in SMEs. Evidence from the Italian wine sector," MANAGEMENT CONTROL, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2018(3), pages 87-110.
    12. Yoshida, Masayuki & James, Jeffrey D. & Cronin, J. Joseph, 2013. "Sport event innovativeness: Conceptualization, measurement, and its impact on consumer behavior," Sport Management Review, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 68-84.
    13. Cécile Ayerbe & Cécile Fonrouge, 2005. "Les transitions entre innovations:études de cas et proposition d’une grille d’interprétation," Revue Finance Contrôle Stratégie, revues.org, vol. 8(2), pages 39-64, June.
    14. Tanja Lepistö & Tiina Mäkitalo-Keinonen & Tiina Valjakka, 0. "Opportunity recognition in a hub-governed network – insights from garage services," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 0, pages 1-24.
    15. Sylvain Lenfle, 2004. "Innovation in services : the contribution of design theory," Post-Print hal-00263365, HAL.
    16. Panourgias, Nikiforos S. & Nandhakumar, Joe & Scarbrough, Harry, 2014. "Entanglements of creative agency and digital technology: A sociomaterial study of computer game development," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 111-126.
    17. Christel Lane & Daniela Lup, 2015. "Cooking under Fire: Managing Multilevel Tensions between Creativity and Innovation in Haute Cuisine," Industry and Innovation, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(8), pages 654-676, November.
    18. Prasanta Kumar Dey & Chrisovalantis Malesios & Debashree De & Soumyadeb Chowdhury & Fouad Ben Abdelaziz, 2019. "Could lean practices and process innovation enhance supply chain sustainability of small and medium‐sized enterprises?," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(4), pages 582-598, May.
    19. Gopesh Anand & John Gray & Enno Siemsen, 2012. "Decay, Shock, and Renewal: Operational Routines and Process Entropy in the Pharmaceutical Industry," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 23(6), pages 1700-1716, December.
    20. Ma Asunción Esteso-Blasco & María Gil-Marqués & Juan Sapena, 2021. "Leadership in Economy of Communion Companies. Contribution to the Common Good through Innovation," Humanistic Management Journal, Springer, vol. 6(1), pages 77-101, April.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:13:p:4753-:d:379271. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.