Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to reveal the identification-based mechanisms through which servant leadership affects desired outcomes (organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) toward coworkers and turnover intention) in the service industry in China.
Design/methodology/approach
– The data of 293 pairs of valid subordinate-supervisor dyads were collected from the hospitality industry in China with a time lag of 30 days to reduce common method bias. Hypotheses were tested by a bootstrapping method and rival model comparisons.
Findings
– The authors demonstrate that both the subordinate’s identification with the supervisor and identification with the organization play crucial roles in translating servant leadership’s effects to subordinate’s coworker-oriented OCBs and turnover intention. However, the occurrence of the two identifications seems to be not parallel but in sequence (i.e. pointing from identification with the supervisor to identification with the organization). In addition, results show that servant leadership’s ability to reduce subordinate’s fear of being close to the immediate supervisor is an equally significant route through which subordinate’s identification with the organization can be established.
Originality/value
– The research has extended the literature and provided a nuanced explanation of the identification processes underlying servant leadership. The differentiation between relational identification with supervisor and collective identification with organization has shed light on a socialization mechanism through which subordinates come to demonstrate other-oriented service behavior and choose not to leave the organization. Additionally, the way that servant leadership helps eliminate subordinate’s fear in a supervisory relationship has proved to be in-negligible in enhancing organizational identification.
Work-family conflict has been one of the central issues in organizational behavior and human resource management research since the late 1980s. Although antecedents and consequences of work-family conflict have been widely studied, there are several limitations in the current literature as follows. Firstly, many researchers pay much of their attention to figuring out the antecedents and consequences of work-family conflict, but little attention is directed toward uncovering the inherent mechanism. Second, the effects of work interfering with family on individuals' work-related attitudes and behaviors have been examined extensively, but little attention
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