On the Servant Leadership Behaviors Perceived in Voluntary Settings: The Influences on Volunteers’ Motivation and Organizational Commitment

Abstract

Building on the functional approach theory, the current study empirically examined the influences of servant leadership behaviors on volunteers’ motivations and on their organizational commitment feelings. In addition, it also examined servant leadership’s indirect influences via those motivations on volunteers’ commitment feelings. To test its hypotheses, the study used the data collected from 385 volunteers. The research has found out that the degree of perceived servant leadership behaviors affected both participants’ motivation to volunteer and their affective and normative commitments feelings toward their organizations. Furthermore, as one of the six dimensions of the motivation concept suggested by the functional approach theory, only the protective motive partially mediated the influences of perceived servant leadership behaviors on the volunteers’ normative commitment attitudes. The study discussed the possible rationales under these research findings and made some future research proposals. The study hopes that its findings, through responding to expectations of their voluntary members, help voluntary organizations to be more effective and efficient in their recruiting and sustaining efforts.

Impact of Servant Leadership on Performance: The Mediating Role of Affective and Cognitive Trust

“…The exchange relationship is an intervening construct between two partners, and the character of the relationship will define the consequences (Cropanzano & Mitchell, 2005, Erdurmazlı, 2019. Trust is a promising relational construct in a work setting between two interacting individuals (Dirks & Ferrin, 2002), and it is a key component in a successful relationship between a leader and followers.…”

“…Trust is a promising relational construct in a work setting between two interacting individuals (Dirks & Ferrin, 2002), and it is a key component in a successful relationship between a leader and followers. It helps them cooperate, manage, share, and enable mutual understanding (Dirks & Ferrin, 2002;Erdurmazlı, 2019). It also reflects the level of confidence of one person in the competence and skill of another (Nyhan & Marlowe, 1997).…”

Enhancing volunteers capacity in all‐volunteer nonprofit organizations: The role of volunteer leaders' reliance on effective management processes and (de)motivating leadership

“…Previous studies have confirmed the benefits of servant leadership and LMX in an all‐volunteering context for respectively volunteers' motivation, satisfaction, commitment, and intentions to stay in the organization (Erdurmazlı, 2019; Schneider & George, 2011); and volunteers' job satisfaction and intentions to stay with the organization (Bang, 2011).…”

Volunteer public leaders’ values-driven leadership: the case of village elders in Kenya

“…Further, servant leaders influence others through: building trusting relationships; demonstrating an altruistic mind set; and possessing interpersonal competence. Patterson (2003) highlighted love, humility, altruism, vision, trust, empowerment and service as important values held by servant leaders, which are also the hallmarks of servant leaders ( Erdurmazlı., 2019 ).…”

“…It has been argued that volunteer leaders are more concerned with the development of people, engage in inspiring leadership behaviours, even more than paid leaders, and are more psychologically involved by demonstrating values that promote independent thought and challenge ( Benson, 2010 ; Catano et al., 2001 ; Posner, 2015 ). Servant leadership model has also been associated with motivations to volunteer ( Erdurmazlı., 2019 ), as well as leadership in African culture ( Wanasika et al., 2011 ). The servant leadership framework was therefore found relevant to the aim of the study, and to the specific study objectives given in the next section.…”