Servant Leadership and the Effect of the Interaction Between Humility, Action, and Hierarchical Power on Follower Engagement

Abstract

Servant leadership has been theorized as a model where the moral virtue of humility co-exists with action-driven behavior. This article provides an empirical study that tests how these two apparently paradoxical aspects of servant leadership interact in generating follower engagement, while considering the hierarchical power of the leader as a contingency variable. Through a three-way moderation model, a study was conducted based on a sample of 232 people working in a diverse range of companies. The first finding is that humble leaders showed the highest impact on follower engagement regardless of their hierarchical position. Less humble leaders in lower hierarchical positions seem to be able to compensate for that through a strong action-oriented leadership style. Most notably for leaders in high hierarchical positions, the moral virtue of humility seems to strengthen the impact of their action-oriented leadership the most. These findings provide empirical support and a better understanding of the interplay between the moral virtue of humility and the actionoriented behaviors of servant leadership.

The Functions of a Servant Leader

“…Accountability was described in the literature as being responsible [18], ensuring transparent practices [53], holding others accountable, monitoring performance [18], and setting clear expectations in accordance with an individual's capability [10]. It was mentioned in 7 different articles as being a characteristic of servant leadership.…”

“…Stewardship was defined in the literature as the process to take accountability [10,64] for the common interest of a society, an organisation, and individuals [6,10,36,41,50,65], and to leave a positive legacy [66], with an attitude of not being the owner, but rather a caretaker [6,10,35,36,41,50,61,67]. Stewardship was referenced by 37 different articles as a servant leadership practice.…”

“…In terms of work engagement, four high quality studies indicated that servant leadership enhances work engagement [8][9][10]59]. Goal congruence and social interaction moderated the relationship between servant leadership and work engagement [8].…”

“…Servant leadership includes practices known to sustain high performing organisations such as (a) establishing a higher purpose vision and strategy; (b) developing standardised and simplified procedures; (c) cultivating customer orientation; (d) ensuring continuous growth and development; (e) sharing power and information; and (f) having a quality workforce [3][4][5]. In addition, servant leadership showed to produce favourable individual and organisational outcomes such as enhanced corporate citizenship behaviour [6,7], work engagement [8][9][10], organisational commitment [7,11,12], sales performance [13] and reduced turnover intention [14,15].…”

Serving from the top: police leadership for the twenty-first century

“…This resilience and acceptance for change can be fostered and embedded further by a good servant leader, who embraces the fundamental paradigms of servant leadership. As the policing landscape alters to accommodate the political, economic, social and technological changes it is worth noting the findings of Sousa and van Dierendonck (2017) who conclude that in general, servant leadership might be particularly effective for leaders in executive and board level positions.…”