Servant Leadership, Trust, and the Organizational Commitment of Public Sector Employees in China

Abstract

So‐called servant leaders strive selflessly and altruistically to assist others before themselves, work to develop their followers' greatest potential, and seek to benefit the wider community. This article examines the trust‐based mechanisms by which servant leadership influences organizational commitment in the Chinese public sector, using data from a survey of civil servants. Quantitative analysis shows that servant leadership strongly influences affective and normative commitment, while having no impact on continuance commitment. Furthermore, we find that affective trust rather than cognitive trust is the mechanism by which servant leadership induces higher levels of commitment. Our findings suggest that in a time of decreasing confidence levels in public leaders, servant leadership behaviour may be used to re‐establish trust and create legitimacy for the Chinese civil service.

Servant Leadership and Follower Job Performance: The Mediating Effect of Public Service Motivation

“…The teams had an average size of eight members. The mean age of the subordinates was 33.07 years (SD = 7.18), which is one year less than the average age of civil servants in Zhejiang province (Miao et al ). Sixty‐eight per cent were male and they had worked under their present supervisor on average for slightly less than four years (M = 3.93, SD = 2.96).…”

“…Thus, a particular leadership style may merely be adopted because it leads to reputation effects in the view of important actors in the institutional environment and not because of its expected efficiency. Servant leadership may be implemented to gain legitimacy, for example, because Chinese President Hu Jintao urged Chinese public sector employees to build a service‐oriented government in which officials work selflessly for the benefit of the people and wider society (Holzer and Zhang ; Miao et al ). Our findings demonstrate that simply because a public organization introduces a leadership style to accommodate new environmental expectations, it does not follow that the novel practice is inadequate in terms of performance (Entwistle ).…”

“…In line with this behavioural approach to leadership research, the present study examines the role of servant leadership in enhancing the job performance of followers through fostering higher levels of PSM in the Chinese public sector. This style of leadership, in which leaders strive selflessly to assist others before themselves and encourage their followers to do the same (Greenleaf ), has been the focus of recent research in the Chinese public sector (Han et al ; Miao et al ). In his essay The Institution as Servant , Greenleaf (, p. 5) states that ‘individuals who want to serve must, on their own, become institution builders where they are’.…”

The Functions of a Servant Leader

“…One study indicated that organisational support mediated the relationship between servant leadership and affective commitment [80]. In another study, servant leadership enhanced both affective and normative commitment in which organisational support mediated the relationship between servant leadership and affective commitment [81].…”

“…The second study reported a positive relationship with employee trust [11]. The third study showed that servant leadership enhanced affective trust [81]. The fourth study reported that trust developed and grew as a result of servant leadership [45].…”