The influence of servant leadership on psychological empowerment and organisational citizenship on a sample of teachers

Abstract

Orientation: The exhibition of organisation citizenship behaviour (OCB) by teachers is of great benefit for human capital development. Teachers’ perceptions of school principals as servant leaders play a critical role in their psychological empowerment and exhibition of OCBs.Research purpose: The goal of the study was to analyse the relationship between servant leadership, psychological empowerment and OCB of teachers in the South African school system.Motivation for the study: Teachers are usually under pressure to attend to the academic needs of the learners, which may be required either during normal working hours or after hours. This has necessitated the need to investigate the role played by a school principal’s servant leadership style in influencing the exhibition of OCBs.Research approach/design and method: A non-probability sample of 203 teachers drawn from selected schools in the Western Cape Province of South Africa was utilised. Item and dimensional analysis as well as structural equation modelling were performed on the data.Main findings: The constructs of servant leadership, psychological empowerment and OCB displayed high levels of internal consistency. Generally, a reasonable model fit was found for the structural and measurement models of the latent variables through confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling. Positive relationships were found between servant leadership, psychological empowerment and OCB.Practical/managerial implications: A principal’s servant leadership approach is likely to promote teacher empowerment and development as it enables the principal to develop teachers to their fullest potential through mentoring and coaching. The teachers are likely to respond with OCB, which benefits the learners and society at large.Contribution/value-add: Schools face the challenge of motivating teachers. One of the ways of achieving this objective is by encouraging servant leadership amongst principals. Servant leadership promotes positive outcomes and extra-role behaviours.

Servant leadership and organisational citizenship behaviour: the role of public service motivation and length of time spent with the leader

“…, 2016; Elche et al. , 2020; Mahembe and Engelbrecht, 2014) have revealed significant relationships between the constructs, whiles others found non-significant nexus between servant leadership and OCB (Harwiki, 2013; van Der Hoven, 2016). Furthermore, Zehir et al.…”

Servant Leadership and Proactive Personality as Impetus for Teachers’ Organizational Citizenship Behaviour

“…However, not all teachers are willing to do extra work outside of their core responsibilities. There are times when teachers are under pressure to meet students' academic needs, which may be required during or after work hours (Van der Hoven et al, 2021). This phenomenon is explained by various teacher complaints about their increasingly demanding and complex workload.…”

How Servant Leaders Psychologically Empower Their Followers

“…Related studies' fi ndings support these fi ndings. Van der Hoven (2014) 2014)'s fi ndings assigning that service employees have perceived higher level of servant leadership from their supervisors. As mentioned above, SLs encourage relational-oriented extra-role behaviors of followers (Sun, 2018) and promote the growth of the followers by giving value to their personal development (Khajehpour et al, 2016).…”

“…Although there are numerous studies about the eff ects of servant leadership behaviors on employees' psychological empowerment (Baykal et al, 2018;Khajehpour et al, 2016;Namasiwayam et al, 2014;Patterson, 2003;Van der Hoven, 2014;Van Winkle et al, 2014;Andrews, 2020), there is a gap in the concept concerning what extent kitchen employees are aff ected by servant leadership behaviors in terms of psychological empowerment in the hotel enterprises. We extend the existing concept with a fi eld study, which handled the possible eff ects of servant leadership on psychological empowerment in terms of sub dimensionality on kitchen employees of hotel enterprises.…”