Effects of servant leadership on the leader's innovative behavior

Abstract

Servant leadership has become an increasingly popular construct in organizational behavior research because of its effectiveness in organizations. Using self-determination theory and broaden-and-build theory, we proposed a moderated mediation framework in which the leader's sense of accomplishment would mediate the relationship between servant leadership behaviors and the leader's innovative behavior. The leader's extraversion was used as the boundary condition of the relationship. Participants comprised 232 leaders and their immediate supervisors, working in firms based in northern China. Results show that servant leadership behaviors indirectly influenced leaders' innovative behavior via their sense of accomplishment. In addition, leaders' extraversion strengthened the impact of sense of accomplishment on their innovative behavior, as well as the indirect effect of servant leadership behaviors on their innovative behavior. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.