Perceived meaningfulness or ego depletion? A two-path model of servant leadership behaviors influence on intention to leave

ABSTRACT

Based on the conservation of resources theory, this study integrates the positive and negative aspects of the impact of servant leadership behaviors on their own in the hospitality industry. Using leaders’ and followers’ paired data from 346 employees nested in 101 teams and analyzed using path regression methods. The results reveal that servant leadership behaviors were positively related to the leader’s ego depletion, and the leader’s ego depletion was positively associated with the leader’s intention to leave. Servant leadership behaviors were positively related to leaders’ perceived work meaningfulness, and followers’ agreeableness significantly moderated the relationship between servant leadership behaviors and leaders’ ego depletion and the relationship between servant leadership behaviors and leaders’ perceived work meaningfulness. These findings broaden our understanding of the effects of servant leadership behaviors and provide new ideas on how to intervene in the negative effects of servant leadership behaviors.

摘要

基于资源保存理论，本研究整合了酒店业服务型领导行为对其自身影响的积极面与消极面。使用来自101个团队，346名员工的领导—下属配对数据，并使用路径分析方法进行分析。结果表明，服务型领导行为与领导者的自我损耗呈显著正向关系, 领导者的自我损耗与领导者的离职意向呈显著正向关系。服务型领导行为与领导者感知到的工作意义呈显著正向关系, 下属的宜人性显著调节了服务型领导行为与领导者自我损耗，以及服务型领导行为和领导者工作意义之间的关系。以上结果拓宽了我们对服务型领导行为影响效果的认识, 并为如何干预服务型领导行为的负面影响提供了新的思路。

KEYWORDS:

• Servant leadership behaviors
• intention to leave
• ego depletion
• perceived work meaningfulness
• follower agreeableness

Acknowledgments

Thank you to the companies who supported the data collection process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Consistent with S. H. Lin et al. (2019), the extent to which individuals perceive consistency in personality was not central to this study, so ICC and rwg for followers’ agreeableness were not reported.