Servant Leadership and Organizational Citizenship ...

American International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences

Available online at http://www.iasir.net

ISSN (Print): 2328-3734, ISSN (Online): 2328-3696, ISSN (CD-ROM): 2328-3688 AIJRHASS is a refereed, indexed, peer-reviewed, multidisciplinary and open access journal published by International Association of Scientific Innovation and Research (IASIR), USA (An Association Unifying the Sciences, Engineering, and Applied Research)

Servant Leadership and Organizational Citizenship Behaviour Among Employees of Service Sector Dr. Garima Mathur Prestige Institute of Management, Airport Road, Opposite Deendayal Nagar,Gwalior - 474 020, MP, India Dr. Pushpa Negi Symbiosis Law School (SLS), Symbiosis International University (SIU), Block A 47/48, Sector-62, Noida – 201 301, UP, India Abstract: This study is aimed at testing different parameters like servant leadership and organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) which will help employees of service organizations like banking to work more efficiently and effectively towards achieving individual and organizational goal. Many studies have been conducted on these parameters to gain improved understanding of the forces and analyzing the factors present servant leadership and organizational Citizenship Behavior and the role of these in boosting or jeopardizing business but the present study evaluated the impact of servant leadership on organizational citizenship behaviors. The study included the employees working in insurance, telecom and banking sector of Gwalior region. The measures for both variables were standardized again in the Indian context through consistency tools like Item to total correlation, Cronbach Alpha. The results showed that servant leadership has significant positive impact on organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs). Keywords: Servant Leadership, Organizational Citizenship Behaviors, Sportsmanship, Conscientiousness, Civic virtue, Interpersonal Harmony I. styling; Introduction Keywords: WWW; component; formatting; style; insert (Minimum 5 to 8 key words) The whole world is facing tough competition to cope with the changing scenario. The organizations require team working and hence understood the concept of working in coordination with each other. But this is not the sole criteria for success. To meet out the challenges employees need to work willingly in the right direction. Willingness among the employees can be generated by right kind of leadership. Researchers discussed many types of leaderships suitable for different situations and kinds of people. Among these much debated is servant leadership. Servant leadership is one of the approaches to leadership which contributed to the way that people lead today. It is a realistic philosophy which supports people who choose to serve first, and then lead as a way of expanding service to individuals and institutions. The theory of servant leadership emerged when Greenleaf (1977) defined the role of the leader as servant. It encourages collaboration, trust, foresight, listening, and the ethical use of power and empowerment. Drury (2004, p.8) defined servant leadership as: “An understanding and practice of leadership that places the good of those lead over the self interest of the leader. Servant leadership promotes the valuing and development of people, the building of community, the practice of authenticity, the providing of leadership for the good of those led, and the sharing of power and status for the common good of each individual, the total organization, and those serve by the organization.” Although interest in servant leadership is increasing, researchers are still lacking in empirical researches to the construct servant leadership (Farling, Stone, & Winston, 1999 and Drury, 2004). Drury (2004) also states that servant leadership has been called as a movement by (Bass, 2000). Few others also quoted servant leadership should be considered in future references of leadership styles (Covey, 2002; DePree, 1995 and Senge, 1997). Servant-leadership focuses on service to followers. It is an approach to work that emphasizes the healthy relations between the components of our humanity and our occupational objectives, and a sharing of power in decision making. Servant leaders believe that serving the needs of their followers is the leader’s top priority (Ehrhart, 2004 and Greenleaf, 2002). It is the moral obligation on the servant leaders that they have to look after the needs of their followers, and prefer to think about them over their own well-being and over the interests of the organization (Greenleaf 1977; 1998). A servant leader views leadership not as position or status, but as an opportunity to serve others, to develop them to their full potential. Greenleaf believed the final goal of servant hood was to help others become

AIJRHASS 14-595; © 2014, AIJRHASS All Rights Reserved

Page 191

Garima Mathur et al., American International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, 7(2), June-August, 2014, pp. 191-196

servants themselves so that society would benefit as well. The theory behind servant leadership is that such leadership helps create a positive work environment in which salespeople develop feelings of attachment and loyalty to the organization (Liden, Sandy, Hao Zhao, and David, 2008). In fact the traits of leaders were compared and researches evident that servant leaders possess different personal values than non-servant leaders (Russell, 2001). There are at least ten characteristics of servant leaders as identified by Spear (1998). For example, Listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, committed to the growth of people and building community. In the present study these characteristics were used to form a questionnaire of 11 items. The Organizational Citizenship Behaviors (OCBs) are a special type of work behavior that are defined as individual behaviors beneficial to the organization and are discretionary, not directly or explicitly recognized by the formal reward system. The interest in the topic of OCB is due to its contribution to business performance. Empirical research in management has shown that employees’ organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the organization (Podsakoff et al. 1997). According to Organ's (1988) definition, it represents individual behavior that is discretionary, not directly or explicitly recognized by the formal reward system, and in the aggregate promotes the efficient and effective functioning of the organization. The literature indicates that Servant Leadership is not a position or status, but is an opportunity to serve others, to develop them to their full potential. Servant-leadership emphasizes increased service to others; an approach to work that emphasizes the healthy organic and functional relations between the components of our humanity and our vocational and occupational objectives, and a sharing of power in decision making. On the other hand Organizational Citizenship Behavior is individual behavior that is discretionary, not directly or explicitly recognized by formal reward system.Although the relationship between both the variables was established by few researchers, it still lacks to be tested in various areas where leadership is inevitable and getting work done through followers is mandatory. Thus the present study aimed at finding out the ways which help an individual to better understand the role of being a servant leader in creating good citizens for the organizations like banks where the team leaders and their team members were considered as sample. The research was conducted on these parameters to gain improved understanding of the forces and analyzing the factors present servant leadership and organizational Citizenship Behavior and the role of these in boosting or jeopardizing business. II. Literature Review Servant leaders are different from their counterparts and the traditional concept of what a leader is or does. It gained an increased attention among different leadership styles. Benut-Gomez (2004, p.143) states that "to succeed, leaders must teach their followers not only how to lead: leadership, but more importantly, how to be a good follower: followership". Similarly, Stone, Robert & Patterson (2004) also suggested that the servant leader's focus is on the followers, and the achievement of organizational objectives is a subordinate outcome. The extent to which the leader is able to shift the primary focus of leadership from the organization to the follower is the distinguishing factor in classifying leaders as either transformational or servant leaders. Therefore, a good follower is someone who can take direction without challenging their leader. It is the servant leader’s ability to be both a great follower and a great leader that is results in their ability to inspire and motivate others. One more important aspect of servant leadership is its ability to see more clearly than anyone else as a result of their continual openness to inspiration and revelation (Covey 2006; Rowe 2003 and Wheatley 2004) proposes servant leaders bring inspiration, reflection, empathy, foresight and intuition, perceptivity, and relational aptitude to their service which involves emotional intelligence within the leaders. Researchers have found support for three variables in servant leadership including service, empowerment and visioning (Dennis & Winston 2003 and Page & Wong 2000). In addition, the servant leader actively recruits exemplary followers and is open to input from them which enhances leader-follower trust (Benut-Gomez 2004 and Pepper 2003). Russell (2001) identified issues relating to both personal values and organizational values. Fundamentally, leader values may be the underlying factors that separate servant leaders from all other leadership types. Moreover, the servant leader is willing to sacrifice themselves out of love for others and in the face of difficulty openly willing to accept fault for negative outcomes (Rowe 2003 and Wheatley 2004). Lab (1991) proposes servant leaders perform several functions in order to develop a culture of servant leadership such as value people, develop people, build community, display authenticity, shared leadership through shared vision. Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) has for many years been identified as a core construct in understanding the relationship between the employee and the employer (Mathieu & Zajac 1990 and Meyer et. al 2002). With regard to the former, analyses consistently indicate significant correlations between OCB and turnover intention (Hackett, Bycio & Hausdorf 1994 and Randall 1990). With regard to the latter, further relationships have been identified between components of OCB and a range of discretionary and extra-role behaviors (Meyer & Herscovitch 2001). Many researchers explored the structure of, and relationships between, organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behavior (Somers 1995; Cropanzano, James &


Page 192


Konovsky 1993 and Organ & Ryan 1995). Smith, Organ & Near (1983) examined the structure of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and its relation to organizational commitment in Nepal. The factor analyses in the study (Organ & Near 1983) revealed two factors of OCB, altruism and compliance, replicating western models of extra-role behavior Structural equation analysis which showed a positive relation between affective and normative commitment on the one hand and both citizenship factors on the other. Continuance commitment was found to be negatively related to compliance and unrelated to altruism. Nielsen et al (2003) explained relationships among different variables such as organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), task interdependence, and performance in work teams. As predicted, measures of team OCB collected from both team members and customers correlated positively with concurrent team performance and subsequent performance using criterion data from both team leaders and team customers. Task interdependence moderated the positive relationship of team OCB with subsequent team performance. The results, based on multi-source measures of both team OCB and team performance, collected on two occasions, extended the researches on OCB from the individual to the team level. Ehrhart (2004) tried to build theory on the relationship of servant leadership and organisational citizenship behavior (OCB). Similarly, the findings of Smith, Organ and Near's (1983) supports the work of Ehrhart (2004) which lead to formulate following hypotheses: Hypothesis 1: There is significant relationship between servant leadership and OCB. Hypothesis 2: There is significant relationship between Social and Personal characteristics and OCB. III. Research Methodology Study and Sample: The study was quantitative, explanatory co-relational in nature where survey method was used to collect the data. The population included all the white collar employees of banking and insurance sector in Gwalior region. The data were collected from 8 companies and 300 questionnaires were distributed out of which 210 questionnaires were returned showing 70% response rate. After deleting incomplete responses data for this study were obtained from 180 respondents of eight organizations of banking sector. Instrumentation: A three part self reported survey including questionnaires published by NebGuide containing 11 items to measure servant leadership was used. These 11 items were 11 constructs proposed by (Spears, 1998) servant leadership such as calling, listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, growth and building community. The measure was converted in to rating scale of 1 to 7. Second part of the questionnaire contained questionnaire of Farh, Zhong and Organ (2004) for OCB including 27 items. The measure was prepared for Chinese population. The responses taken on the Likert type of 1 to 7 where 1 represent minimum importance and 7 represent the maximum importance. Total responses were elicited on 38 items, which took 20 minutes to answer. The third part contained personal details of the respondents. Tools Used for Data Analysis: Many methods were used to analyze the data to convert it in to useful information. The measures were validated through different methods such as internal consistency was established through item to total correlation and Cronbach alpha was applied to assess reliability. To ensure construct validity exploratory factor analysis was employed. The relationship between both the variables was established through Linear Regression. IV. Analysis The study data from the 180 Indian respondents were assessed using SPSS. Internal consistency was established through item to total correlation. The co-relational value was high so all the items were considered for further analysis. Exploratory factor analysis was employed using Principal component analysis and the Varimax rotation with Kaiser Normalization. The exploratory factor analysis was employed to determine construct validity, and Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was used to examine construct reliability. The coefficient alpha was used as an estimate of internal consistency reliability for each dimension and the reliability measures were above 0.70 (Nunnally, 1978). Table 1 and 2 (annexure) presents the summary of this study's psychometric evaluation. The alpha values were (α=0.825) and (α=0.918) for servant leadership and OCB respectively. In the first step, factor analysis was initially conducted with the 11 items of Servant leadership and 27 items of OCB. The exploratory factor analysis resulted in two dimensions for servant leadership and eight dimensions for OCB. The value of the KMO measure of sampling adequacy is 0.716 and 0.849 for servant leadership and OCB, hence, it was appropriate to go for factor analysis. Since, the sample was more than 150, indicating that carrying out factor analysis on the data was feasible. In the first round of the principal factor analysis, two Eigen values > 1.00 (3.201 and 2.031) were obtained for servant leadership and for OCB eight Eigen values were above 1.00 (see table 1 and 2).


Page 193


Table 1 Showing Results of Factor Analysis of Servant Leadership Items of Servant Leadership Hear others ideas and value them Willing to sacrifice your own self-interest for the good of the group Come to you when emotionally disturbed Understand others circumstances and problems Strong awareness of surroundings Willing to follow your requests Feel a strong sense of community Commitment to growth and development of others Preparing the organization for the betterment of society Ability to conceptualize the world, events and possibilities Others have confidence in your ability to anticipate the future and its consequences Eigen Values Percentage of variance explained Cumulative percentage of variance explained

Cooperation

Helping coworkers

Promote Company’s Image

Conscientiousn ess

Sportsmanship

Interpersonal Harmony

Altruism Prohibit behavior harmful to organization Keep workplace clean and neat Refer others to work for company Indoctrinate others with correct political thought Participate in company-organized group activities Save company resources Defend company against disasters

Saving Company Resources

Table 2 Showing Results of Factor Analysis of OCB Component

Items



Components Personal Qualities Sociable Characteristics .765 .741 .691 .580 .575 .329 .556 .550 .486 .739 .727 .623 3.201 2.031 29.104 18.465 29.104 47.569

.761 .752 .737

.325

.725 .669 .660 .623

.314

Make constructive .610

Suggestions Patriotic Obey company rules Participate in union activities Participate in activities organized by groups Maintain harmonious relationships Take extra responsibilities Comply with social norms Communicate within the firm Physically fit Engage in self training Volunteer for overtime work Serve community Promote company image and products to outsiders Use personal resources to Aid Company Share useful work-related information Help colleagues in work-related matters Help coworkers in non work matters Cooperate at work Contribute to public welfare Eigen Values Percentage of variance explained Cumulative percentage of variance explained

.322

.564 .508 .789 .741 .657 .618 .882 .882 .584 .554 .837 .821 .707 .689 .364 .895 .862

3.321 12.299

2.876 10.653

2.645 9.795

2.584 9.570

2.282 8.454

2.039 7.553

1.998 7.366

.888 .861 1.973 7.308

12.299

22.952

32.747

42.318

50.771

58.324

65.691

72.998

The EFA values ranged from 0.486 to 0.765 for the both the factors. The items were clubbed in the headings ‘Personal Characteristics’ and ‘Sociable Characteristics’. As the items were representing either the personal qualities such as Commitment to growth and development of others and Willing to sacrifice your own self-


Page 194


interest for the good of the group or sociological aspect such as Preparing the organization for the betterment of society. For OCB the EFA values were ranged from 0.364 to 0.895. The percentage variance was 47.569 for servant leadership and 72.998 for OCB. There were few factors having cross loadings but all of them were retained as Ford, MacCallum, and Tail's (1986) suggested minimum factor loading of 0.40 and the cross loadings were below 0.40. Moreover, the difference between cross loadings was less than 0.25 in all three cases. Eight factors were converged after varimax rotation. The factors were ‘Altruism, Saving Company Resources, Interpersonal Harmony, Sportsmanship, Conscientiousness, Civic Virtue, Helping Coworkers, Cooperation’. Most of the factors were found to be consistent with the research of Farh, Zhong and Organ (2004). Only few such as Sportsmanship (Podsakoff, Mackenzie, Paine, and Bachrach (2000), Conscientiousness (Farh, Earley and Lin 1997), Civic virtue (Podsakoff, Mackenzie, Paine, and Bachrach (2000) were consistent with findings of others. Result of Hypothesis Testing Regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses. To test the direct effect hypotheses the dependent variable (OCB) was regressed to independent variable (Servant Leadership). The results supported the hypothesis. The model used for regression has good fit as indicated by F-value 896.667 which is significant at 0% level of significance indicating a high predictability of model. The regression model presents (R 2= 0.834, β= 0.913, p=0.000) which represents that servant leadership shows 83.4 percent variance in OCB. The result supports the hypothesis and indicates the statically significant relationship between both the variables. Multiple regression was then applied to test second hypothesis which states that both the personal and sociable characteristics are positively related to organizational citizenship behavior. The data reported that both personal characteristics (Standardized β= 0.686, p=0.000) and Sociable characteristics (Standardized β= 0.354, p=0.000) has significant positive relationship with OCB where,m adjusted R2 showed 83.5 percent variance in the criterion variable. V. Discussion The study resulted in to number of inferences. The study focused on examining the impact of servant leadership as independent variable on OCB as dependent variable. Servant leadership and its dimensions were regressed with over all OCB inclusive of all the dimensions. The data provide general support to the hypothesis that servant leadership is related to OCB. The results of multiple regression also support the hypothesis that both dimensions of servant leadership are positively related with OCB. The results replicated the findings of Ehrhart’s (2004). He found a significant positive relationship of servant-leadership with OCB indicating that the employees getting benefits from their leaders are more likely to exhibit helping and careful behaviors. The theoretical framework was suggested by Greenleaf (1977) who believed that a leader who serves his followers get a more caring and supportive workforce. Smith, Organ and Near's (1983) also supported the view that leadership should be related to OCB. They argued that leaders positing as role models in serving followers make followers to show pro-social behaviours. Different aspects of personal characteristics such as listening, empathy, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship showing trust in a person makes him adorable among his subordinates. Listening on the part of leader sends a signal of ‘being heard’ among followers. Similarly, other attributes such as conceptualization; the ability to dream or think beyond day to day realities helps leader to think beyond as well to foresee future. Such characteristics create an environment where each employee likes to work willingly. These things communicate a feeling of belongingness in the part of individuals which leads to get a good citizen for the organization. VI. Conclusion Organizational Citizenship Behavior has been considered as better criteria for measuring employee’s behaviour in the organization. The extra role behaviours can better be demonstrated by qualities on the part of leaders. The research studied the impact of servant leadership on OCB. The factors underlying servant leadership and OCB were also identified and the impact of both personal and sociable characteristics of servant leadership on OCB was measured. The results indicated that the servant leadership behaviours predict OCB significantly in service industries such as banks, insurance etc. Similarly, both characteristics of servant leadership were found positively related to OCB. The study is useful in enhancing OCB by focusing on the specific style of leadership i.e. servant leadership. Personal characteristics of leaders play more dominant role in exhibiting follower’s OCB. VII. References [1] [2] [3] [4]

Banutu-Gomez, M. B. (2004), “Great Leaders Teach Exemplary Followership and Serve as Servant Leaders,” Journal of American Academy of Business, Cambridge, 4(1/2), 143-151. Bass, B. M. (2000), “The future of leadership in learning organizations,” Journal of Leadership Studies, 7(3), 18. Covey, S. R. (2002), “Servant-leadership and community leadership in the twenty-first century”. In L. C. Spears and M. Lawrence (Eds.), Focus on leadership: Servant-leadership for the 21st century. New York: John Wiley and Sons. Covey, S. R. (2006), “Servant leadership,” Leadership Excellence, 5-6.


Page 195

Garima Mathur et al., American International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, 7(2), June-August, 2014, pp. 191-196 [5] [6] [7] [8]

[9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35]

Cropanzano, R., James, K., & Konovsky, M. A. (1993), “Dispositional affectivity as a predictor of work attitudes and job performance,” Journal of Organizational Behavior, 14, 595-606. Dennis, R. S., & Winston, B. E. (2003), “A factor analysis of Page and Wong’s servant leadership instrument,” The Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 24(8), 455-459. DePree, M. (1995), Forward. In L. C. Spears (Ed.), “Reflections on leadership: How Robert K. Greenleaf's theory of servantleadership influenced today's top management thinkers,” New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc. Drury, S. L. (2004), “Servant Leadership and Organizational Commitment: Empirical Findings and Workplace Implications,” Servant Leadership Research Round table Proceedings, Regent University, School of Leadership Studies, Virginia Beach, VA, 23, (1-17). Ehrhart, Mark G. (2004), “Leadership and Procedural Justice Climate as Antecedents of Unit-Level Organizational Citizenship Behavior,” Personnel Psychology, 57, 61–94. Farh, J. L., Zhong, C. B. & Organ, D. W. (2004), “Organizational Citizenship Behavior in the People's Republic of China,” Organization Science, 15(2), 241-253. Farling, M. L., Stone, A. G., & Winston, B. E. (1999), “Servant leadership: Setting the Stage for Empirical Research,” Journal of Leadership Studies, 6, 49-72. Farh, J., Earley, P. C., & Lin, S. (1997), “Impetus for action: A cultural analysis of justice and organizational citizenship behavior in Chinese society,” Administrative Science Quarterly, 42, 421-444. Ford, J. K., MacCallum, R. C., & Tail, M. (1986), “The Application of Exploratory Factor Analysis in Applied Psychology: A Critical Review and Analysis,” Personnel Psychology, 39, 291- 314. Greenleaf (1977), “The role of values in servant leadership,” Journal of Leadership & Organization Development, 22(2), 76 – 84. Greenleaf (1998), “The Power of Servant Leadership,” San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler. Greenleaf (2002), “Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness,” 25th anniversary ed., Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press. Hackett, Bycio & Hausdorf (1994), “Further Assessments of Meyer and Allen’s (1991) three component model of organizational commitment,” Journal of Applied Psychology, 79, 15-23. Spears Larry (1996), “Reflections on Robert K. Greenleaf and Servant-Leadership,” Journal of Motivation & Organization Development, 17(7), 33 – 35. Laub, J. (1999), “Assessing the servant organization: Development of the servant organizational leadership (SOLA) instrument”, Dissertation Abstracts International, 60(2), 308. (UMI No. 9921922) Liden, Robert C., Sandy J. Wayne, Hao Zhao, and David Henderson (2008), “Servant Leadership: Development of a Multidimensional Measure and Multi-Level Assessment”, The Leadership Quarterly, 19, 2 (April), 161–177. Mathieu, J. E., & Zajac, D. M. (1990), “A review and meta-analysis of the antecedents, correlates, and consequences of organizational commitment,” Psychological Bulletin, 108(2), 171-194. Meyer, J. P., & Herscovitch, L. (2001), “Commitment in the workplace: Toward a general model,” Human Resource Management Review, 11, 299–326. Meyer, J. P., Allen, N. J., & Smith, C. (1993), “Commitment to organizations and occupations: Extension and test of a threecomponent conceptualization,” Journal of Applied Psychology, 78, 538–551. Mayer, J. D., Salovey, P., & Caruso, D. R. (2002), Mayer– Salovey–Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) user’s manual. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: MHS Publishers. Organ, D. W. (1988), “Organizational citizenship behavior,” The good soldier syndrome. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books. Nielsen Tjai M., Eric Sundstrom, Sarah K. Soulen, Terry Halfhill, Joseph W. Huff. (2003), “Corporate citizenship in team-based organizations: An essential ingredient for sustained success”, 9, 169 – 187. Organ, D.W., & Ryan, K. (1995), “A meta-analytic review of attitudinal and dispositional predictors of organizational citizenship behaviour,” Personnel Psychology, 48, 775-800. Page, D., & Wong, T. P. (2000), “A conceptual framework for measuring servantleadership”, In S. Abjibolosoo (Ed.), The human factor in shaping the course of history and development. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Pepper, A. (2003), “Leading Professionals: A Science, A Philosophy and A Way of Working,” Journal of Change Management, 3(4), 349. Podsakoff, P.M., Ahearne, M. & MacKenzie, S.B. (1997), “Organizational Citizenship Behavior and the Quantity and Quality of Work Group Performance,” Journal of Applied Psychology, 82, 262–270. Randall, D. M. (1990), “The consequences of organizational commitment: Methodological investigation,” Journal of Organizational Behavior, 11, 361-378. Rowe, R. (2003), “Leaders as Servants,” New Zealand Management, 50 (1), 24. Russell Robert F. (2001), “The Role of Values in Servant Leadership,” Journal of Leadership & Organization Development, 22(2), 76–84. Russell, Robert F., A. Gregory Stone (2002), “A review of servant leadership attributes: developing a practical model,” Journal of Motivation & Organization Development, 23(3), 145 – 157. Senge, P. M. (1997), “Creating learning communities,” Executive Excellence, 14(3).


Page 196