Research On The Influence Of Servant Leadership On Workplace Innovative Behavior

As a key factor in realizing the sustainable development of enterprises,innovation plays an increasingly prominent role in the organization.How to effectively increase workplace innovative behavior has become an important topic for scholars and business managers.As more and more “the generation after 90s” and “the generation after 00s”enter the workplace,the traditional imperative leadership styles have been unable to meet employees’ needs for humanistic care,and leaders need to transform into a more flexible leadership style to meet the challenges of innovation and development of enterprises in the new era.Previous research suggests that leadership is one of the vital factors affecting employees’ innovative behavior,and servant leadership has a positive impact on employees’ attitudes and behaviors.As the political and economic situation at home and abroad becoming increasingly complex and grim,enterprises are facing numerous risks and challenges,and innovation-driven problems need to be solved urgently.However,previous research on employee innovative behavior is not adequate to address the issue of how to promote the overall innovation and development of the organization.It is also necessary to deeply explore the impact of servant leadership on workplace innovative behavior from the perspective of two-way integration of leaders and employees.Therefore,this paper focuses on how servant leadership affects workplace innovation behavior.Drawing on conservation of resource theory,social exchange theory,broaden-andbuild theory,and social cognitive theory,this paper developed a theoretical model of the influence of servant leadership on workplace innovative behavior.The relationship between servant leadership and employees’ innovative behavior is clarified by using meta-analysis.Through empirical analysis such as questionnaires and semi-structured interviews,this paper examines the influence of servant leadership on employees’ innovative behavior,and the influence of engaging in servant leadership behavior on leaders’ innovation behavior.This research draws the following conclusions:(1)Servant leadership can significantly increase workplace innovative behavior.On the one hand,servant leadership has a significant positive impact on subordinates’ innovative behavior.Servant leaders put the interests of subordinates first,and the practice of proactively serving followers can create a favorable environment for subordinates to engage in innovative activities.At the same time,servant leaders provide work guidance for subordinates,help them overcome difficulties in work,and help them acquire more work skills.Under the dual protection of environment and skills,subordinates’ innovative behavior could increase significantly.On the other hand,sense of accomplishment and emotional exhaustion play mediating roles in the relationship between servant leadership and leader’s innovative behavior.Nonetheless,the empirical findings of this paper reveal that the mediating effect of sense of accomplishment is stronger than that of emotional exhaustion.That is,servant leaders gain more resources than they expend in the process of serving their subordinates,and these resources can help leaders conduct more innovative behaviors.(2)Perceived follower support plays moderating roles in the relationship between servant leadership and leader’s innovative behavior.First of all,perceived follower support moderates the direct relationship between servant leadership and sense of accomplishment,emotional exhaustion,respectively.The stronger the perceived follower support,the stronger the leader’s sense of accomplishment in the process of serving subordinates,and the lower the leader’s emotional exhaustion caused by serving subordinates.Second,perceived follower support moderates the indirect relationship between servant leadership and leader innovative behavior,respectively.The stronger the perceived follower support,the stronger the mediating effect of the sense of achievement between servant leadership and leader’s innovative behavior,and the weaker the mediating effect of emotional exhaustion between servant leadership and leader’s innovative behavior.Moreover,this paper investigated the moderating roles of followers’ age and gender in the relationship between servant leadership and leader’s innovative behavior.Findings suggest that followers’ age moderates the relationship mentioned above.The more senior the subordinate is,the weaker the positive effect of servant leadership on subordinates’ innovative behavior.This is related to the fact that senior subordinates are more inclined to rely on work experience rather than devoting extra time and energy to thinking of different solutions.The result indicates that due to the existence of workplace "ceiling",the time and energy invested by employees in career development decreases with age.Furthermore,the relationship between servant leadership and subordinates’ innovative behavior does not change due to the difference in subordinates’ gender.This may be because more and more female employees dare to express their innovative ideas and seek support from leaders and colleagues for their innovative ideas,which in turn leads to an increase in their innovative behaviors.Compared with previous research,this paper contributes to the literature in the following ways:(1)From an actor-centric perspective,the results of this paper reveal the “doubleedged sword” effect of servant leadership behavior on leaders’ innovative behavior.By now,the research on servant leadership and workplace innovative behavior mainly focuses on the change of employees’ innovation behavior,ignoring the impact on the leader’s own innovation behavior.This paper reveals the influence of servant leadership on leaders’ own innovative behavior by simultaneously constructing two opposite action pathways,which helps to deepen scholars’ understanding of the nomological network of servant leadership,thus enriching the theoretical research of servant leadership,and expanding the research scope of workplace innovative behavior.(2)From the subordinates’ perspective,this paper sheds light on the boundary conditions of how servant leadership impacts leaders’ innovative behavior.This paper innovatively introduces perceived follower support to explore both changes in resource and servant leaders’ subsequent innovative behavior when leaders perceive different levels of follower support.By examining the moderating role of perceived follower support,this paper not only clarifies the contextual factors that affect the innovative behavior of servant leaders in the process of serving subordinates,but also provides a new direction for future research on the boundary conditions of the impact of servant leader behavior on leaders themselves.(3)This paper clarifies the relationship between servant leadership and employees’ innovative behavior by using meta-analysis.Although there are many studies on the relationship between servant leadership and employees’ innovative behavior,the empirical research conclusions on the relationship between the above two are inconsistent.This paper uses meta-analysis to quantitatively analyze a large number of relevant empirical studies,draws a research conclusion that servant leadership is positively related to employee innovative behavior,and verifies the boundary conditions of the relationship.The finding of this paper provides a scientific judgment for scholars to explore the impact of servant leadership on employees’ innovative behavior,and also reasonably explained the potential reasons for the conclusion that the relationship between the two variables was significantly positive,insignificantly positive and negative in previous empirical studies.(4)This paper expands the application scope of the broaden-and-build theory in conjunction with the context of servant leadership.Theories used to explore the relationship between servant leadership and workplace innovative behavior are social identification theory,self-determination theory,social learning theory,etc.,which ignore the role of leaders or employees’ emotional changes.From the perspective of emotional change,this paper applies the broaden-and-build theory to understand the relationship between servant leadership and leaders’ innovative behavior.In doing so,this paper not only expands the application scope of this theory,but also verifies its applicability in the Chinese context,and helps researchers gain further understanding of the relationship between servant leadership and leaders’ innovative behavior.