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With the rapid development of the service industry, service innovation has gradually become a hot topic in business today. How to further improve employees' service innovative behaviors has become critical to organizations' survival and success. Servant leadership, as a leadership style characterized by serving others, is closely related to employees' service innovative behaviors. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to develop a theoretical framework to examine the influence of servant leadership on employees' service innovative behavior, the mediating role of intrinsic motivation and the moderating role of identification with the leader.

To test the theoretical model, a multi-time survey method was used to collect data from 381employees from a large high-tech company in Mainland China.

The results confirm that servant leadership can promote employees' service innovative behavior and intrinsic motivation. Meanwhile, employees' intrinsic motivation partly mediates the influence of servant leadership on their service innovative behavior. Moreover, this mediating relationship is conditional on the moderating role of individual identification with the leader in the path from servant leadership to individual intrinsic motivation.

The key limitation of this study lies in the representativeness of sample data, which is the convenience of non-probability sampling and self-reported data only from a large high-tech company in China.

This study not only further verified a promotion factor of individual service innovative behavior from the perspective of leader influence, but also enriched the understanding of the positive influence of servant leadership on employees.

This study is the first to examine the relationships among servant leadership, employees' intrinsic motivation, identification with the leader and service innovative behavior. The results may help to open the “black box” of the relationship between servant leadership and employees' service innovative behavior by introducing their intrinsic motivation. The conclusions also indicate employees' identification with the leader is an important boundary condition among their relationships. Particularly, it not only moderates the relationship between servant leadership and intrinsic motivation, but also moderates the mediating role of intrinsic motivation.

This study aims to ascertain the role of servant leadership in affecting the knowledge hiding behavior of employees. This study also unfurled the mediating role of prosocial motivation and moderating role of cynicism.

The data were collected from 324 employees working in the IT sector, a subsector of the service sector of Pakistan in two phases. The data was analyzed through hierarchal regression.

This study found servant leadership to be negatively related to knowledge hiding behavior. This study also confirmed the mediating role of prosocial motivation linking servant leadership to knowledge hiding. Finally, cynicism was found to moderate the relationship between servant leadership and knowledge hiding behavior.

This academic endeavor has confirmed the previously unexplored relationship between servant leadership and knowledge hiding behavior. Additionally, the study has explicated the mediating role of prosocial motivation in the said relationship. This study has also found that the relationship between servant leadership and knowledge hiding is moderated by organizational cynicism.

Customer service is crucial for organizations' survival and competitiveness in the hospitality industry. The purpose of this study is to examine how and when servant leadership affects extra-role customer service.

The hypotheses were tested with a sample of 302 employees from a passenger transport company in China.

Results demonstrate that servant leadership was positively related to extra-role customer service and that this relation was mediated by relational identification. In addition, the mediating effect of relational identification in the relation between servant leadership and extra-role customer service was contingent on prosocial motivation.

The study is the first to explore the relation between servant leadership and extra-role customer service from the perspective of relational identification and the moderating role of prosocial motivation.

Drawing from the cognitive evaluation theory, the purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between student volunteers’ narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy, and commitment to university volunteer programmes through the mediating mechanisms of self-orientation and pro-social motivation. Further, it investigates the roll of servant leadership in mitigating these personality types and encouraging student volunteers to become more pro-socially motivated.

The study uses data collected via questionnaire from 156 student volunteers across Australia. Hypothesis testing was conducted using ordinary least squares regression with the path-analytic conditional process modelling (PROCESS) macro for SPSS.

The study’s analysis indicated that self-orientated motivation mediated the relationship between narcissism and normative commitment, and pro-social motivation mediated the relationship between both Machiavellianism and psychopathy, and affective commitment. Further, servant leadership was found to moderate the relationship between both Machiavellianism and psychopathy, and pro-social motivation, such that the negative relationship became weaker under a servant leader. These findings suggest that servant leaders play a significant role in encouraging “dark” personalities to see the light.

This research is the first to examine the use of the Dark Triad in a student volunteering context. It extends the cognitive evaluation theory by revealing that extrinsic (in contrast to intrinsic) motivations are “crowded out” as intrinsic (in contrast to extrinsic) motivations develop within individuals. The study also refines the social learning theory, by examining the influences of “positive” leadership attributes (servant leadership) on “darker” (Dark Triad) personalities.

The study of women business founders provides an opportunity to determine their unique leadership characteristics. Starting a business may be a way for women business owners to be authentic and create more people-centered businesses. Servant leadership’s gender integrative attributes where both agentic and communal behaviors are valued may be more congruent and reflective of the leadership behaviors of women entrepreneurs. Recently, the motivation of compassionate love was theorized to be an antecedent to servant leadership and, it is argued, exists in conjunction with authenticity. Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate compassionate love, authenticity and servant leadership and determine whether they exist in the behaviors of founding female business owners.

This qualitative research study used summative content analysis of telephone interviews conducted with 12 women business owners of professional service firms in four US states to determine whether these women’s motivations, traits and behaviors were consistent with the compassionate love servant leadership model and whether authenticity was the cornerstone of servant leadership.

The analyses found that these women revealed a strong authenticity orientation as they enacted a compassionate love servant leadership style within their businesses. Themes that emerged from the study were agency, calling, humility, trust and respect, self-development, stewardship, authenticity and providing direction. The study revealed support for some of the characteristics associated with compassionate love servant leadership and two characteristics which were unique to this study.

As a qualitative study of 12 individuals, these findings may not be generalizable beyond the four US states of professional service enterprises of women business founders. Future research should test the full servant leadership model of women business owners on a larger group of business founders and the sub-themes where little support exists.

The more gender integrative style of compassionate love servant leadership may be beneficial for women owners to employ as business leaders.

This research revealed support for a variation of compassionate love servant leadership model. The resulting servant leadership model herein was a mixture of agentic and communal leadership motivations, traits and behaviors useful to women business founders. Behaviors of authenticity were found to complement compassionate love. These women were able to extend the boundaries of what it means to be a leader and incorporate behaviors associated with both their gender and leadership roles, thus expanding their ability to successfully empower and equip themselves to navigate barriers unique to women leaders.

Although servant leadership (SL) improves the overall effectiveness of individuals and teams, it remains understudied. The aim of this paper is to provide insight into the mediating mechanisms through which perceived SL affects salespersons’ proactive and adaptive behaviors.

Data were gathered from 145 industrial salespeople and their supervisors across a variety of businesses and sectors in Spain.

SL enhances salespeople’s adaptivity and proactivity by positively affecting their self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation. Furthermore, SL directly shapes the development of adaptive behaviors among salespeople, although this direct influence is not significant when considering proactivity. Additionally, the use of outcome-based control mechanisms enhances the positive effects of SL on salespeople’s intrinsic motivation.

The results demonstrate that sales managers can promote more proactive and adaptive behaviors among sales staff by recognizing the importance of service and their moral responsibilities to the success of their subordinates.

Cognitive evaluation theory was used to examine the direct and indirect effects of perceived SL on two emergent change-oriented behaviors (adaptivity and proactivity) using a matched sample of industrial salespeople from a variety of industries, thus providing a basis for the generalization of results. Moreover, in analyzing the moderating effects of outcome control, the conditions under which SL is more or less effective were examined.

The article aims at examining the ethical limits and risks of servant leadership. During the Second World War, the German army officer Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg is a loyal servant to his nation and homeland. But when he learns about the Nazis’ mass murders and crimes, he begins to have doubts about whom he should serve. Being confronted with numerous moral dilemmas, he finally decides to join a resistance group. Of course, Stauffenberg's situation as colonel and leader was an extreme case. Time and again, however, managers and leaders are faced with similar dilemmas. Indeed, the current COVID-19-crisis shows that even today’s leaders are repeatedly faced with almost insoluble dilemmas. The recent literature about ethics and leadership suggests a philosophy which is almost portrayed as a panacea to any ethical issues: servant leadership (SL). This study, however, questions the commonly held view that SL is always ethical. The purpose of our historical case study is twofold. First, this study explores the ethical challenges Stauffenberg (and other officers) faced and how they dealt with them. Second, this study elaborates on what responses (if any) SL would provide to these challenges.

The applied method is a historical case study, in which the authors draw on a plethora of secondary literature, including books, reports, and articles.

By analyzing the historical case of “Operation Valkyrie,” this study elaborated and identified risks and limitations of SL and pointed out ways to address these risks. In particular, SL poses risks in the case of a too narrow understanding of the term “service.”

While other leadership styles, e.g. transformational leadership or charismatic leadership, have been extensively studied with regard to ethical risks, in the case of SL possible risks and limitations are still largely unexplored.

The purpose is to use co-citation analysis of servant leadership (SL) research to investigate the evolution of the field, its subfields, gaps and opportunities for future research in a systematic manner.

A document co-citation technique and three clustering algorithms (latent semantic index (LSI), the log-likelihood ratio (LLR) and the mutual information (MI) index) were employed to analyse 24,030 references from 549 articles spanning a period of 50 years.

Cluster analyses reveal that SL research consists of eight distinct subfields: (1) conceptualisation and measurement of SL; (2) SL and related theories; (3) methodological foundations and empirical expansion of SL research; (4) individual-level cognitive effects of SL and related theories; (5) “Warmth effects” of leadership behaviour; (6) antecedents of effective leadership; (7) SL, marketing, sales management and ethics and (8) SL, job design and work engagement. Important gaps and opportunities for future research are identified.

The analyses do not show a complete picture of research on SL. Interesting works used by subgroups of SL researchers may not have enough citations to be included in the results. Moreover, bibliometric analyses do not explain the impact of books, journals and articles on the practice of SL. The authors welcome future analyses of the most influential sources of SL practice. The authors expect that managerial and practice-oriented books and journals, such as the International Journal of Servant Leadership and the Servant Leadership Theory and Practice, would play a central role in such analyses.

The discussions of the nature of SL, its effects and antecedents are useful to leaders who want to develop a SL style or assist others in developing it. For researchers and doctoral students, the cluster analyses of co-citations give an overview of the subfields of SL research and reveal important knowledge gaps in the literature.

SL has several favourable effects on the motivation and psychological well-being of followers. Also, followers tend to adopt a willingness to serve.

Previous research has categorised SL research into three broad categories or phases. The cluster analyses of the co-citations reported here reveal a meaningful structure of eight distinct subfields. Knowledge gaps within the subfields represent novel opportunities for future research on SL. The authors also suggest a new subfield of SL research: pedagogical approaches to the motivation and development of SL skills.

Although there is growing research on the relationship between servant leadership and job performance, limited research examined conditions under which servant leadership is more effective. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether employee-oriented human resource policy is shaping the relation between servant leadership and job performance.

Empirical research was carried out among 263 organizations operating in Poland. To verify formulated hypotheses, statistical reasoning with moderator was made using model 1 of SPSS Macro Process.

The present study has proved that employee-oriented human resource policy may act as a moderator between servant leadership and job performance strengthening this relation. Integrating human resource policy with leadership is important to reach a better understanding of how human resource and leadership can influence employee performance.

The current study provides a practical implication for organizations to train managers with leadership skills to improve the job performance of their employees.

This study aims to determine the relationship between servant leadership, innovation self-efficacy, corporate work culture and employee productivity in mediating and moderating role.

The research sample was 72 supervisors and 576 employees from 72 food and beverage small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in three major cities in Indonesia. SPSS and AMOS were used to test the research hypothesis using the hierarchical regression analysis test.

The results show that there was a positive and significant effect between servant leadership on innovation self-efficacy and employee productivity. Innovation self-efficacy mediates the relationship between servant leadership and employee productivity. Corporate work culture moderated the relationship between innovation self-efficacy and employee productivity.

Future research with larger samples are needed to determine the relationship between servant leadership, innovation self-efficacy, corporate work culture and employee productivity more clearly not only on food and beverage SMEs but also on other industries. Future research needs to be carried out using experimental and longitudinal research designs.

There are three important practical implications based on the findings of this study. First, the results of the study provide new ideas for SME managers on how to increase the productivity of their employees, by using servant leadership which is known to be the main driver for innovation self-efficacy behavior. Second, the mediating role of innovation self-efficacy requires managers to build employee self-efficacy behavior, share more power with employees and make employees more involved in decision-making, which in turn can increase employee confidence and motivation, and their productivity. Finally, managers must realize the need to create a productive work culture in the company, by taking various actions, such as giving rewards to productive employees, making clear regulations on the company regarding working hours and company targets, and must pay attention and respect the employee's views and opinions to improve employee identification of their leaders.

This is the first study to build and examine the direct and indirect relationship (mediating and moderating role) between servant leadership, innovation self-efficacy, corporate work culture and employee productivity in food and beverage SMEs.