Servant Leadership and Mental Health Among Leaders and Followers: Empirical Investigations on Antecedents, Processes and Outcomes.

Abstract

The incidence of sick leave caused by mental illness has been on the rise for years. This ongoing “epidemic” poses a major challenge to the econo-my. In occupational health psychology, leadership is having an important role in maintaining and promoting mental health. A very promising leadership theory that goes beyond other prevalent leadership theories to increase positive out-comes on different levels (individual, team, organization) is servant leadership. Surprisingly, in-depth empirical evidence on the relationship between servant leadership and mental health at work is currently scarce. Therefore, I examined the impact of servant leadership on mental health at both employee and leader levels. Following the health definition of World Health Organisation, I conceptu-alized mental health as a two continua model and measured using two indicators, emotional exhaustion and flourishing. In doing so, I used emotional exhaustion as a subclinical indicator of mental illness and flourishing as an indicator of psycho-logical well-being. In addition, I examined compassionate love and religious quest orientation as potential antecedents of servant leadership. Thus, this thesis not only extends the nomological network of servant leadership in terms of ante-cedents, but also provides insights into the relationship between servant leader-ship and mental health on two levels, besides psychological processes and boundary conditions of this relationship. Such a more nuanced understanding of servant leadership in the context of occupational health psychology allows us to provide key practical implications for personnel selection and development, and for organizational development and occupational health management. Using a sample of leader-follower dyads (n = 170) in a cross-sectional design, with the first study I investigated whether compassionate love, as antithesis to narcissism, and religious quest orientation are significant predictors of servant leadership. The sample comprised extra occupational students from a large German University of Applied Sciences. Regression analyzes revealed that compassionate love turned out to be the most meaningful antecedent of servant leadership in this study, by explaining variance beyond narcissism in the criterion variable. Religious quest orientation had no substantial influence on servant leadership. In a second study, I examined the same sample for the effects of servant leadership on leader mental health using structural equation modeling. Based on the Theory of Purposeful Work Behavior, I derived experienced meaningfulness as a mediator between servant leadership and the indicators of mental health. The results showed that servant leadership improved leaders’ mental health. This relationship was medi-ated through the psychological mechanism of experienced meaningfulness. Serv-ant leadership promoted experienced meaningfulness at work, which decreased emotional exhaustion and increased flourishing. In the third study, I analyzed the relationship between servant leadership and employees’ mental health in a shorti-tudinal design with three measurement points using a sample of extra occupa-tional students from a German University of Applied Sciences (n = 106). Based on the Self-Determination Theory, I derived satisfaction of basic psychological needs as a mediator between servant leadership and mental health outcomes. The re-sults of the regression analyses showed that servant leadership improved em-ployees’ mental health. Whereas this relationship was mediated by basic need satisfaction for both emotional exhaustion and flourishing, in terms of indirect-only mediation. Servant leadership nourished employees’ basic psychological needs, causing them to feel less emotionally exhausted while showing increased flourishing. The fourth study complemented the third study by adding employee-related boundary conditions. Specifically, in study 4, using a cross-sectional sam-ple of occupational students from a German University of Applied Sciences (n = 504), the same mediation model from the third study was extended to include employees’ implicit leadership theories. Regression analyses were used to calcu-late moderated mediation models. Results showed that servant leadership satis-fies employees’ basic psychological needs more strongly when employees’ implic-it leadership theories are congruent with the servant leadership ideal type, specif-ically low tyranny and high sensitivity. Hence, if the employee has a prototypical idea of a tyrannical leader, this weakens the positive outcome of servant leader-ship on mental health. If the employee in turn has a prototypical idea of an empa-thetic leader (sensitivity), this strengthens the connection between servant leader-ship and mental health via basic need satisfaction. In summary, this thesis could contribute the following findings: First, further antecedents of servant leadership could be empirically evaluated. Second, it could be shown that servant leadership is positively related to mental health-related variables at both employee and lead-er level. Third, the psychological mechanisms at leader-level (experienced mean-ingfulness) and employee-level (satisfaction of basic psychological needs), as well as specific employee-related boundary conditions (implicit leadership theories), which can strengthen or weaken the studied relationships, could be identified.

Theoretical contributions, practical implications and future research directions and conclude each of the studies, and in an overall discussion the whole thesis.