Servant Leadership and Commitment: Role of Transformational Leadership

Abstract

Leadership styles have been found to impact followers affective and normative commitment. The purpose of this study is to analyze the mediating and moderating role of transformational leadership in the relationship between servant leadership and followers affective and normative commitment. Data were collected from 105 employees (49 male, 56 female) of various IT firms located in India. The respondents were asked to rate their supervisors servant leadership and transformational leadership, and their own affective and normative commitment. Results show that transformational leadership fully mediated the relationship between servant leadership and followers affective and normative commitment. We also found that servant leadership enhances followers affective and normative commitment only when transformational leadership is low. A practical implication of the study is that displaying characteristics of servant leadership would be a good start for any leader-follower relationship and for making it more transformational. Once the leader is seen as highly transformational, servant leadership may not enhance followers affective and normative commitment after that. This study adds to the existing literature by checking for both moderation and mediation by transformational leadership in the relationship between servant leadership and followers affective and normative commitment.

Keywords: Transformational Leadership, Servant Leadership, Organisational Commitment

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