How Can Servant Leaders Foster Public Employees’ Service‐Oriented Behaviors? A Multilevel Multisource Study in Canadian Libraries

• Published date: 01 March 2022
• Author: Kathleen Bentein,Marie‐Ève Lapalme,Sylvie Guerrero,Xavier Parent‐Rocheleau,Gilles Simard
• Date: 01 March 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13416

Research Article

How Can Servant Leaders Foster Public Employees’ Service-Oriented Behaviors? 269

Xavier Parent-Rocheleau is an assistant

professor of human resources management

at HEC Montreal. His research interests

include leadership, employees’ attitudes and

behaviors, and the leader–follower dyadic

relationship. His research also examines issues

related to artificial intelligence and disruptive

technologies in HRM, workplace surveillance,

and algorithmic management of the workforce.

Email: xavier.parent-rocheleau@hec.ca

Abstract: Servant leadership, a leadership style that focuses on leading by serving, is well suited to supporting frontline

employees’ service-oriented behaviors in the public sector. However, we still know little about how servant leaders shape

these behaviors in this specific context. Drawing on social learning theory, relational identity, and service linkage

research, this article addresses this gap and tests a model in which servant leadership is related to service-oriented

behaviors through customer orientation at the individual level and through service climate at the group level. The

research hypotheses were tested, using a multilevel model, on a sample of 922 employees, 86 supervisors, and 9,547

citizens nested in 86 Canadian libraries. Results show that servant leaders are associated with high service-oriented

behaviors through the ability to strengthen individual customer orientation and service climate. Overall, this article

highlights that developing servant leaders may help public organizations reach their goal of serving citizens better.

Evidence for Practice

• Public managers can spur service behaviors among their frontline public employees by adopting servant

leader behaviors.

• Servant leaders were found to positively influence service performance (a) through their ability to build a

collective perception that serving citizens is highly valued (service climate); and (b) through their ability to

put citizens at the heart of employees’ identity (customer orientation).

• Public organizations who want to improve service to citizens would benefit by promoting or hiring servant

leaders into manager positions, and by training or coaching their current leaders to become servant leaders.

• Consistent with servant leadership philosophy, it would be advantageous for public organizations to develop

or reinforce a ‘servant culture’, by facilitating relationship building between leaders and employees, by

promoting skills development, by paying attention to autonomy levels, and by focusing on service and other-

orientation values.

In public organizations, service performance,

or the service quality offered to citizens,

represents a major type of performance (Kelly

and Swindell2002). Although service performance

may be assessed in various ways, the evaluation of

civil servants’ service behaviors is especially salient

for user- or customer-focused organizations such as

public libraries (Weinstein and McFarlane2017).

In parallel with public organizations’ quest to better

serve citizens, scholars have started to build knowledge

about the various factors contributing to service

behaviors of frontline public employees. Notably,

managers’ leadership has been identified as essential

to reach high levels of such behaviors (Paarlberg

and Lavigna2010). However, very few studies have

explored whether and how servant leadership, a

leadership style centered on the development and

empowerment of followers (Greenleaf1977), could be

of value in promoting high levels of service-oriented

behaviors in the public sector. This is quite surprising

given the calls to explore servant leadership as a

means of improving public organization performance

(e.g., Hanson and Baker2017). By definition,

servant leadership focuses on leading by serving

(Greenleaf1977). Servant leaders’ prioritization of

followers’ needs over organizational goals and their

own needs can thus instill servant behaviors in their

followers, who in turn are more likely to demonstrate

servant leadership and high levels of service to citizens

(Chen, Zhu, and Zhou2015).

The main purpose of the current study is to answer

the question of how servant leadership may foster

employee service-oriented behaviors in public

organizations. We draw on the theoretical frameworks

of social learning theory (Bandura1977), relational

identity theory (Sluss and Ashforth2007), and

service linkage research (Bowen and Schneider2014)

to develop and test a multilevel model in which

(a) civil servants’ customer orientation mediates

the relationship between individual perceptions of

servant leadership and service-oriented performance

Kathleen Bentein

Marie-Ève Lapalme

Sylvie Guerrero

How Can Servant Leaders Foster Public Employees’

Service-Oriented Behaviors? A Multilevel Multisource

Studyin Canadian Libraries

Sylvie Guerrero holds a PhD from the

University of Toulouse (France). She was a

visiting Professor at the University of Boulder

and at King’s College London before joining

the Université du Québec à Montréal in

2004. Her research focuses mainly on the

employment relationship and on human

resource management. She publishes in

journals like

Journal of Vocational behavior

,

or

Human Resource Management Journal

,

and in public management journals like

Review of Public Personnel Administration

.

Email: guerrero.sylvie@uqam.ca

Marie-Ève Lapalme is a full professor at

the Université du Québec à Montréal where

she teaches Human Resource Management and

Performance management. Her research interests

include alternative employment relationships,

leadership, performance, and career management.

Email: lapalme.marie-eve@uqam.ca

Kathleen Bentein is a full professor of

organizational behavior at the Université

du Québec à Montréal. Her main research

areas include attitudes change across time,

multiple commitment toward different foci

at work, identification and disidentification

processes, and leadership. Her work has been

published in a variety of journals, including

Journal of Management

,

Journal of Applied

Psychology

,

Leadership Quarterly

,

Journal

of Organizational Behavior

,

Journal of

Occupational and Organizational Psychology

,

and

Journal of Vocational Behavior

.

Email: bentein.kathleen@uqam.ca

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 82, Iss. 2, pp. 269–279. © 2021 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13416.

Gilles Simard is a full professor at the

School of Business at Université du Québec à

Montréal where he teaches Human Resource

Management and Organizational Behavior.

His main research and professional practice

areas include OCB and leadership. He is one

of the main associates of the consulting

group Energie Mobilization, since 2001.

Email: simard.gilles@uqam.ca

ESG-UQAM ESG-UQAM

Xavier Parent-Rocheleau

Gilles Simard

HEC Montréal