The Followers perspective on the connetions between perceived servant leadership, affect and cognition-based trust and prosocial motivation

Abstract: This study was initiated for the purpose to further understand the theoretical relationship between followers trust of the closest bound perceived servant leader and the predictability of the  followers organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Specifically, this study looked at the modifying effect of the followers prosocial motivation—the desire to benefit other people (Grant, 2008) on multilevel dimensions of trust (i.e. affect- and cognition-based trust) and how this could possibly predict if at all followers OCB. There is far less research specifically about servant leaders than those implementing transformational leadership theory (Joseph & Winston, 2005; van Dierendonck & Nuijten, 2011). There are numerous studies using transformational leadership based on the well-defined parameters that are proven to be a relatively strong predictive variable in a variety of theoretical fields (N. Eva, Sendjaya, & Prajogo, 2015). Zhu and Akhtars’ (2014) study on transformational leadership behavior and multi-levels of trust is the inspiration to the current research project. The current research project is a close replication of Zhu and Akhtars’ (2014) model with the replacement of transformational leadership with servant leadership. Data were collected from 39 followers and four leaders from seven different facilities in the greater Stockholm area. The results showed that affect-based trust mediated the relationship between servant-based leadership and followers OCB. In addition, affect-based trust mediated the relationship between servant leadership and followers OCB only with those with high prosocial motivation. As for cognition-based trust, there seems to be some interaction between cognition-based trust and the relationship between servant leadership and followers with low prosocial motivation. These results strengthen the conclusions of the original study by Zhu and Akhtar (2014). Finding that servant leadership does not predict follower’s organizational citizenship behaviors alone. To reach a better understanding on followers OCB and their interaction within a servant leadership organization one must look at the individual followers’ level of trust and prosocial motivation variables to further our understanding on how to encourage OCB.