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Advances in Ergonomic Design of Systems, Products and Processes pp 71–85Cite as

Beneficial Effects of Servant Leadership on Short- and Long-Term Indicators of Employees’ Psychological Health

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Abstract

Servant leadership is conceptualized as a leadership style, which encourages employees to behave in a social responsible way. In the present study, we examine the positive relationship between servant leadership and employees’ psychological health. We propose that this beneficial relationship results from the potential of servant leaders to shape employees’ needs and to create work environments that fulfil these needs. We examine the proposed relationships of servant leadership (a) competing for variance with job ambiguity as a well-known job-stressor, and (b) in relation to long- and short-term indicators of psychological health. In a sample of N = 443 employees, we tested the relationships of servant leadership and job ambiguity to ego depletion, need for recovery, emotional exhaustion, and depersonalization as indicators of psychological health. Our results demonstrate that servant leadership is positively related to employees’ psychological health and accounts for unique amounts of variance in the examined short- and long-term indicators of psychological health over and above that explained by job ambiguity. Accordingly, servant leadership can be regarded as an important determinant of employees’ psychological health.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors (IfADo), Dortmund, Germany

    Wladislaw Rivkin & Klaus-Helmut Schmidt

Authors
  1. Wladislaw Rivkin
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  2. Klaus-Helmut Schmidt
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Correspondence to Wladislaw Rivkin .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. ifab-Institute of Human and Industrial Engineering, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Karlsruhe, Germany

    Barbara Deml

  2. REFA-Institut e.V., Dortmund, Germany

    Patricia Stock

  3. Institut für Arbeitswissenschaft, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

    Ralph Bruder

  4. Institute of Industrial Engineering and Ergonomics, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

    Christopher Marc Schlick

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Rivkin, W., Schmidt, KH. (2016). Beneficial Effects of Servant Leadership on Short- and Long-Term Indicators of Employees’ Psychological Health. In: Deml, B., Stock, P., Bruder, R., Schlick, C.M. (eds) Advances in Ergonomic Design of Systems, Products and Processes. Springer Vieweg, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-48661-0_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-48661-0_5

  • Publisher Name: Springer Vieweg, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-662-48659-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-662-48661-0

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