"Servant leadership, changes in personal values, and job meaningfulness"

Abstract

This study focuses on servant leadership behavior as it enhances organizational newcomers' values of self-transcendence and subsequent perceptions of job meaningfulness. We argue that by focusing specifically on serving followers, servant leaders exemplify the extreme form of self-transcendence, which shocks newcomers into self-reflection regarding their worldviews, and then stimulates them to develop a higher level of self-transcendence value. An 8-month study of 217 new graduates entering organizational life for the first time supports the hypotheses that servant leadership enhances new employees' values regarding self-transcendence, which then improves their perception of job meaningfulness and which in turn, positively relates to job performance. To exclude alternative explanations, we simultaneously examine three other possible mechanisms between servant leadership and job meaningfulness. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.