Servant Leadership and Machiavellian Followers: A Moderated Mediation Model

Abstract

Despite promoting positive employee outcomes, servant leaders may become the victim of manipulation by followers. The current study investigates this underexplored side of servant leadership by examining the employee-related outcomes of the interaction between servant leadership and follower Machiavellianism through mediating mechanism of exploitative manipulative behavior. It is argued that employees high in Machiavellianism engage in exploitative manipulative behavior to achieve subjective career success and social power while working with a servant leader. We used PROCESS macro to analyze our mediation and moderated mediation hypotheses, respectively. We collected data in a time-lagged design (three-time lags) from 320 dyads (self and peer) responses from service sector organizations. The results fully supported our hypotheses. Limitations and future research directions are also presented.