Servant chief executive officers and employees’ responses

The impact of servant leadership, which emphasizes personal integrity and the needs of followers, has been examined in the literature. However, existing studies have not explored the influence of servant leadership by strategic leaders on the performance of employees. Drawing from social learning theory and collective social learning theory, we examined the effect of servant leadership by chief executive officers (CEOs) on employees’ work outcomes. Our sample comprised 66 CEOs from intelligence-intensive companies in China, matched with 526 members of top management teams and 1,294 employees. Our results revealed that servant leadership by CEOs had a positive influence on the performance of employees. Further, top management teams’ social integration, team knowledge integration, and employees’ psychological empowerment acted as mediators of this relationship. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.