Servant Leadership and Followers Prosocial Rule-Breaking: The Mediating Role of Public Service Motivation

Naqib Ullah Khan; Muhammad Zada; Asad Ullah; Afraseyab Khattak; Heesup Han; Antonio Ariza-Montes; Luis Araya-Castilo

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.848531

Servant Leadership and Followers Prosocial Rule-Breaking: The Mediating Role of Public Service Motivation

Front Psychol. 2022 Jul 5:13:848531. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.848531. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Naqib Ullah Khan¹, Muhammad Zada^{2

3}, Asad Ullah⁴, Afraseyab Khattak⁴, Heesup Han⁵, Antonio Ariza-Montes⁶, Luis Araya-Castilo⁷

Affiliations

¹ School of Public Administration, Central South University, Changsha, China.
² Business School, Henan University, Kaifeng, China.
³ Department of Management Sciences, Alhamd Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan.
⁴ Institute of Business and Management Studies, The University of Agriculture, Peshawar, Pakistan.
⁵ College of Hospitality and Tourism Management, Sejong University, Seoul, South Korea.
⁶ Social Matters Research Group, Universidad Loyola Andalucía, Córdoba, Spain.
⁷ Facultad de Economía y Negocios, Universidad Andrés Bello, Santiago de Chile, Chile.

Abstract

This research explores the effect of servant leadership on prosocial rule-breaking (PSRB) and the mediating mechanism of public service motivation (PSM) between the association of servant leadership and PSRB. The said phenomenon is examined in the civil service context of Pakistan during the continuing crises of the COVID-19 pandemic, a situation where the traditional civil service policy and rule system has become highly complicated for passionate employees' service performance and efficiency, and where servant leadership has received greater attention for inspiring the attitudinal and behavioral outcomes of frontline workers during the pandemic. Data were collected from 546 frontline workers of the corona relief tiger force. The findings of the study revealed that servant leadership has a significant effect on PSRB and PSM, and that PSM significantly promotes PSRB. The results also revealed that servant leadership has a significant impact on PSRB via engendering PSM.

Keywords: corona relief tiger force; prosocial rule-breaking; public managers; public service motivation; servant leadership.