How does servant leadership fuel employee innovative behavior? A moderated mediation framework

This research seeks to contribute to leadership theory by proposing an integrative framework to reveal how servant leadership and employee cognitive factors foster the conditions that promote employee innovative behavior. Building on social cognitive theory, we hypothesize that servant leadership improves employee innovative behavior through inspiring employee knowledge-sharing. We predict that employee organizational identification strengthens the impact of servant leadership on knowledge-sharing, and that employee learning goal orientation amplifies the relationship between employee knowledge-sharing and innovative behavior. We also propose that the positive indirect effect of servant leadership on employee innovative behavior via knowledge-sharing is strongest when both moderators are at a high level. Using data collected from 215 supervisor-employee dyads from three private high-tech firms in China and a multisource and multiphase research design, we find support for our proposed model. Theoretical and managerial implications for leadership and management practices are also discussed.