Servant leadership and academics' engagement in higher education: mediation analysis

This study presents a model for the impact of servant leadership on work engagement of staff in academic settings. Moreover, the paper introduces intrinsic motivation, psychological ownership, and person-job fit as intervening mechanisms between servant leadership and work engagement. Our data were gathered from academic staff working in twelve Palestinian universities. We used partial least squares SEM to investigate the hypotheses. Results indicate that the link between servant leadership and academics' work engagement is not straightforward. Intrinsic motivation, psychological ownership, and person-job fit of academic staff had a full mediating effect among the examined variables. The paper provides evidence that servant leadership is a promising style for higher education. Moreover, the paper offers important implications for administrators and policymakers in higher education about the role of servant leadership in promoting academics' work engagement.