Blessing or curse: The moderating role of political skill in the relationship between servant leadership, voice, and voice endorsement

Drawing on social exchange theory and social-political theory of influence, we hypothesize that followers reciprocate servant leadership by engaging in voice behavior. Further, we propose that promotive and prohibitive forms of voice are differentially endorsed by leaders and that follower political skill is pivotal in the social influence process of converting the two types of voice to managerial endorsement. To test our hypothesized model, we collected three-wave, multi-source data from 308 architects and their leaders from a large architecture firm in China. Our results confirmed that servant leadership was positively related to both follower promotive and prohibitive voice. Moreover, regarding the moderating role of follower political skill, we found that the relationship between servant leadership, promotive voice, and voice endorsement was positive when follower political skill was high, while it was not significant for followers with low political skill. In contrast, the relationship between servant leadership, prohibitive voice, and voice endorsement was positive under the low political skill condition, while it was negative when follower political skill was high. Our results suggest a divergent role of political skill in converting different types of voice to managerial endorsement.