Supervisors’ Reactions to Managers’ Servant Leadership: The Effect of Self-Concern and Other-Orientation

Supervisors, who are in the middle-level positions in organizations, cognitively process and interpret the behaviors of their managers (who are in charge of supervisors). Drawing from motivated information processing theory, this dissertation proposes a dual-process model to explore conditions under which managers’ servant leadership behaviors promote supervisors’ self-interested behavior and team-oriented behavior through two cognitive mechanisms, psychological entitlement and perspective taking. When supervisors have high self-concern, managers’ servant leadership enacts supervisors’ psychological entitlement, which leads to more self-interested behavior and less team-oriented behavior. When supervisors have high other-orientation, managers’ servant leadership triggers supervisors’ perspective taking, which makes supervisors engage in less self-interested behavior and more team-oriented behavior. Using a field study with 76 supervisors and 508 followers, the results demonstrated a negative interactive effect between managers’ servant leadership and supervisors’ other-orientation on supervisors’ perspective taking. Results from the supplementary analysis further indicated a significant moderating effect of supervisors’ self-concern on the relationship between supervisors’ psychological entitlement and self-interested (team-oriented) behavior.