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Servant leadership effectiveness: do religious atmosphere and housing price matter? social information-processing Perspective

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Abstract

Leadership effectiveness is a result of the interaction between leadership style and the social and organizational environment. We draw on social information-processing theory and analyze how the interaction between servant leadership and the social environment (i.e., religious atmosphere and housing price in one region) influences employee behavior. We likewise measure geographic-proximity-based religious atmosphere and housing price variables on the basis of 25 geographically disparate branches of a company, including a sample of 82 supervisors and 351 employees. Multilevel analyses reveal that the interaction between servant leadership and religious atmosphere has a positive effect on employee helping behavior but not for employee voice behavior. Conversely, the interaction between servant leadership and housing price has a positive effect on employee voice behavior, but does not have such effect on employee helping behavior. We also discuss the theoretical and practical implications on leadership research.

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Acknowledgements

We appreciate the support of National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no.71672139) and Humanities and Social Science Talent Plan of Shaanxi Province.

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  1. School of Management, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, 710049, Shaanxi, China

    Junting Lu & Zhe Zhang

  2. School of Management, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, 710072, Shaanxi, China

    Ming Jia

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  1. Junting Lu
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Lu, J., Zhang, Z. & Jia, M. Servant leadership effectiveness: do religious atmosphere and housing price matter? social information-processing Perspective. Curr Psychol 40, 3944–3957 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-019-00337-3

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