Relationship of Servant Leadership and Employee Loyalty: The Mediating Role of Employee Satisfaction

Donghong Ding, Haiyan Lu, Yi Song, Qing Lu

School of Business, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China.
School of Humannities and Social Science, University of Science and Technology, Hefei, China.
School of Management, University of Science and Technology, Hefei, China.

DOI: 10.4236/ib.2012.43026                

Abstract

There is a growing concern about the relationship of servant leadership and employee loyalty recent years, but few are focusing on the intervening mechanisms between them. Especially in China, research on such mediating variables is nearly blank. In this paper, we make our attempt on detecting the role in such relationship by empirical studies through 186 samples using the structural equation model (SEM) method, and reach two conclusions: servant leadership is significantly positive correlated with employee loyalty; employee satisfaction is found to play mediating role which occupies 77% of the total effect between servant leadership and employee loyalty. Our result shows that, to improve employee loyalty, the managers should not only develop their servant leadership style, but also take into consideration the individual needs to improve psychological satisfaction.

Keywords

Servant Leadership; Employee Satisfaction; Employee Loyalty; Mediating Role

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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