How and When Perceptions of Servant Leadership Foster Employee Work Meaningfulness

Abstract

Understanding how and when leaders foster employee work meaningfulness is theoretically and practically important. Drawing on the theoretical underpinnings of servant leadership and person-environment fit, we propose that perceiving their leaders as servant leaders who put followers first would help employees fit into their job (i.e., person-job fit) and subsequently promote their work meaningfulness. Moreover, we argue that working under servant leaders who are perceived to possess high rather than low prototypicality would make employees more likely find congruence with their jobs and experience more work meaningfulness as a result. A full-time working sample from China evidenced our hypotheses. Our findings provide important contributions to extant work psychology literature and carry vital practical implications for organizations to develop employee work meaningfulness.