How Servant Leadership Sparks Feedback-Seeking Behavior: A Moderated Mediation Model

Abstract

Drawing upon social information processing theory, we propose that moqi with supervisors mediates the relationship between servant leadership and follower feedback-seeking behavior. Subordinates’ traditionality plays a moderating role in this process. A total of 440 Chinese working adults responded to the two-wave questionnaire survey in paper and pencil forms. Correlation analyses, mediation analysis, and moderated mediation analysis was performed through R and SPSS PROCESS Macro. The results revealed that servant leadership positively correlates with followers’ feedback-seeking behavior via moqi with supervisors. Moreover, these indirect effects of servant leadership were moderated by traditionality, such that servant leadership had weaker relations with feedback-seeking behavior when traditionality was higher (vs. lower). Theoretical contributions and practical implications, limitations and suggestions for further study were discussed.