Introduction

Greenleaf (1970) defined ‘servant leadership’ as a leadership style based on the premise that the leaders who are good at motivating followers are those who prioritize followers’ needs over their own personal needs. Servant leadership emphasizes the importance of doing good to others, and involves themes such as humility, authenticity, accountability, and empowerment (Sendjaya et al. 2008; Sausa and Von Dierendonck 2015). Although Greenleaf proposed the concept of servant leadership in the 1970s, it did not attract much attention until last decade (Van Dierendonck 2011). Several studies have shown that servant leadership can promote work performance, innovative performance and organizational citizenship behavior in the work context (Chen et al. 2015; Sausa and Von Dierendonck 2015; Newman et al. 2015). Recently, researchers begun to investigate the role of servant leadership in promoting creativity at work (Neubert et al. 2008; Sausa and Von Dierendonck 2015; Yoshida et al. 2014). Neubert et al.’s (2008) study suggests that leaders who model promotion-focused behavior (the tendency to ideals, growth, or advancement) (Higgins 1997, 1998) cause an adaptive focus in employees which could enhance creative behavior. Yoshida et al. (2014) argue that servant leadership can enhance employee creativity when employees see themselves as a reflection of leader-member relationship and perceive psychological safety. Given that feedback-seeking behavior can serve as a self-regulation strategy to enhance creativity (De Stobbeleir et al. 2008), the first purpose of our study is to investigate whether feedback-seeking behavior mediates the relationship between servant leadership and creativity.

It has also been demonstrated that group climate can moderate the influence of servant leadership on individuals’ outcomes. For example, Chen et al. (2015) suggested that a group competitive climate strengthened the mediated relationship between servant leadership and employees’ service performance. In line with this, the second purpose of our study is to investigate the possible moderating role that affective climate, the shared perceptions considering interpersonal and social relations in an organization (Ostroff 1993; Reichers and Schneider 1990), can play on servant leadership’s influence process. Figure 1 depicts the proposed model.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Hypothesized model linking servant leadership with creativity

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Servant Leadership and Creativity

Creativity refers to the production of novel and useful ideas (Amabile 1988). Amabile (1997) suggested that creativity could be influenced by work environments, which can affect the factors that contribute to creativity (i.e., expertise, creative-thinking skill, and intrinsic motivation). These work conditions include managerial practice, organizational resources, and organizational motivation to innovate (Amabile and Conti 1999). Previous research has demonstrated that leadership, such as transformational leadership, is one of the situational factors influencing creativity (Tierney et al. 1999; Wang and Rode 2010). In this study, we suggest that servant leadership has a positive influence on employees’ creativity. Servant leaders are considerate towards employees; they show empathy and provide support to followers, allowing them to develop their capacities and interests and fulfill their potential (Greenleaf 1998). Since servant leaders tolerate employees’ errors, accept their new ideas, and encourage them to learn from mistakes and adapt behaviors (Bowen and Ford 2002), employees are more likely to seek a higher level of challenge and mastery performance intrinsically (Boggiano et al. 1982). Therefore, they tend to find alternative approaches to solve problems and exhibit creativity. Accordingly, we propose:

  • Hypothesis 1: Servant leadership is positively related to employees’ creativity.

The Mediating Role of Feedback-Seeking Behavior

Servant leaders promote employees’ feedback-seeking behavior, which could, in turn, enhance their creativity. Seeking feedback from supervisors allows employees to obtain information related to their work, which can reduce the uncertainty of job situations and provide reference for employees to evaluate their performance and adapt themselves towards goal fulfillment (Ashford 1986; Tsui and Ashford 1994). The direct inquiry of work-related information can enhance employees’ creativity, since this kind of behavior motivates employees to proactively challenge the state quo (Crant 2000). Perceiving the discrepancy between current situation and goal, employees might be encouraged to develop new skills to solve the existing problems (Tyre 1992). Additionally, the process of seeking feedback allows employees to expose themselves to diversified information related to the task, their role, and the organization. They are, thus, induced to consider alternatives and generate novel ideas, generating creative behaviors (Majdar 2005).

Most studies in the feedback seeking literature have adopted a cost-value framework to explain the antecedents’ influence on feedback-seeking behavior (Ashford 1986; Morrison and Vancouver 2000; VandeWalle et al. 2000). Antecedents could encourage or discourage feedback seeking through decreasing one’s perceived cost about losing face or hurting ego and/or increasing perceived value about the information obtained. Based on this framework, servant leadership can promote employee’s feedback seeking in two ways. First, servant leaders are accountable and considerate about the capacity of individual employees when providing feedback to help them achieve goals (Sausa and Von Dierendonck 2015). The subordinates of servant leaders may perceive such feedback as more valuable, and, thus, are more willing to seek feedback from them more frequently. Second, the authenticity of servant leadership encourages servant leaders to build high quality relationships with their employees, in which servant leaders accept the “true self” of their subordinates (Greenleaf 1977). This acceptance allows seeking feedback signals one’s continuous effort to know and develop the self. The subordinates of servant leaders may perceive seeking feedback as less costly, and are more willing to seek feedback from them more frequently. Accordingly:

  • Hypothesis 2: Feedback seeking mediates the relationship between servant leadership and creativity.

Servant Leadership and Affective Climate

Affective climate is defined as an overall interaction pattern, a shared perception, or the atmosphere surrounding interactions within a team (Choi et al. 2003). Previous studies have shown that emotion contagion and socialization processes can induce positive feelings in employees and promote a positive affective climate (Ashforth and Humphrey 1993; Barsade 2002; Walter and Bruch 2008). Affective events theory (Weiss and Cropanzano 1996) posits that servant leaders’ behavior includes affective events that can enhance followers’ positive feelings. For example, by showing empathy and respect for followers and supporting them, servant leaders meet followers’ psychological needs (Podsakoff et al. 1990). In this study, we propose that servant leadership is positively related to affective climate for the following reasons. First, Servant leaders have two important characteristics as role models: altruism and authenticity. They attach more importance to the interests of the organization than to their own interest and intrinsically motivates employees to achieve organizational goals and evokes positive emotions, such as optimism, elation and cheerfulness, in followers (Ashforth and Humphrey 1995; McColl-Kennedy and Anderson 2002). Second, social learning theory (Bandura 1977) suggests that leaders’ behaviors can ‘trickle down’ to employees through observation and imitation (Mayer et al. 2009; Mayer et al. 2012). Therefore, followers tend to imitate their leaders by transferring positive emotions to the other employees. For these reasons we propose:

  • Hypothesis 3: Servant leadership is positively related to affective climate.

Affective Climate as a Moderator

The climate of a work group conveys the values, desires, expectations, and potential rewards of an organization to employees (Ostroff et al. 2003; Schneider 1990; Schneider et al. 2005), and may have an impact on leaders’ influence. Researchers have explored the effects of organizational climates (Schneider 2000), especially the role that climate plays in motivation and its effects on individual outcomes (Ashkanasy et al. 2000; Kozlowski and Klein 2000). In this study, we suggest that employees’ perception of affective climate can moderate the mediated relationship between servant leadership, feedback seeking, and creativity. Affective climate corresponds to the levels of warmth, support, acceptance, sincerity, and enthusiasm, and serves as a social control mechanism, influencing how employees behave in team contexts (O'Reilly and Chatman 1996). High affective climate allows individuals to evaluate information favorably and to perceive the environment as safe enough to engage in feedback seeking and creativity. Accordingly, we posit:

  • Hypothesis 4: Affective climate moderates the mediated relationship between servant leadership, feedback seeking, and creativity, such that the mediated relationship will be stronger when affective climate is strong.

Method

Sample and Procedure

Participants in the current study consisted of 388 full-time employees and their supervisors from a high-tech communication company located in a major city in northern China. Packets with survey questionnaire and informed consent sheet were distributed in a company-wide meeting held for frontline employees. Separate questionnaires were designed for supervisors and subordinates to minimize potential common method biases. Employees were instructed to finish the subordinate questionnaire and forward the supervisor questionnaire to their immediate supervisors. Surveys were completed on a voluntary basis. Participants were instructed to complete the survey and to bring it back to the upcoming meeting of both supervisors and subordinates, two weeks later. To protect the confidentiality of participants, they were instructed to seal the questionnaires in the envelopes provided after finishing their questionnaires. Two short messages were sent to the participants three days after the questionnaire was distributed and one day before the second meeting, to encourage participants to complete the survey and to remind them to bring it with them. A box was placed outside the meeting venue and the participants were reminded by one of the authors to put their completed and sealed questionnaire into the box before and after the meeting.

A total of 205 respondents contributed to the sample of the present study. On average, employees were 33.86 years old (SD = 7.48) and mostly male (68.8%). Most participants held a Bachelor’s degree (68.3%), with the remainder reporting a graduate degree (15.6%), a polytechnic diploma or associate degree (14.6%), or high school education (1.5%). The average company tenure was 8.06 years (SD = 6.54).

Measures

All scales used in the questionnaires were in Chinese. A standard, back-translation procedure (Brislin 1990) was applied to verify the survey instructions and questionnaires. Given the concerns of the potential constraints of this method (Wang 1993; Xie et al. 2008), one of the authors discussed the questionnaire items with a focus group to ensure clarity.

Servant Leadership

We used a 14-item scale, developed and validated by Ehrhart (2004), to measure servant leadership. Participants were instructed to rate each item on a 5-point scale (1 = to a small extent, 5 = to a great extent). Sample items included: “My supervisor creates a sense of community among our department.”; “My supervisor help us to reach our potential.” The scale’s reliability was .88.

Feedback Seeking from Supervisors

Employees’ feedback seeking frequency was measured with a 5-item scale validated by VandeWalle et al. (2000). Each supervisor was asked to provide his or her own ratings for how often each of the five aspects of feedback (the inadequacies of overall job performance, technical aspects of the job, values and attitudes of the firm, role expectations, and social behaviors) was sought by the rated subordinate. Sample items included: “How often does this subordinate ask you for feedback about his or her overall job performance” and “How often does this subordinate ask you for feedback about his social behaviors” The scale’s reliability was .80.

Creativity

Following the research of Zhou (1998), we measured employees’ creativity using an 11-point scale, ranging from 1 (not creative at all) to 11 (extremely creative). This method has been used in previous studies (Ryan and Grolnick 1986; Shalley 1991). First, participants were instructed to solve a problem. Then, three judges assessed their creativity by evaluating their solutions and rating the extent to which each solution was relatively creative. The scale’s reliability was .80.

Affective Climate

Affective climate was measured using a five-item scale developed by Choi et al. (2003). Participants were asked to evaluate the overall perception of team affective climate. Sample items included: “How much did you feel that the team is supportive,” “How much did you feel that you could trust others in the group,” and “How much did you feel comfortable to participate” The scale’s reliability was .91.

Analysis and Results

Analytic Plan

First, the preliminary analyses examined the descriptive statistics, correlations among study variables, and the possible group differences in the study variables based on demographic variables. Next, the regression analyses tested the association between the predictor and outcome variables, as well as the association between the predictor and the potential moderator. Then, the procedures recommended by Hayes (2013) were performed for mediation and moderated mediation using the SPSS PROCESS Macro (Hayes 2012). Five thousand bootstrap resamples were used to generate 95% confidence intervals, which estimated the size and significance of the effects. Based on the theoretical considerations, we examined whether servant leadership is positively related to employees’ creativity and affective climate, whether feedback-seeking mediates the relationship between servant leadership and creativity, and whether affective climate moderates the mediating effect on the link between servant leadership and feedback-seeking.

Results

See Table 1 for the mean scores, standard deviations of the study variables, and the correlation among them. Servant leadership was positively correlated with feedback seeking and creativity, feedback seeking was positively correlated with creativity, and affective climate was positively correlated with servant leadership and creativity.

Table 1 Means, standard deviations, and bivariate correlations of study variables
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The preliminary analyses, using independent-sample t tests and Pearson correlational tests, examined the employee’s age, gender, education level, and corporate tenure differences, in relation to all of the study variables. Employee’s age, gender and education level were not significantly associated with any of the study variables. Employee’s corporate tenure was not significantly associated with any study variable, except for creativity, where the employees with longer corporate tenure have lower creativity (r = −.14, p < .05). Based on these results, corporate tenure was controlled in subsequent analyses.

Regression Analyses

The results of regression analyses showed that servant leadership was significantly associated with creativity (β = .19, t = 2.75, p < .01), and servant leadership was also significantly associated with affective climate (β = .20, t = 2.95, p < .01). Accordingly, hypothesis 1 and 3 were supported.

Mediation Analyses

Mediation models tested the hypotheses that servant leadership might exert an indirect effect on creativity through feedback-seeking. As shown in Fig. 2, servant leadership was indirectly related to creativity via feedback-seeking, such that a higher level of servant leadership was associated with more feedback-seeking, which, in turn, was related to more creativity (indirect effects point estimate = − .05, SE = .02, 95% BCaCI = .01 to .10). Hypothesis 2 was supported.

Fig. 2
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Mediational model for associations between servant leadership and creativity as mediated by feedback seeking

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Moderated Mediation Analyses

Moderated meditation models examined whether affective climate moderated the indirect effect, specifically on the links between servant leadership and creativity. Preacher et al. (2007) have noted that a moderating effect is demonstrated when the independent variable and the moderator significantly interact with each other and the bootstrapped confidence intervals do not contain zero.

We did not find significant moderating effects of affective climate on the link between servant leadership and feedback-seeking (the mediator; β = .09, t = 1.66, p = .10), supporting hypothesis 4. Table 2 presents the bootstrapping estimates and slope coefficients for the conditional indirect effects of servant leadership on creativity.

Table 2 Bootstrap estimates of indirect effect at −1 SD, the mean, and the +1 SD levels of moderator
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Discussion

The aim of our study was to expand our understanding of servant leadership and its influences on employees. We hypothesized that servant leadership can promote employee creativity in an organization, and the results of our study supported our hypothesis. Moreover, we investigated the mediating effect of feedback-seeking behavior and found that servant leadership could lead to employee creativity through enhancing employees’ feedback-seeking behavior. Since followers’ attitudes and perceptions can be affected by leaders (Weiss and Cropanzano 1996), we examined the impact of servant leadership on affective climate. Although we found that servant leadership was positively related to affective climate, our result does not support the idea that affective climate moderates the relationship between servant leadership, feedback-seeking behavior, and creativity. These findings have several important implications.

Theoretical Implications

Our study provides an insight into the crucial mechanism underlying the effects of servant leadership. Given the growing importance of servant leadership and the lack of research at the individual level (Ozyilmaz and Cicek 2015), we theoretically developed and empirically tested a model in which the mediating effect of employees’ feedback seeking and the moderating effect of affective climate were investigated. First, our study illustrated that, when leaders implement servant leadership, employees are likely to seek valuable work-related information without being concerned about losing face. They are motivated to think outside-the-box when exposed to diversified information (Majdar 2005; Perry-Smith 2006), which could, in turn, help them to generate new and useful ideas. This finding is of vital importance, since our study is the first to employ a specific behavior to explain how servant leadership exerts its influence. Previous research mainly adopted psychological states (e.g. Self-efficacy, prosocial motivation etc.) as mediators when examining the impact of servant leadership (Walumbwa et al. 2010; Zhu and Wang 2015). Our study extends the literature by involving a specific proactive behavior, feedback seeking, as a mediator.

Second, this study expands our knowledge on servant leadership by involving affective climate in our model. Our findings demonstrate that the altruism and authenticity of servant leaders can enhance their employees’ positive emotions, and, thus, promote affective climate within the organization. However, our data failed to support the hypothesis that affective climate moderates the mediated relationship between servant leadership and creativity.

Practical Implications

Creativity is crucial for companies to maintain competitive advantages (Somech 2006). Our study makes a contribution to the managerial field by indicating that servant leaders can promote creativity by encouraging feedback-seeking behavior. Our results suggest that organizations could hire servant leaders in critical positions or develop their managers’ servant leadership skills. Practically, when interviewing potential managers, interviewers may ask questions evaluating whether the interviewee is humble, altruistic, and authentic. Moreover, organizations could provide training programs that encourage leaders to consider the benefit of the organization and others before considering that of themselves. Additionally, our research demonstrates that to ensure the impact of servant leadership on employees’ creativity, servant leaders could also intentionally promote employees’ feedback-seeking behavior. Accordingly, organizations may offer managerial training opportunities involving programs to enhance both servant leadership and leaders’ consciousness of encouraging employees’ feedback seeking.

Limitations and Future Research

Our study is not without limitations. First, participants of our study were well-educated employees from only one high-tech company in China, representing a population that may be more innovative and open to the influence of servant leadership. Future studies can examine our model among samples in different industries, to increase the generalizability of our findings. Second, although our study confirmed that feedback seeking can mediate the relationship between servant leadership and creativity, little is known about whether other proactive behaviors can play a similar role. Given servant leadership theory plays an increasingly important role in the study of leadership in organizations (Hu and Liden 2011; Pekerti and Sendjaya 2010), future researchers could adopt different mediators to further investigate the influence process of servant leadership. For example, when servant leaders nurture organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) (Podsakoff et al. 2009), employees may become more committed to the organization and thus be more willing to maintain high performance levels. Third, future research can extend our model by investigating whether other group climate variables might act as possible moderators. For example, justice climate (employees’ shared cognition about how an organization as a whole is treated) (Naumann and Bennett 2000) may moderate the servant leadership model. When employees perceive that they are being treated fairly, they might be more likely to be affected by servant leaders.

Conclusion

In conclusion, our research stresses the importance of servant leadership to organizations. The results of our study support our hypothesis that servant leadership promotes employees’ creativity through encouraging feedback-seeking behavior. Moreover, our findings indicate that servant leadership can promote an affective climate in the organization.