Servant Leadership and Follower Voice: A Dual-Centric Energizing Process

Using a dual-centric perspective, this research investigates why and when servant leadership encourages follower voice. Drawing from conservation of resources theory, we developed a dual-centric moderated mediation model theorizing mediating roles of followers’ feelings of energy (i.e., a recipient-centric perspective) and leaders’ relational energy (i.e., an actor-centric perspective), as well as moderating role of leader trait of self-regulation between servant leadership and follower voice. Field surveys collecting time-lagged supervisor- subordinate matched data were used to test our dual-centric model. We found that followers’ feelings of energy and leaders’ relational energy mediated the relationship between servant leadership and follower voice, and high leader trait of self-regulation strengthened the positive relationships between servant leadership and both followers’ feelings of energy and leaders’ relational energy, as well as indirect relationships between servant leadership and follower voice. Theoretical and practical implications of these results are also discussed.