Servant leadership, social exchange relationships, and follower's helping behavior: Positive reciprocity belief matters

This study examined how leader-member exchange (LMX) and team-member exchange (TMX) mediate the relationship between servant leadership and helping behavior. The bootstrapping results involving 300 five-star hotel employees and their 80 immediate supervisors revealed that (1) LMX and TMX respectively mediated the relationship between servant leadership and helping behavior, (2) positive reciprocity belief moderated the relationship between servant leadership and LMX, (3) positive reciprocity belief moderated the relationship between servant leadership and TMX. Furthermore, moderated mediation analysis demonstrates that (4) the mediated relationship linking servant leadership with helping behavior via LMX is stronger when positive reciprocity belief is high, and (5) the mediated relationship linking servant leadership with helping behavior via TMX is stronger when positive reciprocity belief is high. We discuss theoretical and practical implications and recommend future research.