SERVANT LEADERSHIP AND ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIOR AT STATE OWNED HEI’S IN SOUTHERN ETHIOPIA: ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT AS MEDIATOR

Abstract

This article's primary focus is on servant leadership and organizational citizenship behavior at state owned HEI’s in southern Ethiopia: organizational commitment as mediator. Servant leadership is an approach of thinking and acting as a leader that puts the needs of the people they are responsible for ahead of their own. This reveals that servant leadership has a significant effect on the commitment of employees in the organizations. Servant leadership and OCB share a common foundation to support organizations to function properly. Servant leadership is vital in creating good relationships between leaders and employees. The three main variables: servant leadership, OC, and OCB are the ones that come to mind. Therefore, servant leadership is believed to be an independent variable influencing OC and OCB. Organizational commitment is seen as an independent variable that forecasts OCB and serves as a mediator between servant leadership and OCB. OCB is thought to be the dependent variable that Servant Leadership and OC forecast. To gain a better understanding of quantitative results from qualitative data, this study employed a mixed survey technique, particularly explanatory sequential mixture designs (QUAN-qual). Researchers employing explanatory sequential mixed designs, which are heavily quantitative-oriented, first gather and analyze quantitative data before using the data to guide the qualitative components of their study. The subsequent testing of the structural model confirmed all hypothesized relationships. The findings revealed that Servant Leadership is a significant positive antecedent of both Organizational Commitment and Organizational Citizenship Behavior. Organizational Commitment was confirmed to be a powerful predictor of OCB and a significant partial mediator of the relationship between servant leadership and employee citizenship. The overall model demonstrated impressive explanatory power, particularly for OCB.