Servant leadership and its relation to personal branding: testing a mediated-moderated model

Purpose This study attempts to evaluate a theoretical framework explaining the role of servant leadership on followers’ personal branding, where perceived organizational support represents the mediating factor, and job autonomy is the moderating factor. Design/methodology/approach Servant leadership, personal branding, perceived organizational support, and job autonomy were assessed in an empirical study based on sample of 205 full-time workers working in Jordan. This study used a cross-sectional design due to its quantitative nature, which sought to investigate the relationship between servant leadership, POS, job autonomy, and personal branding. Data were gathered via online survey and analyzed via structural equation modeling (SEM), confirmatory factor analysis, reliability and validity tests, and mediation and moderation tests. Findings The results from SEM reveal that the servant leadership style directly influences follower’s levels of personal branding. Furthermore, the direct relationship between servant leadership and personal branding was found to be mediated by employees’ perceptions of perceived organizational support. Finally, job autonomy moderates this relationship, suggesting that followers who are working on low autonomy tasks have lower personal branding. Research limitations/implications This study has several limitations that should be considered when interpreting the results. First, the research focus on specific sectors which limits the ability to generalize the findings into other contexts. Second, since the valuation and utilization of resources are conditioned by cultural and institutional contexts, future studies could replicate the model of the study in other national contexts. Finally, the use of cross-sectional design restricts the ability to make the inferences of causality. Practical implications This study provides contribution in three major aspects. First, it highlights servant leadership as a relational resource that employees can leverage to enhance personal branding through perceived organizational support. Second, proposed moderated mediation results support the presence of nonlinear resource gain spirals, which are more dynamic than additive, hence addressing the most recent calls to investigate interactive resource dynamics in the framework. Third, it provides empirical support for cultural contingency of resource processes, thus responding to demands of non-Western validation of organizational theories. Originality/value This study is distinctive as it is one of the first studies that tested the influence of servant leadership and personal branding through perceived organizational support and job autonomy within a Jordanian context.