Servant Leadership and Employee Gratitude: The Moderating Role of Employee Narcissism

In this paper, we develop novel theoretical insights regarding employees’ reactions to servant leadership. Drawing on social exchange theory and the servant leadership literature, we propose that the needs–supplies fit between servant leaders and narcissistic employees can urge narcissistic employees to feel more grateful in response to servant leadership. In turn, employee gratitude is positively associated with organizational citizenship behavior and negatively associated with workplace deviance. We test our model across two studies, including a two-wave field survey study of 344 employees and their 80 leaders (Study 1) and a scenario-based experimental study of 100 participants (Study 2). The findings support our theoretical model that, at a higher (versus lower) level of employee narcissism, servant leadership enhances organizational citizenship behavior and reduces workplace deviance through enhanced employee gratitude. We discuss our contributions to the servant leadership literature and present practical implications for organizations.