The Impact of Servant Leadership on Innovative Work Behavior and Adaptive Work Performance

The focus of this work is on leadership during a global health crisis. Using Job Demand-Resource (JD-R) theory, we propose, and our results confirm, that servant leadership impacts employees’ innovative work behaviors and adaptive work performance via employees’ job crafting behaviors. Further, task autonomy and task interdependence act as conditional moderators, such that the positive impact of servant leadership on job crafting is enhanced when these job characteristics are higher. Data were collected in two studies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Study 1 included data from multiple industries, while study 2 focused on IT firms. By exploring the relationship between servant leadership and employee-driven work design, our study enriches the literature on how leaders can positively influence employee performance in the midst of crises. For practitioners and employees who encounter imbalance between job demands and personal needs during challenging times, we suggest that organizations should encourage servant leadership and job crafting training to increase employees’ innovative work behavior and adaptive performance.