Impact of Servant Leadership on Employee Performance in Public Sectors: The Mediating Role of Employee Job Satisfaction, Commitment, and the Moderating Role of Self-Esteem

The study explores the impact of servant leadership on employee performance in public sectors, the mediating role of employee job satisfaction, commitment, and the moderating role of self-esteem in the case of Ethiopia’s public sector, Ministry of Revenue. The survey was adopted from the theory of servant leadership, employee job commitment, satisfaction, and performance. The study used primary and secondary data. And also used both qualitative and quantitative research methods. The Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia has 200 public sectors and 158,617 employees. The researcher selected the Ministry of Revenue, which has 12 branches of taxpayers, and 3959 employees to address the study. Among those taxpayers, the investigator had chosen five branches. Data were collected from top-leaders, middle-leaders, and employees’ of the organization. Questionnaires were distributed for 363 potential respondents whereas 345 were completed and retrieved successfully, which is about a 95.04% response rate. The data was described by testing of nonresponse bias, reliability and validity tests of measurement scales used in the study, descriptive analysis based on respondent’s information, assessing data quality, the correlation between variables, and hypotheses testing using Structural Equation Model (SEM) and Regression Analysis. The data obtained from 38 structured survey questionnaires, and 5 unstructured interviews. To perform the data analysis, SPSS 26 and AMOS 24 statistical software versions were used. The study has a substantial role in bringing high employee job satisfaction, employee job commitment to purpose, and employee performance and enhances leadership competence in public sectors. Besides, the study provides knowledge into servant leadership literature and further research.