IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-05321037.html

Servant leadership and employee socially responsible behavior: The role of employee psychological entitlement

Author

Listed:
  • Nishat Babu

    (Loughborough University)

  • Kenneth de Roeck

    (SKEMA Business School - SKEMA Business School)

  • Nicolas Raineri

    (ICN Business School, CEREFIGE - Centre Européen de Recherche en Economie Financière et Gestion des Entreprises - UL - Université de Lorraine)

Abstract

This research investigates the interactive effect of servant leadership and employee psychological entitlement on socially responsible behavior (SRB) among employees. Specifically, we build on social learning theory to hypothesize that employee psychological entitlement, an individual trait reflecting an excessive self-oriented focus, undermines the positive effects of servant leadership on employee prosocial motivation, and in turn, SRB. Results from a multi-source field study (N = 240) support our predictions, and highlight the detrimental role of employee psychological entitlement on the ability of organizational leaders to effectively promote the creation of social good through employee behavior.

Suggested Citation

  • Nishat Babu & Kenneth de Roeck & Nicolas Raineri, 2025. "Servant leadership and employee socially responsible behavior: The role of employee psychological entitlement," Post-Print hal-05321037, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05321037
    DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2025.113378
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-05321037v1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hal.science/hal-05321037v1/document
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.paid.2025.113378?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nicolas Raineri & Pascal Paillé, 2016. "Linking Corporate Policy and Supervisory Support with Environmental Citizenship Behaviors: The Role of Employee Environmental Beliefs and Commitment," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 137(1), pages 129-148, August.
    2. Babu, Nishat & De Roeck, Kenneth & Raineri, Nicolas, 2020. "Hypocritical organizations: Implications for employee social responsibility," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 376-384.
    3. Nicolas Raineri & Pascal Paillé, 2016. "Linking Corporate Policy and Supervisory Support with Environmental Citizenship Behaviors: The Role of Employee Environmental Beliefs and Commitment," Post-Print hal-03795971, HAL.
    4. Kenneth De Roeck & Omer Farooq, 2018. "Corporate Social Responsibility and Ethical Leadership: Investigating Their Interactive Effect on Employees’ Socially Responsible Behaviors," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 151(4), pages 923-939, September.
    5. Jean-Pascal Gond & Assâad El Akremi & Valérie Swaen & Nishat Babu, 2017. "The psychological microfoundations of corporate social responsibility: A person-centric systematic review," Post-Print halshs-01698534, HAL.
    6. Denise Parris & Jon Peachey, 2013. "A Systematic Literature Review of Servant Leadership Theory in Organizational Contexts," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 113(3), pages 377-393, March.
    7. Rodell, Jessica B. & Booth, Jonathan E. & Lynch, John W. & Zipay, Kate P., 2017. "Corporate volunteering climate: mobilizing employee passion for societal causes and inspiring future charitable action," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 69524, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    8. Nishat Babu & Kenneth de Roeck & Nicolas Raineri, 2020. "Hypocritical organizations: Implications for employee social responsibility," Post-Print hal-03796007, HAL.
    9. Nicolas Raineri & Pascal Paillé, 2016. "Erratum to: Linking Corporate Policy and Supervisory Support with Environmental Citizenship Behaviors: The Role of Employee Environmental Beliefs and Commitment," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 137(1), pages 211-211, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Nematollah Shiri & Vahid Jafari‐Sadeghi, 2023. "Corporate social responsibility and green behaviour: Towards sustainable food‐business development," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 30(2), pages 605-620, March.
    2. Nicolas Raineri & Corentin Hericher & Jorge Humberto Mejía-Morelos & Pascal Paillé, 2022. "A deontic perspective on organizational citizenship behavior toward the environment: The contribution of anticipated guilt," Post-Print hal-03796112, HAL.
    3. Sania Khan & Wadi B. Alonazi & Azam Malik & Noor Raihani Zainol, 2023. "Does Corporate Social Responsibility Moderate the Nexus of Organizational Culture and Job Satisfaction?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(11), pages 1-17, May.
    4. Syed Haider Ali Shah & Basheer M. Al-Ghazali & Sabeen Bhatti & Nida Aman & Mochammed Fahlevi & Mohammed Aljuaid & Fakhrul Hasan, 2023. "The Impact of Perceived CSR on Employees’ Pro-Environmental Behaviors: The Mediating Effects of Environmental Consciousness and Environmental Commitment," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(5), pages 1-25, February.
    5. Xie, Jiangtao & Jain, Tanusree, 2024. "Unpacking micro-CSR through a computational literature review: An identity heterogeneity view of internal stakeholders," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 172(C).
    6. Hericher, Corentin & Bridoux, Flore & Raineri, Nicolas, 2023. "I feel morally elevated by my organization’s CSR, so I contribute to it," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    7. Khalid Mehmood & Fauzia Jabeen & Hina Rehman & Yaser Iftikhar & Naseer Abbas Khan, 2024. "Understanding the boosters of employees’ voluntary pro-environmental behavior: a time-lagged investigation," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 26(4), pages 9847-9869, April.
    8. DaYeon Choi & Insuk Lee & SangHoon Kang & HyunKue Lee, 2024. "The Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility Attribution on Socially Responsible Behaviors: The Mediating Role of Meaningfulness of Work," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 17(1), pages 1-17, December.
    9. Kenneth de Roeck & Nicolas Raineri & David Jones & Sabrina Scheidler, 2024. "Giving the benefit of the doubt: Investigating the insurance-like effect of CSR in mitigating negative employee reactions to psychological contract breach," Post-Print hal-04238140, HAL.
    10. Jiali Chen & Aiqing Zhang, 2023. "Exploring How and When Environmental Corporate Social Responsibility Impacts Employees’ Green Innovative Work Behavior: The Mediating Role of Creative Self-Efficacy and Environmental Commitment," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(1), pages 1-20, December.
    11. Saskia Crucke & Marie Servaes & Tom Kluijtmans & Shana Mertens & Eveline Schollaert, 2022. "Linking environmentally‐specific transformational leadership and employees' green advocacy: The influence of leadership integrity," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 29(2), pages 406-420, March.
    12. Bilal Afsar & Waheed Ali Umrani, 2020. "Corporate social responsibility and pro‐environmental behavior at workplace: The role of moral reflectiveness, coworker advocacy, and environmental commitment," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 27(1), pages 109-125, January.
    13. Irmela Fritzi Koch-Bayram & Torsten Biemann, 2024. "How Corporate Social (Ir)Responsibility Influences Employees’ Private Prosocial Behavior: An Experimental Study," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 194(1), pages 103-118, September.
    14. Huseyin Keles & Ozgur Yayla & Abdullah Tarinc & Ali Keles, 2023. "The Effect of Environmental Management Practices and Knowledge in Strengthening Responsible Behavior: The Moderator Role of Environmental Commitment," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(2), pages 1-18, January.
    15. Farooq Ahmad & Md Billal Hossain & Khurram Mustafa & Faisal Ejaz & Kausar Fiaz Khawaja & Anna Dunay, 2023. "Green HRM Practices and Knowledge Sharing Improve Environmental Performance by Raising Employee Commitment to the Environment," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(6), pages 1-19, March.
    16. Jiang Yang & Saqib Yaqoob Malik & Yasir Hayat Mughal & Tamoor Azam & Wajid Khan & Muhammad Asif Chuadhry & Muhammad Ilyas & Yukun Cao, 2023. "Assessing the Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility, Green Shared Vision on Voluntary Green Work Behavior: Mediating Role of Green Human Resource Management," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(23), pages 1-18, November.
    17. Lucas Amaral Lauriano & Juliane Reinecke & Michael Etter, 2022. "When Aspirational Talk Backfires: The Role of Moral Judgements in Employees’ Hypocrisy Interpretation," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 181(4), pages 827-845, December.
    18. Nuraddeen Abubakar Nuhu & Kevin Baird & Sophia Su, 2023. "The impact of interactive and diagnostic levers of eco‐control on eco‐innovation: The mediating role of employee environmental citizenship behaviour," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 63(2), pages 2245-2271, June.
    19. Anisur Rehman & Aftab Ara & Harman Preet Singh, 2025. "How green HRM practices, organisational citizenship behaviour towards environment, technological competence and resistance to change influence the environmental performance of Saudi universities," Future Business Journal, Springer, vol. 11(1), pages 1-18, December.
    20. Xiaojuan Rao & Hongliang Qiu & Alastair M. Morrison & Wei Wei, 2022. "Linking Perceived Environmental CSR to Residents’ Environmental Citizenship Behavior in Rural Tourism: The Mediating Role of Resident–Environment Relationship Quality," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(24), pages 1-19, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05321037. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.