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IJPSM
35,2 Servant leadership and
organisational citizenship
behaviour: the role of public service
236 motivation and length of time spent
Received 28 April 2021
Revised 21 October 2021
with the leader
8 December 2021
Accepted 16 January 2022 Robert Ipiin Gnankob, Abraham Ansong and Kassimu Issau
School of Business, University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana

Abstract
Purpose – The study examined the influence of servant leadership on organisational citizenship behaviour
(OCB) of employees in Ghana through the intervening roles of public service motivation (PSM) and the length of
time spent with the leader.
Design/methodology/approach – A structured questionnaire was used to gather data from 328 randomly
sampled respondents within the six metropoles in Ghana for data analysis. The partial least squares structural
equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was used to address the hypotheses of the study.
Findings – The study found that servant leadership has a significant positive influence on OCB and PSM. The
study also found that PSM significantly and positively influences OCB. The study finally established that
whiles PSM significantly mediated the relationship between servant leadership and OCB, the length of time
spent with leaders did not moderate the servant leadership and OCB nexus.
Practical implications – The study implies that stakeholders in the local government sector, such as the
Local Government Service Board, should emphasise employing or promoting supervisors who are servant
leadership-driven to occupy key positions within the local government structure. Efforts could also be made to
train the supervisors to acquire servant leadership traits.
Originality/value – The results from the study provide significant insights on how the public sector in Ghana
and beyond can identify, develop and maintain servant leaders to promote employees OCB. Also, being a
pioneering study in Ghana, the results and recommendations from the study have set the pace for future
scholars to discuss issues that engulf the public sector.
Keywords Servant leadership, Public service motivation, Organisational citizenship behaviour,
Length of time spent with the leader, Ghana
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
Public sector institutions in developing nations are faced with a myriad of challenges spanning
from low employee commitment to low productivity. Kumasey et al. (2017) reported that public
sector employees are not as committed to taking extra work roles as compared to private sector
employees despite their continued enjoyment of job security and better conditions of service.
Arnaboldi et al. (2015) postulated that the public service environment in recent years demands
public servants to deliver quality services, ensure efficiency and provide value for money.
Furthermore, several professionals and experts have contended that public establishments,
including those at the national, federal, state and local government levels, should increase the
level of their performance and efficiency to reflect that of the private sector organisations’
orientation (Kim, 2012; Rayner et al., 2012). Likewise, with the advent of the new public
management (NPM), the public sector has been put under pressure from citizens to ensure that
International Journal of Public
Sector Management operations in the sector hit cost recovery targets whiles eliminating wastes through public sector
Vol. 35 No. 2, 2022
pp. 236-253
reforms.
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0951-3558
Thus, employees in the public service, who have an innovative mindset, are willing to
DOI 10.1108/IJPSM-04-2021-0108 commit themselves to the public mandate and engage in transformative initiatives without
necessarily being rewarded for such efforts are central to driving these changes (Wang et al., Servant
2019; Couros, 2015; Mahembe et al., 2015). Kim (2012) claims that organisational citizenship leadership and
behaviour (OCB) of employees is one area researchers and practitioners should emphasise to
help advance the NPM call and to ensure institutional success in the sector. Pioneering
OCB
scholar, Organ (1988), noted that OCB is an enactment and display of individual extra-role
behaviours that are discretionary and are not explicitly acknowledged by the formal reward
system of an organisation. Elche et al. (2020) viewed OCBs as job-related behaviours that are
optional, not directly or overtly recognised by the formal reward system of an organisation, 237
but which eventually promotes the effective and efficient running of that organisation. This
suggests that employees who exhibit work behaviours that are fundamental to the
achievement of the organisation’s goals, yet not stipulated in the employment contract nor
acknowledged by the official reward mechanisms of the organisation, are said to be
showing OCBs.
Within the public sector, Ingrams (2020, p. 223) assert that “OCB has special salience in
public organisations due to the relevance of generalised citizenship in government-citizen
relationships and the goals of public administration reforms to achieve greater organisational
responsiveness to citizens”. Part of the reforms to ensure efficiency in Ghana was introducing
the metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs) through the local government
system under the remits of the 1992 Constitution (Article 240) and the Local Government Act
2016 (Act 936) to spearhead these mandates. The MMDAs are seen as a laboratory of
democracy and also principal agents for advancing the cause of equal opportunity,
redistribution of wealth and reducing poverty (Adu-Gyamfi, 2014) and advocating for
efficient utilisation of public resources at the local levels. Since OCB can drive transformation
and maintain institutional success, public sector organisations, such as MMDAs, can
leverage these behaviours by creating an atmosphere that will stimulate the employees’
willingness to voluntarily initiate and pursue OCBs with high enthusiasm (Aziz et al., 2017).
Although majority of works have focused on other leadership styles, such as
transformational leadership (Nanang et al., 2021) and ethical leadership (Ali et al., 2018),
other scholars (Tran and Truong, 2021; Slack et al., 2020; Eva et al., 2019; Gotsis and Grimani,
2016) contend that servant leadership fits well in the public sector and may play a more
prominent role in improving the OCBs of employees. Notably, Hoch et al. (2018) argued that
servant leadership shows distinctiveness and the ability to better explain the variety of
employee outcomes over other forms of leadership. Other studies (Pressentin, 2020; Ying
et al., 2020) have applauded servant leadership beyond other types of leadership in
influencing employee extra behaviours because servant leaders focus on the needs of their
followers and recognise their responsibility to society. The essence of servant leadership
stands on the principle that leaders should develop their followers in a manner that followers
will themselves emerge as servant leaders (Gotsis and Grimani, 2016). Servant leadership
characteristics such as stewardship, creating value for the community and altruistic calling
portray that leaders act selflessly and thus, create a sense of OCB among subordinates (Eva
et al., 2019; Walumbwa et al., 2010).
According to the social exchange theory (Blau, 1964), social relationships are voluntary
arrangements that are driven by the benefits of the interactions upheld with other people.
Therefore, within the framework of the reciprocal rule, when an individual demonstrates
benevolent behaviour towards another, a psychological inequality may result, which compels
the latter possibly to feel obliged to act in favour of the former. In line with the above reasoning,
when servant leaders express strong concern for the needs of their followers and treat followers
fairly, these may arouse OCBs from the employees in return (Chon and Zoltan, 2019).
Despite few studies on the link between servant leadership and OCB of employees across
the globe, these records have not yet been consistent. Mathur and Negi (2014) noted that
contradictory findings have been documented in the literature concerning the significance
IJPSM and the direction of the relationship between the study’s constructs. For instance, previous
35,2 scholars (Coxen et al., 2016; Elche et al., 2020; Mahembe and Engelbrecht, 2014) have revealed
significant relationships between the constructs, whiles others found non-significant nexus
between servant leadership and OCB (Harwiki, 2013; van Der Hoven, 2016). Furthermore,
Zehir et al. (2013) view the relationship as not direct and argued that the link between the
constructs should be examined further. In studies of Nobari et al. (2014), Faruqi and Hafidz
(2019) and Ghalavi and Nastiezaie (2020), the authors recorded an indirect significant link
238 between servant leadership and OCB.
Other scholars have reported that public service motivation (PSM) is among the elements
that can spur OCB within the public sector (Khan et al., 2016; Shim and Faerman, 2017). This
is because PSM has been distinguished for its role in the OCB and other aspects of employee
and organisational performance in the public sector (Campbell and Im, 2016; Kroll and Vogel,
2014). Based on the PSM theory, it is expected that public servants who have high levels of
PSM (Perry et al., 2010) will have a strong sense of civic duty and may be motivated to pursue
OCB. Ingrams (2020) and Andrew and Le
on-C
azares (2015), who have examined the link
between PSM and OCB, have concluded that PSM encourages public employees to attach
greater value to the provision of better service to citizens and are indulged in more selfless
and extra-role behaviours because of their values.
Moreover, Burke et al. (2017) noted that employee “followers” do not just get influenced by
the actions of leaders to drive a change process; rather, they may take some time to be able to
mimic and integrate the behaviours being exhibited in the workplace by leaders for the
benefit of organisation. Bandura (1977) posits that individuals learn through imitation of role
models over some time. The author further argued in the social learning theory (SLT) that
people are not only reacting to external influences as if they were “unthinking organisms” but
also engage in carefully selecting, organising and transforming stimuli that affect them. In
line with the foregoing arguments, employees may need some period to fully analyse the
actions of servant leaders in an establishment before making the decision to incorporate the
actions into their work behaviours.
According to Coxen et al. (2016), employees’ willingness to commit to exhibiting
exceptional work behaviours in the organisation may be contingent on the presence of other
organisational factors, such as PSM and the length of time employees serve under their
leaders, which have been neglected over time in the determination of servant leadership and
OCB nexus. Mostafa and Leon-Cazares (2016) asserted that PSM could serve as one
significant construct to determine public employees’ work behaviours due to its general
acceptability as a set of motives that drives individuals to participate in deeds that benefit
society. Again, since employees possess the tendency of taking time to learn traits of their
superiors and modelling them for their growth and development of the organisation
(Bandura, 1977; Burke et al., 2017), it is likely that the length of time spent with leaders may
affect the strength and direction of the servant leadership and OCB nexus. Finally, much has
not been done on servant leadership and OCB link in the developing country perspective,
particularly in Ghana, which needs further investigation.
Therefore, this paper attempts to fill the gaps by answering the following research
questions: (1) how does servant leadership influence OCB among public sector employees?,
and (2) how do PSM and length of time spent with the leader affect the servant leadership and
public sector employees’ OCB link?

Theoretical underpinning and literature review

The social exchange, social learning and PSM theories have been used to explain relationships
in the study. Concerning the social exchange theory, Blau (1964) posits that individuals
engage in exchange relationships as a result of the experiences they had with others.
The author indicated that social relationships are products of voluntary actions motivated by Servant
the benefits derived from the interactions maintained with other people. Once strong social leadership and
exchange relationships have been established, then theoretically the norm of reciprocity
will cause both parties to expect that their positive behaviours will be reciprocated (Chan and
OCB
Mak, 2014). Bandura (1977) proposes that individuals learn from gradually observing
and emulating the attitudes, values and behaviour of important role models in their
environment. Boekhorst (2015) added that when subordinates observe the positive behaviours
exhibited by credible role models, they learn that these are required behaviours within their 239
social context and may seek to emulate them. They will seek to model the behaviours of their
leaders due to either the leader’s position or because they see the leader as a mentor worth
imitating. These may lead to the employee exhibiting extra-role behaviours of their leaders.
Finally, the study draws inferences from the PSM theory in that when employees in the public
sector show high levels of PSM such as willingness to participate in a policymaking, having
the passion to help others towards the common good of society or upholds ethics and integrity
of all standards at work, such behaviours may foster their citizenship behaviours
(Perry et al., 2010).

Servant leadership and OCB

According to Greenleaf (1977), servant leaders are those whose first and overriding concern is to
serve other people; after that, they deliberately choose to lead the people. The founding scholar
posits that servant leaders possess a strong wish to offer themselves for the services of followers
along with the ability to lead in a harmonised way that brings thoughtful interaction with the
surrounding environment. Thus, servant leaders seek to demonstrate certain qualities, including
altruism, hope, humility, vision, caring for other people, integrity, interpersonal acceptance and
trustworthiness (Van Dierendonck and Nuijten, 2011). Mahembe and Engelbrecht (2014)
proclaimed that servant leadership is based on the premise that to bring out the best in followers,
leaders should rely on one-on-one communication to understand the abilities, needs, desires,
goals and potential of their employees.
According to Organ (1988), OCBs are behaviours displayed by employees that are
discretionary, not directly or explicitly recognised by the formal reward system and that, in
the aggregate, promote the effective functioning of an organisation. From the perspective of
the author, OCB is fundamentally an enactment or demonstration of an employee’s extra-role
behaviours that are optional and are geared towards benefiting the organisation yet are not
recognised by the prescribed reward system. This is because such behaviours are often
internally inspired, arising from and sustained by the employee’s intrinsic need for a sense of
achievement, competence, belonging or affiliation in the organisation (Mahembe et al., 2015).
Aziz et al. (2017), Elche et al. (2020) and Eva et al. (2019) have asserted that employees often
feel responsible or obligated to exhibit OCBs in return for the humanistic concern they receive or
see their leaders (supervisors) do. Hence, when servant leaders express concern for the growth
and development of their subordinates, these leaders become admirable, seen as people of
integrity and as such, the subordinates may feel psychologically obligated to reciprocate
through OCB (Eva et al., 2019). Agreeably, Chon and Zoltan (2019) found that servant leaders’
admirable integrity traits drive the employees to reciprocate discretionary, extra-role and
positive behaviours in the organisation. In light of this, the study postulated that
H1. Servant leadership has a significant positive influence on OCB.

Servant leadership and PSM

Servant leadership seems appropriate for public organisations because they demonstrate
familiar altruistic callings as PSM and have the desire to foster altruistic behaviours in
IJPSM employees (Schwarz et al., 2016). Altruism is the foundation of several PSM definitions, which
35,2 suggests that PSM is extremely rooted in one’s desire to serve others for the benefit of society
(Perry et al., 2010). Stazyk and Davis (2015) also found that PSM was positively associated
with ethical obligations engrained in integrity and virtue to do good for community
development. Similarly, servant leaders are characterised by their ethical and self-sacrificing
behaviours, compassion for others and altruistic nature (Sendjaya et al., 2008). Moreover,
Hunter et al.’s (2013) study concluded that servant leadership has a positive influence on the
240 service climate within an organisation by fostering a culture that emphasises the importance
of taking an interest in the growth and development of others. Furthermore, drawing on SLT,
it can be inferred that due to the altruistic, compassionate and dedicated characteristics of
servant leadership, servant leaders can persuade subordinates to demonstrate some levels of
PSM (Hunter et al., 2013; Liden et al., 2014). Hence, the postulation of the hypothesis that
H2. Servant leadership has a positive significant relationship with PSM.

PSM and OCB

PSM has often been used as an approach to explain the behaviour of public officials (Ritz et al.,
2016a, b). PSM originates from beliefs that the motives of public servants are systematically
different from their private sector counterparts (Perry et al., 2010; Zhu and Wu, 2016). Thus,
the term PSM points to the notion that people are motivated to work in public service as a
result of altruism, a desire to serve or a wish to have an impact on society. It is closely rooted
in the understanding that public service is different from the private sector, both because of
the tasks it performs and the behaviours it expects of its employees (Ritz et al., 2016a, b). van
Witteloostuijn et al. (2017) noted that PSM is the desire for an individual to serve the public
interest and offers an explanation for the reasons why public service activities take place.
Ingrams (2020) argued that OCB can play a substitution role of PSM because it grants
individuals the inner motivation to render their services to the organisation and their fellow
workers rather than relying on external influencers, such as the role of a leader and pay. The
PSM theorist argues that employees who have high PSM are more ready to sacrifice their
interest to help the greater community (Perry et al., 2010) and to help the organisation to
achieve its objectives, which are also behaviours inherent in employees’ OCB (Gould-
Williams et al., 2013). Also, because PSM relates more to employees in government
institutions, one can conclude that public service employees with a high level of PSM are
attracted to the idea of serving the citizens, committed to the public good, a desire to serve
others and voluntarily take extra responsibilities (Ingrams, 2020; Mostafa and Leon-Cazares,
2016). Hence, these characteristics are more likely to increase employees’ willingness to
engage in positive extra behaviours that benefit the organisation and its members (Gould-
Williams et al., 2013). Thus, the study hypothesised that
H3. PSM has a significant positive influence on OCB.

Servant leadership, PSM and OCB nexus

In the light of social exchange theory (Blau, 1964), servant leaders who lead employees with
service orientation, sacrifice their self-interest, demonstrate empathy and care, and act in the
best interest of the community may get their employees to engage in OCB (van Dierendonck,
2011). Also, according to SLT, individuals learn by “paying attention to and emulating the
attitudes, values and behaviours of credible models” (Brown and Trevi~ no, 2006, p. 597). Thus,
when the employees are inspired by their servant leaders, they will learn and revolve other
serving values, such as sharing their knowledge (Tuan, 2016), to help develop their colleagues
and contribute to the success of their team and organisation. Servant leaders foster PSM
among public servants, which in turn triggers their extra-role behaviours, such as knowledge
sharing, increasing their commitment to the public interest and civic duty, compassion and Servant
self-sacrifice for public service (Tuan, 2016; Perry et al., 2010). leadership and
Moreover, since PSM is a drive for employees to share knowledge to increase their
competencies as well as those of their colleagues to fulfil civic duties, it encourages the
OCB
employees to demonstrate other extra behaviours that are useful for organisational growth.
Hence, employees with high levels of PSM care about doing work that has a positive bearing
on others and the organisation (Chen et al., 2014). Because of the foregone exposition, the
study hypothesised that 241
H4. PSM mediates the nexus between servant leadership and OCB.

Servant leadership, length of time with the leader and OCB link
In Schwarz et al.’s (2016, p. 8) study on the mediating role of PSM in the relationship between
servant leadership and follower’s job performance, they controlled for length of time
followers have worked under their supervisor and noted that the follower’s attitudes of
showing PSM and performance behaviours are “influenced not only by the follower’s
relationship with the leader but also by the degree to which a follower believes their leader
displays servant leadership consistently over time to other team members.” According to
Schewarz et al. (2016) and Shapiro and Kirkman (2001), if the employees foresee that the
leader selectively shows servant behaviours across members, they may feel concerned that
the leader will not provide them with the benefits of servant leadership in the future. These
fears of “anticipatory injustice” (Shapiro and Kirkman, 2001) may have some influence on
current follower behaviours as actual unjust treatment. The assertion made by these scholars
suggests that time may be of the essence in servant leadership research as followers may get
to learn about their leaders before acting in response (Burke et al., 2017). Bandura (1977)
argued that since servant leaders’ behaviours could be modelled, this may result in employees
showing higher levels of OCBs, including assisting their clients and other employees in the
organisation when the subordinates have over some time learned about their supervisor-
servant leaders. In respect of the above logic, the study anticipated that
H5. The length of time with leader moderates the relationship between servant
leadership and OCB.
Figure 1 shows a conceptual framework that reflects the hypotheses of the study. The dotted
lines illustrate the indirect relationship between servant leadership and OCB using PSM as a
mediator.

H4

PSM

H3
H2
Servant H1 OCB
Leadership
H5

Figure 1.
LTwL The conceptual
framework
IJPSM Research methodology
35,2 Sample size and sampling procedure and data collection procedure
The study was conducted on the employees of the six metropolitan assemblies in Ghana,
namely Accra, Tema, Kumasi, Tamale, Cape Coast and Sekondi-Takoradi metropoles. These
study areas were chosen because they serve the higher geographic populace within the local
government structure of Ghana. The 1992 Constitution (Article 240(1)) and the Local
Governance Act 2016 (Act 936) of Ghana established the MMDAs to spearhead public sector
242 development at the local level. The metropolitan assemblies under Section 78 of the Local
Government Act 2016 (Act 936) have 16 departments which are headed by supervisors.
Employees working under each supervisor in the six metropoles were used as units of
analysis to assess the perception about their respective supervisors. This means that 96
(16 3 6) supervisors were assessed from the employee’s perspective. From a population of
4,793 permanent staff of the metropoles, 357 of them were sampled based on Krejcie and
Morgan’s (1970) sample size determination table. Data collection was done from January to
February, 2021. Although a total number of 357 respondents were targeted to participate
randomly in the study, 328 of them actually did participate giving a response rate of 92%
comprising 212 males (64.6%) and 116 females (35.4%) (See Appendix 1 for details of other
demographic information).

Variables
Responses on servant leadership were drawn from Ehrhart’s (2004) 14-item servant
leadership scale. This scale has been used because of its wide acceptability in contemporary
leadership research (Liden et al., 2015). Kim et al.’s (2013) revised 16-item scale was also used
to measure PSM. The authors have proposed several changes to the original Perry and Wise’s
(1990) multidimensional measure of PSM to support the development of a more universal
measure that can be used globally, including public sector research. Podsakoff et al.’s (1990)
19-item OCB scale was adapted to elicit responses from the employees. The scale appears
more reflective of extra-work behaviours of employees across all organisations (Abid et al.,
2015). The length of time spent with the leader was measured using the number of years the
staff worked under their immediate supervisors.

Analysis
The hypotheses were tested using the partial least squares structural equation modelling
(PLS-SEM). The PLS-SEM was used primarily because of two reasons: first, due to its efficacy
in predicting the relationship between exogenous and endogenous variables (Farrukh et al.,
2019) over other techniques, such as regression, and second, due to the presence of the
incremental characters (Hair et al., 2017), i.e. PSM and length of time spent with the leader that
is mediating and moderating in the servant leadership and OCB nexus (Figure 2). Concisely,
PLS-SEM requires that accepted criteria in the measurement and structural models are met
before proceeding to discuss the findings. As reported in the ensuing tables, the measurement
model; indicator loadings (IL), internal consistency, convergent validity and discriminant
validity was first evaluated followed by the structural model (Collinearity assessment,
coefficient of determination (R2), significance (p: t-statistic) predictive relevance (Q2) and effect
size (f2). The descriptive statistics of the items have been presented in Appendix 2.

Results
Measurement model assessment
Reliability of the indicators, internal consistency issues and discriminant validity were
reported in Tables 1 and 2.
 Servant
leadership and
OCB

243

Figure 2.
Structural output

From Table 1, loadings for SL were between 0.699–0.888, loading for PSM ranged from 0.706–
0.879, whiles those for OCB were between 0.832–0.891. As a rule of thumb prescribed by Hair
et al. (2017), the indicators shown in the table were reliable. The rest were deleted from the
model because they failed to meet the threshold. Furthermore, a cursory check at the values of
all the measures of internal consistency shows that the constructs’ internal consistency
reliability was achieved because the values of CA, rho_A and CR all met the accepted
threshold of 0.708 or higher (Hair et al., 2017). Again, the constructs’ convergent validity,
which measured the extent to which the constructs shared mutual relationships, was
satisfactory because values of AVE were well higher than the minimum 50% threshold
(AVE ≥0.50).
As a rule of thumb heterotrait–monotrait (HTMT) ratio, less than 0.85 connotes the
nonexistence of discriminant validity problems (Henseler et al., 2015). Table 2 indicated that
constructs were well distinguished from each other (Italic values < HTMT0.85).

Structural model assessment

The variance inflation factor (VIF) results in Table 3 suggest that the model was not
contaminated with common method biases (CMBs). Based on the recommendations of Hair
et al. (2017), VIF values less than or up to 3.3 connote the absence of CMB, and this criterion
was well upheld in this study. Therefore, the various hypotheses were then tested based on
the other results depicted in the same table and Figure 2.
The results in Table 3 indicated that servant leadership has a significant positive
influence on the employees’ OCB (R 5 0.365; t 5 4.494; p < 0.001) and PSM (R 5 0.790;
IJPSM Constructs IL CA rho_A CR AVE
35,2
OCB 0.956 0.958 0.962 0.739
OCB10 0.845
OCB11 0.853
OCB2 0.843
OCB3 0.832
244 OCB5 0.845
OCB6 0.894
OCB7 0.891
OCB8 0.891
OCB9 0.840
PSM 0.942 0.948 0.950 0.632
PSMA1 0.775
PSMA2 0.847
PSMA3 0.830
PSMA4 0.879
PSMC10 0.735
PSMC11 0.706
PSMC9 0.759
PSMV5 0.836
PSMV6 0.852
PSMV7 0.758
PSMV8 0.749
Servant leadership (SL) 0.933 0.938 0.944 0.629
SLQ1 0.707
SLQ10 0.774
SLQ11 0.861
SLQ12 0.888
SLQ13 0.879
SLQ14 0.869
SLQ2 0.764
SLQ4 0.710
SLQ6 0.699
SLQ9 0.746
Length of time with leader (LTwL) 1.000 1.000 1.000 1.000
Table 1. SL*LTwL 0.933 1.000 0.943 0.625
Indicator, constructs Note(s): CA 5 Cronbach’s alpha; CR 5 Composite reliability; CV 5 Convergent validity; AVE 5 Average
reliability and validity variance extracted

LTwL OCB PSM SL*LTwL SL

LTwL
OCB 0.125
PSM 0.059 0.526
Table 2. SL*LTwL 0.096 0.068 0.092
Heterotrait–monotrait SL 0.029 0.567 0.823 0.146
ratio (HTMT) Note(s): Italic values depict HTMT threshold for determining nonexistence of discriminant validity issues

t 5 38.841; p < 0.000) in metropolitan assemblies in Ghana. Again, the result shows that PSM
has a significant positive influence on OCB (R 5 0.220; t 5 2.637; p 5 0.008). Furthermore, the
structural path of the indirect influence of the servant leadership and OCB through PSM was
significant (R 5 0.174; t 5 2.607; p 5 0.009). However, a non-significant relationship was
found of the moderating role on length of time in the nexus between servant leadership and Servant
OCB (R 5 0.019; t 5 0.276; p 5 0.782). These results further indicated that servant leadership, leadership and
PSM and the length of time spent with leader harmoniously or jointly account for 32.1% of the
variation in the employees’ OCB within the metropolitan assemblies in Ghana. Moreover,
OCB
these variables made a statistically significant moderate predictive relevance (Q2 5 0.233) on
the values of OCB while servant leadership predicts PSM substantially (Q2 5 0.384). In
respect of the effect size, the study averred that SL (f2 5 0.073), PSM (f2 5 0.027) and length of
time spent with the leader (f2 5 0.025) cause small statistically significant positive variance in 245
OCB while SL also leads to a large significant change in PSM (f2 5 0.663).

Concluding discussions
The study examined the influence of servant leadership on employees’ OCB through the
mediating role of PSM and length of time spent with a leader as moderator. The findings
showed that servant leadership has a significant positive influence on OCB in the
metropolitan assemblies of Ghana, which supports hypothesis one. The study concurred that
when the Government of Ghana or public sector policy advocates wish to provoke the
citizenship behaviours of the employees in the sector, then, they should be concerned about
the kind of supervisors who are placed at the various units and departments within these
institutions. Concisely, these direct supervisors or heads of departments within the sector
should be welcoming, promoting the good of the employees and leading by example. The
employees may exhibit OCB if they believe that they have the ability and competence to
perform their tasks successfully as well as have the independence and freedom from their
leaders to do such tasks. Thus, when servant leaders show concern for the ultimate good of
their employees, seek employees’ advancement and grant them freedom, they will obtain
extra-role behaviours as feedback. The findings of the study corroborate with positions
upheld in studies conducted by scholars, such as Elche et al. (2020), Abid et al. (2015) and
Mahembe and Engelbrecht (2014), on the SL and OCB nexus.
Again, hypothesis two was supported. This means that servant leaders tend to ignite PSM
traits, such as being altruistic, ethical, compassionate and dedicated towards organisational
goals. Again, to rejuvenate public sector employees’ original orientation to serve the society
wholly, institutional managers and superiors must continually demonstrate the traits of
“leading by first following”. This perspective was shared in the SLT where Bandura (1977)
asserted that employees exhibit certain characteristics in an organisation because they
learned or modelled their leaders who are role models. Again, van Dierendonck (2011)
asserted that servant leaders focus on humility, authenticity and interpersonal acceptance
and also see workers as an end in themselves by helping them advance their personal and
professional growth to reach their potential, and these have implications on the PSM of the
employees.

Beta (R) T statistics p-values VIF R2 Q2 f2

LTwL → OCB 0.131 2.614 0.009 1.013 0.321 0.233 0.025

PSM → OCB 0.220 2.637 0.008 2.673 0.027
SL*LTwL → OCB 0.019 0.276 0.782 1.030 0.000
SL → OCB 0.365 4.494 0.000 2.699 0.073
SL → PSM → OCB 0.174 2.607 0.009
SL → PSM 0.790 38.841 0.000 1.000 0.625 0.384 0.663 Table 3.
Note(s): R2 of 0.25, 0.5 and 0.75 is considered as weak, moderate and substantial, respectively; Q2 of 0.02, 0.15 Structural model
and 0.35 is considered as small, medium and large, respectively; f2 of 0.02, 0.15 and 0.35 is seen as small, medium results of the
and large, respectively hypotheses
IJPSM Similarly, the implications of the results prove that PSM statistically has a significant
35,2 influence on the OCB of employees in Ghana. Thus, employees are willing to exhibit extra-role
behaviours such as extending support to their fellows at the workplace in times of need,
protecting organisational properties, offering constructive suggestions in the organisation,
showing patience, supporting the effective sharing of useful information and promoting the
organisation’s image based on their already predisposition to do good in the society. Hence,
the third hypothesis of the study was confirmed. The findings of the present study shed light
246 on the postulations expressed in works of prior scholars (Ingrams, 2020) that the nature of
PSM makes it an important construct at complementing the employees’ extra-role behaviours
in an organisation. Corroborating with Ingrams (2020), the author found that PSM has a
significant effect on OCB across public sector employment settings.
Furthermore, hypothesis four was supported in the study since the results of the indirect
path showed PMS mediates the relationship between servant leadership and OCB. It could be
inferred that servant leadership’s influence on the extra-role behaviours of the employees in
the metropolitan assemblies in Ghana could be better improved through PSM. Furthermore,
public managers, including heads of various departments of the local government structure
who demonstrate servant leadership traits, will boost the PSM of the employees, which
eventually leads to the employees displaying OCBs. The reasoning is that employees in the
public service look up to their superiors as role models (Bandura, 1977) from whom they (i.e.
employees) mimic behaviours that remind them of their predisposition to commit to civic
duty and work for the good of society. These PSM features of the employees will result in the
demonstration of OCBs, including sharing their knowledge (Tuan, 2016), protecting company
properties and promoting the institution’s image.
However, the length of time spent with the leader does not moderate the nexus of servant
leadership and OCB. Therefore, hypothesis five was not supported. We reasoned that since
OCBs are not part of the formal prescribed duties of the employees (Organ, 1988), they will
only choose to exercise them at discretion regardless of how long they serve under servant
leaders. The desire for the employees in the public sector in Ghana to preserve the image of
their institutions, do good to co-workers and avoid unnecessary complaints are purely borne
out of discretions and not influenced by the number of times they see their superiors exhibit
servantship. The study supports the prepositions made empirically by some scholars (Abid
et al., 2015; Singh and Kolekar, 2015) that OCB can neither be obligatory nor can be enforced
by the managers or the supervisors upon their subordinates because the basis of OCB is
purely voluntary.
The study failed to support the assertion made in Bandura’s (1977) SLT that employees
need time under their leaders to carefully select, organise and emulate the leaders’ traits in
course of executing their duties. The study is further opposed to the positions upheld by
Schewarz et al. (2016), Shapiro and Kirkman (2001) and Burke et al. (2017) who found time to
be of the essence in leadership research, particularly, in leadership and performance nexus.
The reason accounting for these diverse views may be that the aforementioned scholars have
failed to distinguish what kind of work employees are willing to perform given the period
they serve under their leaders. In the current study, the task to be performed was purely
voluntary and not binding on the employees and hence the different results.

Practical implications
The study emphasised that stakeholders, such as the Ministry of Local Government and
Rural Development (MLGRD) and Local Government Service (LGS), under which
metropolitan assemblies operate should employ or promote managers or supervisors who
possess servant leadership traits as they are necessary for spurring citizenship behaviours
among employees in the service. The supervisors may also be trained through seminars or
sponsored to take short courses in leadership to develop the servant leadership traits towards Servant
improving the OCBs of employees. Furthermore, the study concludes that employees’ leadership and
predisposition to commit to the public mandate within the public sector establishments get
improved at the instances of servant leadership; thus, the leadership of high moral concern,
OCB
ethics and pragmatism should be emphasised in the sector. Also, the study implies that public
sector institutions should prioritise recruiting employees who have the sense to involve in
public policymaking, self-sacrifice, participate in public discourses at will and have
compassion for society. This is essential because part of the attributes of servant leadership 247
has been absorbed by PSM traits in contributing to employees’ citizenship behaviours in the
public sector in Ghana. Finally, the study concludes that employees’ desire to demonstrate
citizenship behaviours, such as working overtime and making constructive inputs into the
running of the public enterprise, does not depend on the length of time under the servant. This
is why the length of time spent under a servant leader’s supervision failed to moderate the
link between servant leadership and OCB.

Limitations and suggestions for future studies

The study examined how servant leadership and other contextual factors conspire to
influence the OCBs of employees in the metropolitan assemblies in Ghana. Thus, the scope of
the study was restricted to one aspect of the public sector in Ghana. This limits the extent to
which the findings of this study could be generalised across the other public sectors of the
nation. The study could be replicated in the other areas of the sector to provide a better
understanding of how the variables employed in the study affect the OCBs of employees.
Again, the study could not look at other organisational characteristics, such as the
institutional culture, within which servant leaders should operate and how that may influence
OCB. Future scholars may explore how that could interfere in the servant leadership and
OCB nexus.

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Appendix 1

Variable Option Frequency Percentage (%)

Gender Male 212 64.6

Female 116 35.4
Total 328 100
Age 21–30 years 64 19.5
31–40 years 223 68.0
41–50 years 36 11.0
51–60 years 5 1.5
Total 328 100
Educational level Postgraduate degree 30 9.1
First degree 169 51.5
Higher National Diploma (HND) 120 36.6
Senior High School (SHS) 4 1.2
Professional certificates 5 1.5
Total 328 100
Work experience 1–5 years 38 11.6
6–10 years 78 23.8
11–15 years 100 30.5
16–20 years 56 17.1 Table A1.
Above 21 years 56 17.1 Demographic
Total 328 100 information
IJPSM Appendix 2
35,2
Range
Standard (between 1–7
Code Item name Loadings Means deviations scale)

Servant leadership
252 SLQ1 My boss spends the time to form quality 0.707 5.2256 2.00253 6
relationships with employees
SLQ2 My boss creates a sense of community 0.764 5.1921 1.80798 6
among employees
SLQ4 My boss tries to reach consensus among 0.710 5.3415 1.63089 6
employees on important decisions
SLQ6 My boss makes the personal development 0.699 5.4695 1.55598 6
of employees a priority
SLQ9 My boss balances concern for day-to-day 0.746 4.8811 1.65565 6
details with projections for the future
SLQ10 My boss displays wide-ranging 0.774 4.8811 1.74731 6
knowledge and interests in finding
solutions to work problems
SLQ11 My boss makes me feel like I work with 0.861 5.2439 1.71741 6
him/her, not for him/her
SLQ12 My boss works hard at finding ways to 0.888 5.2378 1.57916 6
help others be the best they can be
SLQ13 My boss encourages employees to be 0.879 5.3140 1.56476 6
involved in community service and
volunteer activities outside of work
SLQ14 My boss emphasizes the importance of 0.869 5.4421 1.51334 6
giving back to the community
Public service motivation
PSMA1 I Admire people who initiate or are 0.775 5.5610 1.51928 6
involved in activities to aid my
community
PSMA2 It is important to contribute to activities 0.847 5.5549 1.43462 6
that tackle social problems
PSMA3 Meaningful public service is very 0.830 5.3079 1.47341 6
important to me
PSMA4 It is important for me to contribute to the 0.879 5.5396 1.40715 6
common good
PSMV5 I think equal opportunities for citizens are 0.836 5.6006 1.34628 6
very important
PSMV6 It is important that citizens can rely on the 0.852 5.6768 1.38774 6
continuous provision of public services
PSMV7 It is fundamental that the interests of 0.758 5.7470 1.45682 6
future generations are taken into account
when developing public policies
PSMV8 To act ethically is essential for public 0.749 5.7378 1.27004 6
servants
PSMC9 I feel sympathetic to the plight of the 0.759 5.5244 1.31075 6
underprivileged
Table A2. PSMC10 I empathize with other people who face 0.735 5.5884 1.25792 6
Item names, loadings, difficulties
means, standard PSMC11 I get very upset when I see other people 0.706 5.5823 1.28241 6
deviation and range of being treated unfairly
indicators that meet the
criteria (continued )
 Range
Servant
Standard (between 1–7 leadership and
Code Item name Loadings Means deviations scale) OCB
Organisational citizenship behaviour
OCB2 Help others who have been absent 0.843 4.6829 2.03413 6
OCB3 Willingly gives of his/her time to help 0.832 4.3811 1.76213 6
others who have work related problems 253
OCB5 Consults with me or other individuals 0.845 4.3902 1.66457 6
who might be affected by his/her actions
or decisions
OCB6 Does not abuse the rights of others 0.894 4.6646 1.84334 6
OCB7 Takes steps to prevent problems with 0.891 4.8079 1.71421 6
other workers
OCB8 Informs me before taking any important 0.891 4.7500 1.78637 6
action
OCB9 Does not consume a lot of time 0.840 4.9024 1.87766 6
complaining about trivial matters
OCB10 Does not tend to make problems bigger 0.845 5.0488 1.80656 6
than they are
OCB11 Does not constantly talk about wanting to 0.853 5.1189 1.69940 6
quit his/her job Table A2.

Corresponding author
Abraham Ansong can be contacted at: [email protected]

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