Servant Leadership and Mental Health Among Leaders and Followers: Empirical Investigations on Antecedents, Processes and Outcomes.
type: CreativeWork
description: The incidence of sick leave caused by mental illness has been on the rise for years. This ongoing “epidemic” poses a major challenge to the econo-my. In occupational health psychology, leadership is having an important role in maintaining and promoting mental health. A very promising leadership theory that goes beyond other prevalent leadership theories to increase positive out-comes on different levels (individual, team, organization) is servant leadership. Surprisingly, in-depth empirical evidence on the relationship between servant leadership and mental health at work is currently scarce. Therefore, I examined the impact of servant leadership on mental health at both employee and leader levels. Following the health definition of World Health Organisation, I conceptu-alized mental health as a two continua model and measured using two indicators, emotional exhaustion and flourishing. In doing so, I used emotional exhaustion as a subclinical indicator of mental illness and flourishing as an indicator of psycho-logical well-being. In addition, I examined compassionate love and religious quest orientation as potential antecedents of servant leadership. Thus, this thesis not only extends the nomological network of servant leadership in terms of ante-cedents, but also provides insights into the relationship between servant leader-ship and mental health on two levels, besides psychological processes and boundary conditions of this relationship. Such a more nuanced understanding of servant leadership in the context of occupational health psychology allows us to provide key practical implications for personnel selection and development, and for organizational development and occupational health management. Using a sample of leader-follower dyads (n = 170) in a cross-sectional design, with the first study I investigated whether compassionate love, as antithesis to narcissism, and religious quest orientation are significant predictors of servant leadership. The sample compri…
abstract: The incidence of sick leave caused by mental illness has been on the rise for years. This ongoing “epidemic” poses a major challenge to the econo-my. In occupational health psychology, leadership is having an important role in maintaining and promoting mental health. A very promising leadership theory that goes beyond other prevalent leadership theories to increase positive out-comes on different levels (individual, team, organization) is servant leadership. Surprisingly, in-depth empirical evidence on the relationship between servant leadership and mental health at work is currently scarce. Therefore, I examined the impact of servant leadership on mental health at both employee and leader levels. Following the health definition of World Health Organisation, I conceptu-alized mental health as a two continua model and measured using two indicators, emotional exhaustion and flourishing. In doing so, I used emotional exhaustion as a subclinical indicator of mental illness and flourishing as an indicator of psycho-logical well-being. In addition, I examined compassionate love and religious quest orientation as potential antecedents of servant leadership. Thus, this thesis not only extends the nomological network of servant leadership in terms of ante-cedents, but also provides insights into the relationship between servant leader-ship and mental health on two levels, besides psychological processes and boundary conditions of this relationship. Such a more nuanced understanding of servant leadership in the context of occupational health psychology allows us to provide key practical implications for personnel selection and development, and for organizational development and occupational health management. Using a sample of leader-follower dyads (n = 170) in a cross-sectional design, with the first study I investigated whether compassionate love, as antithesis to narcissism, and religious quest orientation are significant predictors of servant leadership. The sample compri…
author: Brouns, Tim Dietmar
language: en
keywords: Liderazgo, Agotamiento Emocional, Psicología del Liderazgo
license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
date published: 2021
date modified: 2026-07-24T03:17:38Z
provider: Universidad Catolica de Murcia - Doctoral
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Universidad Catolica de Murcia - Doctoral

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/10952/5141