The human side of leadership: exploring the relationship between servant leadership, organisational facilitators and happiness at work

Abstract

Although human resource management (HRM) research has established a significant relationship between leadership styles and different attitudinal outcomes, few studies have considered the important role of organisational facilitators as a more proximal outcome of servant leadership to explain happiness at work (HAW). This paper explores the relationships between servant leadership, organisational facilitators and HAW, based on the leader-member exchange (LMX) and job-demands resources (JD-R) theories. Individual-level analyses from a sample of 189 machine operators revealed that organisational facilitators fully mediate the relationship between servant leadership and HAW. The discussion reviews the implications of these results and suggests future research directions.