Antecedents and Outcomes of Servant Leadership: Implications for the Salesforce

Business scandals during the last 20 years have shown the importance of leadership. The uniqueness of a salesperson’s job makes leadership especially important in professional selling.  This study examined antecedents and outcomes of servant leadership. A model analyzing the relationship among moral identity, servant leadership, organizational justice, ethical work climate, and turnover was tested with a sample of 233 business-to-business salespeople and 76 sales managers via a multilevel structural equation model. The findings indicate that moral identity symbolization, but not moral identity internalization is a direct antecedent of servant leadership. Servant leadership is an indirect predictor (through organizational justice) of ethical work climate. Ethical work climate predicts turnover directly.  The study makes an important contribution to the existing literature by analyzing how moral identity influences servant leadership. In addition, this study indicates the influence of servant leadership directly on organizational justice and indirectly on ethical work climate and turnover.