The Impact of Servant Leadership on the Responsibility-Taking Behavior of Grassroots Administrators in Colleges and Universities: The Mediating Role of Prosocial Motivation

Keqin Huang

doi:10.6918/IJOSSER.202605_9(5).0006

Authors

Keqin Huang

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.6918/IJOSSER.202605_9(5).0006

Keywords:

Servant Leadership, Responsibility-Taking Behavior, Prosocial Motivation.

Abstract

With the growing problems such as insufficient initiative and ineffective performance among grassroots administrators in colleges and universities, how to effectively stimulate their responsibility-taking behavior has become an urgent issue to be addressed in current higher education governance. Through a literature review of servant leadership and responsibility-taking behavior, combined with practically observed phenomena, this study finds that servant leadership may exert a positive impact on the responsibility-taking behavior of grassroots administrators in colleges and universities, which calls for further empirical exploration. Therefore, drawing on prosocial theory, social learning theory, and job relational design theory, this study investigates the mechanism underlying the influence of servant leadership on subordinates’ responsibility-taking behavior. A questionnaire survey, as an empirical research method, is adopted to test the research hypotheses. Based on 417 valid questionnaires collected, the results show that servant leadership positively promotes the responsibility-taking of grassroots administrators in colleges and universities, and their prosocial motivation plays a mediating role between servant leadership and their responsibility-taking. According to the findings, this paper elaborates on the theoretical value and practical implications of the study, discusses its limitations, and provides prospects for future research.

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