The effect of servant leadership on followers’ career ambition in multilingual public service organizations
BP2-STS
- Lang, Bernhard ORCID Université de Fribourg
- Fribourg (Switzerland), 2026
1 ressource en ligne (XIV, 138 pages) ; 1 fichier pdf
Thèse: Université de Fribourg (Suisse), 2026
Leadership
Servant leadership
Travail de groupe
Entreprises publiques
Carrières dans la fonction publique
Ambition
Multilinguisme
Efficacité de l'organisation
Femmes
Différences entre genres
Domination masculine
Entreprises
Autorité (psychologie)
Aptitude pour la direction
English
This doctoral dissertation investigates how servant leadership influences followers’ leadership aspirations and leadership role occupancy in multilingual, male-dominated public service organizations. Integrating servant leadership theory with research on motivation, diversity, and leadership development, it examines how psychological, linguistic, gender, and structural factors shape leadership emergence. Three empirical studies conducted within Swiss public service organizations draw on multi-level survey data and quantitative methods.
Study 1 examines servant leadership and leadership role occupancy in a military context. At the individual level, servant leadership positively predicted leadership role occupancy, fully mediated by organizational commitment and partially mediated by task-related self-efficacy. Latin-speaking followers were more likely to assume leadership roles than Germanic-speaking followers. At the team level, smaller team size and higher leader education predicted leadership role occupancy.
Study 2 investigates linguistic proximity between leaders and followers. Linguistic proximity shaped leadership perceptions and moderated how servant and transformational leadership perceptions translated into leadership role occupancy, highlighting language as an important contextual factor in leadership emergence.
Study 3 examines leadership aspiration and psychological safety in a male-dominated police context. Men reported higher leadership aspirations and psychological safety, while women indicated greater support needs. Psychological safety predicted leadership aspiration mainly for men. At the team level, servant leadership increased women’s leadership aspirations, while psychological safety did not mediate this relationship.
Overall, the dissertation shows that servant leadership can foster leadership development through distinct psychological pathways, while its effects depend on linguistic, gender, organizational, and structural conditions.
Study 1 examines servant leadership and leadership role occupancy in a military context. At the individual level, servant leadership positively predicted leadership role occupancy, fully mediated by organizational commitment and partially mediated by task-related self-efficacy. Latin-speaking followers were more likely to assume leadership roles than Germanic-speaking followers. At the team level, smaller team size and higher leader education predicted leadership role occupancy.
Study 2 investigates linguistic proximity between leaders and followers. Linguistic proximity shaped leadership perceptions and moderated how servant and transformational leadership perceptions translated into leadership role occupancy, highlighting language as an important contextual factor in leadership emergence.
Study 3 examines leadership aspiration and psychological safety in a male-dominated police context. Men reported higher leadership aspirations and psychological safety, while women indicated greater support needs. Psychological safety predicted leadership aspiration mainly for men. At the team level, servant leadership increased women’s leadership aspirations, while psychological safety did not mediate this relationship.
Overall, the dissertation shows that servant leadership can foster leadership development through distinct psychological pathways, while its effects depend on linguistic, gender, organizational, and structural conditions.
- Faculty
- Faculté des sciences économiques et sociales et du management
- Language
-
- English
- Classification
- Economics
- Notes
-
- Bibliographie
- License
-
CC BY
- Open access status
- diamond
- Identifiers
-
- SWISSCOVERY 991173087661905501
- DOI 10.51363/unifr.eth.2026.038
- URN urn:nbn:ch:rero-002-124195
- Persistent URL
- https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/336602
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