Effects of Servant Leadership on Gratitude, Empowerment, Innovativeness and Performance: Turkey Example

Inspired by positive organizational scholarship, this study focuses on two important concepts of positive organizational behavior: empowerment and gratitude. The effects of servant leadership style—with its ever-increasing popularity—were investigated based on these two concepts, under the assumption that having been affected by servant leadership, gratitude and empowerment will enhance the innovative capacity of the individuals on whom it is tested. The assumption is that this change, in turn, will have a positive effect on the overall performance of the organization. During our field survey, 527 white-collar workers from Turkey’s Marmara region contributed to the study. Our results suggest that servant leadership has a positive effect on the perceptions of empowerment and gratitude felt by followers, and that these feelings in turn affect innovativeness and organizational performance. We thus contribute to the related literature by displaying the positive effects of innovativeness on organizational performance by supporting the view that when firms are more innovative they tend to perform better.