Servant Leadership and Employee Advocacy: Mediating Roles of Psychological Empowerment and Organizational Commitment

Abstract

This study examined the relationship between servant leadership and employee advocacy in a private educational institution, with psychological empowerment and organizational commitment tested as parallel mediators. A cross-sectional survey of 305 teachers and operational staff across six Indonesian cities was analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) with SmartPLS 4. All seven hypothesized paths were supported. Servant leadership was positively associated with employee advocacy (? = 0.187), psychological empowerment, and organizational commitment. Both mediators showed significant indirect effects on employee advocacy: ? = 0.075 through psychological empowerment and ? = 0.260 through organizational commitment. Organizational commitment was also the strongest direct predictor of employee advocacy (? = 0.529), and the model explained 60.10% of the variance in employee advocacy. The larger coefficient for the organizational commitment pathway indicated a descriptively stronger indirect association; however, the difference between the two specific indirect effects was not statistically tested. Measurement quality was generally acceptable, although the estimated-model standardized root mean square residual (SRMR = 0.120) and normed fit index (NFI = 0.820) indicated limitations in model fit that warrant caution in interpreting the results. The findings extend research on employee advocacy to the context of private education and suggest that servant leadership is associated with employee advocacy both directly and indirectly through employees' psychological empowerment and organizational commitment. Longitudinal and multi-institutional studies are needed to examine temporal ordering and assess the robustness of the two mediation pathways.