Leader Member Exchange as a Mediator of the Relationship between Servant Leadership and Job Satisfaction: A Research on Turkish ICT Companies

Servant leadership (SL) is a theoretical framework that defines a leader’s primary motivation and role as service to others. It introduces a holistic approach to work,advocates a sense of community, and promotes the sharing of power in decision making by showing humility, authenticity, and stewardship. Servant leader also develops and empowers employees by standing back, encouraging to be autonomous, and by forgiving mistakes. On the other hand, the Leader Member Exchange (LMX) Theory explores theone-on-one relationship between a leader and the individual follower independently, instead of focusing on the general relationship between the leader and the group as a whole. The objective of this study is to test the effect of SL on job satisfaction (JS) in Turkish business context and to identify the mediator effects of LMX on the relationship between SL and JS by quantitative data obtained from Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) Sector companies in Turkey. The multidimensional leadership measure developed by Van Dierendonck and Nuijten (2011), four-dimension LMX Measure of Liden and Maslyn (1998), and short form of Minnesota Job Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ) developed by Weiss, Dawis, England, and Lofquist (1967) were used as assessment tools on questionnaire. Research results show that there is a partial mediator effect of LMX on the relationship between SL and JS.

Keywords:

Leader Member Exchange , Job Satisfaction , Information and Communication Technology Companies , ICT sector , Turkey