Resilience! An intensifier for servant leadership? An employee engagement perspective

Purpose Drawing insights from the “Substitutes for Leadership” Theory, this study intends to examine the moderating role of resilience between servant leadership (SL) and employee engagement (EE). Particularly, relying on the issue that there are certain barriers, which hamper the effective execution of SL in the workplace, this study proposes to check that whether or not, resilience can intensify the effect of SL on EE. Design/methodology/approach A cross-sectional study was conducted on 241 employees working in the Indian Banking and Insurance (B&I) sector using the SPSS (v20), and the AMOS software (v21). Findings The study’s results revealed that SL is significantly related to EE. Also, this relationship is stronger for the employees who experience a high level of resilience, thus denoting that resilience works as a booster for SL. Research limitations/implications This study has certain limitations like being cross-sectional in nature and covering only B&I sector employees. Practical implications Since resilience helps in intensifying the effect of SL on EE, the organizational HR managers should devote efforts to make their workforce resilient. Originality/value This paper is the first of its kind which empirically investigated the intensifying role of resilience for SL style.