Servant leadership and organizational citizenship behavior, mediated by interpersonal employee conflict in Malaysian Universities

In contemporary work environment, universities seek to maximize academicians’ performance. Organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) is beneficial for organizations so universities expect the academicians to engage in OCB. As, OCB is not rewarded so academicians lack in its practice. Therefore, there was a need to investigate the factors which impact the OCB of academicians in Malaysian universities. This study investigated the effect of the five constructs of Servant Leadership on OCB of academicians in MTUN universities. Additionally, Interpersonal Employee Conflict (IEC), is natural and inevitable in any organization but have not been studied between Servant Leadership and OCB. To fill this gap, this quantitative study investigated the mediating role of IEC between servant leaders and OCB. Unit of analysis of this study was the academicians of MTUN universities. Study was conducted using a survey questionnaire distributed to 684 academicians of MTUN using stratified proportionate systematic sampling, mostly through online resources. Variance-based structural equation modelling was used to perform the analysis, using SmartPLS3 and SPSS Version 25. Results revealed that four of the five constructs of Servant Leadership were positively and significantly related to OCB, while IEC had a negative relationship with OCB. Servant Leadership constructs also had a negative relationship with IEC. Results revealed that IEC mediated the relationship between Servant Leadership and OCB. The findings have implications for academic leaders to practice Servant Leadership to foster academicians’ OCB and manage interpersonal conflicts. This study revealed that practice of servant leadership by academic leaders positively influence academicians’ OCB despite the presence of interpersonal employee conflicts. It is recommended to perform this study in the private universities in future, moreover, it is recommended to perform this study on non-faculty employees of public and private universities in different countries