How servant leadership influence employee spouses’ quality of family life: the social mindfulness lens

Work and family are closely interconnected domains of human life. The past of three decades have witnessed the increasing research interest in exploring the crossover effect from employee work domain to their family domain. However, we know little about how and when servant leadership has crossover effects on the family member of employees. Drawing on work-family enrichment theory, the study focus on how servant leadership as an other-oriented leadership style enhances employee spousal ratings of family life quality through its effect on employees’ other-orientedness. Specially, we propose that servant leadership can increase employees’ social mindfulness (i.e., perspective taking and empathic concern) so that to understand spouses’ thoughts and care for their feelings, which improve their perception of family life quality. Besides, the study examines the moderating effect of job demands for the relationships. Survey method is hired in this paper. The study collected the employee-spouse dyad data in three waves, each with an interval of two weeks, and examined the whole model through a path analysis using Mplus 8.3. The statistical analysis shows that both perspective taking and empathic concern mediate the positive effect of servant leadership on employee spouses’ family life quality. Job demands positively moderates the relationship. The indirect effect of servant leadership on employee spouses’ family life quality be strengthened when employees are in high job demands context. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and practical implications as well as future research directions of the findings.