Servant leadership and civil servants’ service attitude: The role of basic needs satisfaction

We explored the effect of servant leadership on service attitude to understand its mediation mechanism, on the basis of self-determination theory. We used valid, reliable scales to measure servant leadership and basic needs satisfaction, and a self-designed scale to measure service attitude among 160 public servant–citizen paired dyads from the Chinese Government Affairs Center. Results show that servant leadership had a positive influence on service attitude, and that the basic needs of autonomy and competence played mediating roles, but the basic need of relatedness did not. Our results affirm self-determination theory and empirically show the different roles of psychological needs satisfaction. Future research prospects and implications for civil service reforms are discussed.