The role of servant leadership in directing employees' presenteeism and job alienation behaviors: An empirical study

This study investigated the impact of servant leadership, one of the modern leadership approaches, on two of the most significant organizational problems of our time: job alienation and presenteeism. The necessary data for the research were collected from 689 administrative staff working at seven public and five foundation universities selected from the seven geographical regions of Turkey. The collected data was analyzed in two stages using SPSS 27 and Mplus 8 programs. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was performed using the Mplus 8 program to determine whether the three scales used in the research were reliable and valid measurement tools. The fit indices obtained from the CFA results indicated that all three scales accurately reflected their factor structures and were reliable measurement tools. Simple and multiple linear regression analyses were conducted to determine the impact of servant leadership on employees' job alienation and presenteeism behaviors. The analyses revealed that servant leadership had a significant impact on both job alienation and its sub-dimensions. Moreover, while servant leadership did not have a significant impact on presenteeism and its sub-dimension of avoiding distractions, it did have a significant impact on the sub-dimension of completing tasks. Additionally, the hypotheses developed to determine the impact of the sub-dimensions of servant leadership on the sub-dimensions of job alienation and presenteeism were partially accepted. Keywords: Leadership, Servant Leadership, Alienation, Work Alienation, Presenteeism.