Replacement of Servant Leadership by High-commitment Human Resource Management System to Create Emotional Commitment and Psychological Empowerment

 Based on theories of social exchange and leadership substitutions, if there are necessary infrastructures, human resource management strategies can be replaced by servant leadership in promoting employees' emotional commitment and psychological empowerment. The present research seeks to examine the possibility of the replacement of servant leadership with the high-commitment human resource management system in the Fars Governorate Organization.

 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK:

To achieve a competitive advantage, managers are constantly looking for ways to increase employees' commitment and empower them. In this regard, the question is how human resource management and leadership interact. Previous research suggests that, in certain conditions, human resource management and leadership can substitute and complement each other. Therefore, the current research seeks to investigate how servant leadership can be replaced by high-commitment human resource management to affect employees' emotional commitment and psychological empowerment. If the socio-emotional needs of employees are met by human resource management practices, organizational leaders need less ability and effort to meet them. For this reason, it is proposed that the high-commitment human resource management system and servant leadership can moderate the effect of each other on employees' emotional commitment and psychological empowerment.

This research was a correlational survey with a statistical population of 1200 employees in the Fars Governorate Organization. A sample size of 320 people was investigated by conducting stratified random sampling. The data collection tool was a pre-made questionnaire with 35 items. To analyze the gathered data, a partial least square approach to structural equation modeling was utilized in SmartPLS software.

Employees’ opinions indicated that the use of high-commitment human resource management practices is less than average in the Fars Goveronate Organization (2.72 out of 5). It was determined that about 23 percent of the variance in emotional commitment was explained by servant leadership and high-commitment human resource management practices. Additionally, servant leadership was able to explain about 12 percent of the variance in psychological empowerment. Examining the moderating hypotheses indicated that none of the servant leadership and high-commitment human resource management can moderate each other's effect on outcome variables. Moreover, Comparing the two groups of male and female employees revealed that women feel less influence in the workplace.

CONCLUSIONS & SUGGESTIONS:

The low level of high-commitment human resource management practices determined that the conditions are not available for the replacement of servant leadership with the high-commitment human resource management system in the Fars Governorate Organization. Therefore, first of all, this organization needs to develop high-commitment practices. In terms of moderating hypotheses, non-significant effects can be attributed to the low levels of moderators and employees' maturity. Future researchers, of course, are recommended to investigate these issues. As the results indicated, the relationship between the high-commitment human resource management system and psychological empowerment was not statistically significant. Based on this, it can be said that servant leadership cannot be replaced by the high-commitment human resource management system in the Fars Governorate Organization due to the lack of necessary infrastructure.