Unraveling the Paradox: Facades of Conformity Amid Servant Leadership and Employee Readiness to Change

This article aims to examine how the conservation of resources theory contributes to a better comprehension of the relationships among servant leadership, facades of conformity, and employee readiness for change. The study further investigates the moderating role of proactive personality in these relationships. Using a sample of 247 employees from different public and private sector organizations, our findings suggest that servant leadership is significantly related to employee readiness to change in a positive direction. The results further highlighted that servant leadership also had a positive indirect relationship with employee readiness to change through the facades of conformity. Nevertheless, interestingly proactive personality does not moderate the relationship in our mediated model. However, our findings can contribute to the existing literature by unveiling conditions under which servant leaders might inadvertently create facades of conformity, that in turn influence the individual change initiative.