Abstract
Servant leadership is an employee-oriented leadership model which drives discretionary behaviours in employees. It has the basic premise of helping employees by developing their full potential and motivating them to perform beyond their formal obligation which is organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB). There are scanty studies which addressed the relationship between servant leadership and OCB. The studies had not also incorporated motivation as the mediator while examining such a relationship. There is a need for assessing the mediating role of motivation to explain the association between servant leadership and OCB. Hence, this research study aimed at examining the relationship between servant leadership style and OCB where motivation was used as the mediating variable in the context of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) of Australia. A survey was conducted by adopting convenient sampling method. The data was collected from 226 employees who worked in SMEs and the data analysis was done by using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). The seven constructs of servant leadership (agapao love, vision, humility, trust, empowerment, service, altruism) were used to determine the association with OCB. The results demonstrated that only agapao love and trust had a significant and positive relationship with OCB. Contrastingly, all the constructs showed a significant and positive relationship with OCB when motivation was used as the mediating variable. The results revealed that motivation mediated the relationship between servant leadership and OCB significantly. Therefore, the outcomes indicate that leaders should practise servant leadership style to motivate employees for enhancing OCB in them.