Abstract
Contemporary organizations are plagued by many chronic problems such as abuse of power, bullying leadership, unethical practices, social isolation and alienation in the workplace, and the violation of employees' psychological well-being and work-life balance. In such contexts, the interest on value laden leadership approaches such as servant leadership became more important than before. This paper examines the role of religiosity in servant leadership. Samples are drawn from the upper and middle managers from the public organizations in Malaysia. Simple random sampling method is used in selecting respondents. Partial least squares (PLS) path modeling was selected as an appropriate statistical approach for data analysis in this study. Result shows that religiosity is positively related to servant leadership. It suggests that servant leaders' behaviors can be affected by religiosity of those leaders. The more religious the leader, the more the leader showed servant leadership behaviors. Therefore leadership development programs should consider religiosity as one of the important factors in developing servant leaders.