Ashford and Cummings (1983) introduced the concept of feedback-seeking behavior (FSB) as “… [a] conscious devotion of effort toward determining the correctness and adequacy of behaviors for attaining valued end states.” Researchers have found leadership styles are significantly correlated with followers’ feedback-seeking behavior (e.g., Levy et al., 2002; Wang et al., 2016; Qian et al., 2017; Moss et al., 2020). Servant leadership is a desirable approach to leadership and have consistently demonstrated its ability to explain additional variance beyond other leadership styles in key outcomes, such as employee satisfaction, commitment, organizational citizenship behavior, in-role performance, and firm performance (Liden et al., 2008; Hoch et al., 2018; Sendjaya et al., 2019; Lee et al., 2020). Whether and how employees’ feedback-seeking behavior was encouraged by servant leadership remains unclear, we submit that social information processing theory can explain the relationship between servant leadership and feedback-seeking behavior.

Servant leadership is a multidimensional construct, involving forming relationships with followers, helping subordinates grow and succeed, empower followers, putting subordinates first, behaving ethically, and emotional healing, etc. (Ehrhart, 2004; Liden et al., 2008). It focuses on helping others and stresses bringing out the full potential of its followers primarily (Liden et al., 2015). Based on social information processing theory, followers use information from work contexts to understand leaders’ expectations and decide how to behave. They may consider interactions with a leader as a crucial aspect of the work environment and may behave based on their interpretation of leadership behavior. First, from the perspective of a leader, servant leaders are familiar with each follower’s actual abilities and needs through one-on-one communication, then they tend to assist followers in developing their potential pertinently. In addition, from the perspective of followers, if subordinates were treated with respect, compassion, trust, and patience at work, they are likely to feel psychologically safe (Chughtai, 2016) or self-efficacy, and then promote followers’ feedback-seeking behavior. As a result, they tend to seize the opportunity and seek feedback from leaders and perceive feedback from servant leaders as more credible and valuable. In this context, followers are more likely and frequently seek feedback about their work from the servant leader (Anseel et al., 2015; Huang et al., 2018). We predict the following:

Servant leadership involves forming good relationships with followers, scholars have suggested that servant leaders spend quality time and develop a high-quality exchange relationship with subordinates (Ehrhart, 2004). In this study, we focus on a key, but always overlooked, aspect of supervisor-subordinate relationships, i.e., subordinates’ moqi with supervisors (Zheng et al., 2019). Servant leadership contributes to followers’ perceived quality of the dyadic relationship between a leader and a member (van Dierendonck and Nuijten, 2011). As servant leaders focused on their followers’ needs, interests, and development, the relationships between leaders and subordinates are likely to be stably based on mutual trust and understanding (Kauppila et al., 2021). Moqi with supervisors as a key supervisor-subordinate relationship, from a subordinate-centric view, it could emphasizesubordinates’ tacit understanding of leaders’ work-related expectations and requirements (Zheng et al., 2019). Therefore, the emergence and development of moqi must base on mutual trust and understanding between leaders and subordinates, which could be facilitated by servant leadership.

Based on social information processing theory, followers use information get from leaders to understand leaders’ expectations, which in turn impact their bebavior in the work environment.Specifically, if subordinates were trusted, empowered, and treated with respect, compassion, and patience, they may obtain moqi with their supervisors and form a better understanding of their expectations and performance through the interaction with leaders. Thus, they are likely to feel psychologically safe and believe that they would not be punished or rejected because of seeking feedback (Yoshida et al., 2014; Chughtai, 2016). As a result, they tend to seize the opportunity and seek feedback from leaders without doubt and anxiety. In addition, servant leaders set a role model to subordinates, therefore, based on the moqi and mutual trust, followers may perceive feedback from servant leaders as more credible and valuable, and more proactively and frequently seek feedback from servant leaders. Therefore, servant leadership is likely to be associated with followers’ feedback-seeking behavior through moqi with supervisors. Accordingly, we hypothesized:

Traditionality captures one’s endorsement of traditional hierarchical role relationships, which are prescribed by Confucian social ethics, such as emperor-subject, father-son, husband-wife, older brother-younger brother, and friend-friend (Farh et al., 2007). We propose that traditionality may moderate the mediated relationship between servant leadership and feedback-seeking behavior.

Leadership is about hierarchical relationships between the leader and the follower, for followers high in Chinese traditionality, leaders are treated like fathers and followers are treated like sons (Yang, 1993; Rarick, 2007). They assume the existence of a high level of power distance and collectivism, and are less likely to behave based on how leaders treat them (Spreitzer et al., 2005; Farh et al., 2007). This suggests that traditionalists are less sensitive and less likely to be suspicious of servant leader’s attitudes and behavior, because they tend to adjust their values more to conform to the traditional hierarchical values, and can’t put development ahead of their leader (Li et al., 2017). They firmly believe that meeting the expectations of the leader is a kind of responsibility and obligation, rather than an equal, mutual trust relationship. Therefore, high traditionality may negatively moderate the relationship between servant leadership and moqi with supervisors.

In contrast, employees with low traditionality tend to perceive the relationship with leaders as an equal relationship. It is not easy for them to accept unequal power distribution and differentiated status (Hui et al., 2004; Li et al., 2017). As a result, they are more proactive during the communication and interaction with supervisors in the work environment, and more sensitive to servant leader’s care and compassion. Thus, subordinates with low traditionality and servant leaders form a better mutual understanding of each expectation and interest through the interaction, it is easy for them to build mutual trust and understanding with servant leaders. Therefore, the positive influence of servant leadership on encouraging moqi with supervisors is more effective for those with low traditionality. Accordingly, we hypothesized:

As alluded above, it is logical to integrate H1-H3 into a moderated mediation model (Edwards and Lambert, 2007; Hayes, 2017). High traditionality can mitigate the positive influence of servant leadership on followers’ moqi with supervisors, and then influence employees’ feedback-seeking behavior.

For followers with high traditionality, the indirect relationship between servant leadership and feedback-seeking behavior via moqi with supervisors is weaker. Because they tend to conform to the traditional hierarchical obligation and authority, although their servant leaders put them first, and manifest respect and trust to them, they are dare not overstep these invisible boundaries. Therefore, it is not easy for them to build and develop moqi with supervisors. When they need to seek information feedback on performance, they are more likely to suppress their inner seeking motivation and behavior, that is, they tend not to seek feedback from leaders. In contrast, followers with low traditionality who develop high moqi with servant leaders would actively exchange ideas and suggestions to obtain more resources (Yao et al., 2019). Therefore, they are more likely to seek feedback from leaders more proactively. Accordingly, we hypothesized:

The data for this study were collected from 10 companies in a range of different industries (e.g., energy industry, transportation industry, agricultural investment industry) operating in Henan province of the People’s Republic of China. We collected survey data through a two-wave questionnaire survey to minimize common method bias. The first round of data collection was in the December of 2020, and we asked the respondents to report their immediate supervisors’ servant leadership, traditionality, and demographic information of themselves. One month later, we invited them to report their moqi with supervisors and feedback-seeking behavior. All participants were assured of confidentiality and anonymity. Respondents’ gender, age and educational level, tenure, marital status, and job position were included as controls because of their potential relationships with variables. Among the 788 employees, 620 responded in the first wave, and 512 responded in the second wave, yielding a response rate of 64.9 percent. We used 440 responses due to invalid or incomplete responses. More specifically, it included 164 females (37.3%) and 276 males (62.7%), 50% of participants was 31–40 years old (n = 220), 77.3% of participants were married (n = 340). The tenure of half employees was 10 years above (n = 230, 52.3%). A total of 72.3% of the employees had a bachelor’s degree (n = 318). The majority were technical staff of various companies (n = 144, 32.7%), followed by department managers (n = 118, 26.8%), administrative staff (n = 70, 15.9%), chief executives (n = 22, 5.0%), and 86 (19.5%) reported other positions.

Servant leadership. The 7-item measure of global servant leadership (SL-7) from Liden et al. (2015) was used to evaluate servant leadership. Bao et al. (2018) reported good reliability (higher than 0.80) for the Chinese version of this scale. Participants were asked to rate each item on a 5-point Likert scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). A sample item was “My leader makes my career development a priority.” In the present study, the internal consistency reliability of the SL-7 was 0.85.

Traditionality. To assess traditionality, we used the shortened version of the Chinese Individual Traditionality Scale (CITS; Yang et al., 1989) used by Farh et al. (1997). The scale includes five items (e.g., When people are in dispute, they should ask the most senior person to decide who is right), each item was rated on a 5-point Likert-type scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). In this study, the reliability of traditionality was 0.72.

Subordinates’ moqi with supervisors. Subordinates’ moqi with supervisors was measured using a subordinate-focused moqi scale developed by Zheng et al. (2019). The scale includes eight items (e.g., In day-to-day work situations, without explicit verbal communication or overt cues from my supervisor, I can understand his/her task requirements at work), each item was rated on a 5-point Likert-type scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). In this study, the Cronbach’s alpha was 0.94.

Feedback-seeking behavior. To measure feedback-seeking behavior, a five-item scale developed by VandeWalle et al. (2000) was employed. We utilized the Chinese version of this scale published by Zhang and Liao (2015). Participants were asked how frequently they sought feedback from their supervisors regarding their job performance and other four aspects and responded to the scale on a 5-point Likert scale from 1 (never) to 5 (very frequently). The Cronbach’s α for feedback-seeking behavior was 0.92.

A series of CFAs was performed using the package ‘lavaan’ in R 4.0.2 (Rosseel, 2012; R Core Team, 2019) to examine the discriminant validity of the study variables. We compared a four-factor model with a three-factor model, a two-factor model, and a one-factor model. In the four-factor model, four key variables (servant leadership, moqi with supervisors, traditionality, feedback-seeking behavior) were treated as four independent factors. In the three-factor model, we loaded the items of servant leadership and moqi with supervisors on one factor. In the two-factor model, the items of servant leadership, moqi with supervisors, and traditionality were loaded on one factor. In the one-factor model, all variables were loaded on one factor. Models were assessed by the following fit indices: the χ²/df, CFI, TLI, RMSEA, and SRMR. As shown in Table 1, the hypothesized four-factor model fits the data well, χ²(269) = 726.14, CFI = 0.93, TLI = 0.92, RMSEA = 0.06, and SRMR = 0.05. Therefore, these results support the good discriminant validity of our measures.

The descriptive statistics and Pearson correlations for the study variables are presented in Table 2. Employee’s perception about servant leadership is not significantly related to gender (r = 0.00, p > 0.05), age (r = 0.01, p > 0.05), and education (r = −0.08, p > 0.05). Moqi with supervisors is positively related to gender (r = −0.18, p < 0.001), and it is not significantly related to age (r = 0.10, p > 0.05) and education (r = −0.01, p > 0.05). Traditionality is positively related to his or her gender (r = −0.29, p < 0.001), age (r = 0.22, p < 0.001), and education (r = −0.15, p < 0.001). Employee’s feedback-seeking behavior is not presented significant relations with participants’ demographic variables.

Moreover, employee’s perception about servant leadership is positively related to their moqi with supervisors (r = 0.25, p < 0.001), traditionality (r = 0.21, p < 0.001), and feedback-seeking behavior (r = 0.24, p < 0.001). Moqi with supervisors is positive related to their traditionality (r = 0.21, p < 0.001) and feedback-seeking behavior (r = 0.51, p < 0.001). The correlations among traditionality and feedback-seeking behavior are not significant.

Using SPSS 26.0 Macro PROCESS (Model 4, Hayes, 2017), we analyzed the mediating role of moqi with supervisors between servant leadership and employee’s feedback-seeking behavior. Model 2 in Table 3 and Model 5 in Table 4 indicates that after controlling for the effect of employees’ gender, age, and education, servant leadership was found to be significantly and positively related to employee’s feedback-seeking behavior (β = 0.24, p < 0.001), and moqi with supervisors (β = 0.25, p < 0.001); When servant leadership and moqi with supervisors were simultaneously considered (Model 3 in Table 3), the relationship between servant leadership and employee’s feedback-seeking behavior was significant (β = 0.12, p < 0.01), which indicates that moqi mediated the relationship between servant leadership and employee’s feedback-seeking behavior. Hypothesis 1 was supported. To further clarify the mediation effect, we used a bootstrap procedure with 5,000 samples to produce a confidence interval (CI) for the indirect effect. The indirect effect of servant leadership (via moqi with supervisors) on feedback-seeking behavior (indirect effect = 0.12, SE = 0.02, 95% CI = [0.08, 0.17]) was statistically significant. Overall, the indirect effect of servant leadership on employee’s feedback-seeking behavior via moqi with supervisors was significant, these results provide support for Hypothesis 1 and Hypothesis 2.

Using Hayes (2017) PROCESS macro (Model 7), we assessed our whole moderated mediation model. Hypothesis 3 states that traditionality moderates the relationship between servant leadership and moqi with supervisors, and Hypothesis 4 states that traditionality moderates the indirect relationship between servant leadership and feedback-seeking behavior via moqi with supervisors.

As Model 6 shown in Table 4, the interaction term of servant leadership and traditionality was statistically significant (β = −0.11, p < 0.05). Traditionality moderated the mediation effect of moqi with supervisors on servant leadership and employee’s feedback-seeking behavior. Thus, H3 was supported. Then, to examine the whole research model, we conducted a bootstrapping procedure with 5,000 samples to test the conditional indirect effect of servant leadership through moqi with supervisors on employee’s feedback-seeking behavior at both high and low levels of traditionality. As shown in Table 5, the conditional indirect effect of servant leadership on feedback-seeking behavior via moqi with supervisors was statistically significant when traditionality was low (−1 SD, indirect effect = 0.16, SE = 0.03, 95% CI = [0.10, 0.22]) compared with when traditionality was high (+1 SD, indirect effect = 0.06, SE = 0.04, 95% CI = [−0.02, 0.14]). Hypothesis 4 thus received support.

Finally, we used the Johnson–Neyman technique to identify the regions in the range of the moderator variable where the effect of servant leadership on an employee’s feedback-seeking behavior is statistically significant (Johnson, 2008; Hayes and Matthes, 2009). The results may help provide more preventive interventions and pointed suggestions. Figure 2 indicates that when the traditionality is smaller than 1.026 (on a 5-point scale), that is, the blue area on Figure 2, the indirect effect is significantly different from zero, which is consistent with the previous hypotheses, indicating the effect of servant leadership on employee’s feedback-seeking behavior via moqi is significant and negatively moderated by traditionality.

As mentioned above, this study explores the mechanism and boundary conditions of servant leadership on employees’ feedback-seeking behavior. The main theoretical contributions are as follows: First, our results trying to investigate the antecedents of feedback-seeking literature from the perspective of servant leadership style. Previous studies have evidenced that leadership style significantly influence employee feedback-seeking behavior, involving transformational leadership (Levy et al., 2002; Wang et al., 2016) and ethical leadership (Qian et al., 2017; Moss et al., 2020), little is known about the impact of servant leadership. In addition, researchers have evidenced the incremental validity of servant leadership over other leadership styles, it could better explain a wide range of outcomes. Although Chughtai (2016) found that servant leadership can promote employees’ negative feedback-seeking behavior, feedback-seeking behavior includes positive feedback and negative feedback, the relationship between servant leadership and overall feedback-seeking behavior remains unclear, we addressed this shortcoming by clarifying and confirming employees’ feedback-seeking behavior was encouraged by servant leadership.

Second, based on the social information processing theory, this paper further reveals that the mechanism of servant leadership on followers’ feedback-seeking behavior. Studies have found that moqi with supervisors has not been fully explored as a mediator between leadership and outcomes (Zheng et al., 2019), we are the first to employ social information processing theory to explain the transmission mechanism of moqi with supervisors in the relationship between servant leadership and feedback-seeking behavior. Our study confirmed the servant leadership can indirectly affect followers’ feedback-seeking behavior through their moqi with supervisors. That is, moqi with supervisors is a new type of mediator that links servant leadership with employee feedback-seeking behavior, which opens the black box of the relationship between servant leadership and employees’ feedback-seeking behavior.

Third, this study clarifies the boundary conditions of the relationship between servant leadership and employees’ feedback-seeking behavior. Consistent with previous studies (Ashford et al., 2003; Anseel et al., 2015), we found that contextual factors and individual differences are crucial antecedents of employees’ feedback-seeking behavior. This research has constructed a moderated mediation model by the addition of traditionality as a moderator to explore its moderating effect on the relationship between servant leadership, moqi with supervisors, and feedback-seeking behavior. It is also worth noting that our model is largely derived from Chinese culture since moqi with supervisors and traditionality are most frequently observed in Chinese societies. Our results found that traditionality plays a negative moderating role in the relationship between servant leadership and moqi with supervisors, and negatively moderated the mediating effect of moqi with supervisors in the relationship between servant leadership and feedback-seeking behavior. Therefore, this study combines servant leadership theory with Chinese traditional values to explore boundary conditions of the relationship between servant leadership and employees’ feedback-seeking behavior, which deepens our understanding of the relationship between them.

The findings of this research can have important implications for organizations. Results indicated that it is worthwhile to implement servant leadership in managerial practice since servant leadership can inspire followers to seek feedback proactively, collect information to improve their performance, subsequently team and organizational performance. Therefore, first, organizations should select managers with servant leadership skills, including develop the serving and empowering skills of leaders through providing training and development programs, so that supervisors can learn how to encourage employees’ feedback-seeking behavior, especially as it relates to their interaction relationship with supervisors. In addition, organizations also could create an altruistic atmosphere, so that leaders can adopt servant leadership philosophy, emphasize caring and concerning followers, and put development and improvement of employees first, which facilitates employee feedback-seeking behavior through moqi with them.

Second, our study provides valuable insight into how servant leaders can facilitate employees’ feedback-seeking behavior. It is suggested that supervisors can play an important role in facilitating employees’ feedback-seeking behavior by developing the moqi with them. Therefore, organizations may help individuals recognizing the importance of moqi, which will hopefully motivate them to be more sensitive to the feedback offered by supervisors. As for supervisors, they should be aware of their roles in cultivating feedback-seeking, and identify the needs and interests of subordinates, strengthen communication with their subordinates proactively, and participate in team-building activities with subordinates, then cultivate subordinates’ moqi with them through mutual understanding and support. When recruiting and selecting leaders, relevant tests can be carried out to test the matching degree between supervisors and subordinates, which helps to cultivate moqi between supervisors and subordinates in the future.

Third, contextual factors and individual differences are crucial antecedents of employees’ feedback-seeking behavior, so we can not ignore the importance of the traditionality of Chinese employees. Therefore, leaders should adopt differentiated management for employees with different traditionality levels. For employees with low traditionality, leaders need to strengthen their interpersonal interaction with subordinates, establish high-quality leader-member exchange and thereby improve subordinates’ moqi with supervisors. For organizations that employ quite a lot of employees who have high traditionality, or organizations that have a traditionalist culture like China, leaders should consider other strategies for encouraging feedback-seeking behavior. For example, they should consider other strategies for encouraging feedback-seeking behavior. One alternative strategy is to cultivate subordinates’ moqi with supervisors, emphasize employees’ duty to work roles and loyally to their supervisors, cultivate mutual trust and understanding between them simultaneously, which is not only consistent with traditional Chinese culture but also shorten the distance between the leaders and subordinates.

As with any research, our research has several limitations and, it does provide several insights for future research. First, although our research model is built on solid theories, our cross-sectional research design may generate a concern of causality in results. In the future, longitudinal designs should be conducted to provide evidence of reliable causalities. For example, a previous study found subordinates’ feedback-seeking positively predicted their subsequent perceptions of moqi with a supervisor (Zheng et al., 2019), it is essential to adapt longitudinal designs to investigate reliable causalities.

Second, although the research was conducted in Chinese culture and, the generalizability of our findings was limited. We only examined a relatively small sample of companies, it is worthwhile to extend our findings using other types of organizations to generate a more generalization result. For instance, civil servants in the public sector may be more conform to traditional responsibilities and hierarchical values.

Finally, future research is needed to test our findings in other contexts as well. Obviously, contrary to western countries, Confucianism has persisted as a major cultural force for thousands of years in China, traditional hierarchical role relationships play an important role in the workplace. Given the contextual factors and individual differences are crucial antecedents of employees’ feedback-seeking behavior, we suggest that this study be tested and compared in other contexts.