Despite the heavy reliance of Korean church organizations on the voluntary commitment of their members, empirical research on the influence of religious leaders' leadership on member behavior remains limited. In particular, although servant leadership...
Despite the heavy reliance of Korean church organizations on the voluntary commitment of their members, empirical research on the influence of religious leaders' leadership on member behavior remains limited. In particular, although servant leadership has a strong affinity with the inherent nature of Korean church organizations, most prior studies have relied on cross-sectional designs, thereby limiting causal interpretation. Accordingly, this study aims to examine the effect of religious leaders' servant leadership on members' organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and to investigate the mediating role of psychological safety, grounded in Conservation of Resources (COR) Theory. A three-wave longitudinal survey was conducted with adult Christians aged 20 and above, and a final valid sample of 304 respondents was analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis, hierarchical multiple regression analysis, and bootstrapping methods with Stata. The results indicated that servant leadership had a significant positive effect on both psychological safety and OCB, and psychological safety showed a partial mediating effect. This study provides theoretical and practical implications by empirically demonstrating the effects of servant leadership in the context of Korean church organizations using longitudinal data and by extending the applicability of COR Theory.