The relationship between servant leadership and nurses' in-role performance: The sequential mediating effects of job autonomy and emotional exhaustion.

Aims: Drawing on the conservation of resources theory, this study examines the underlying process through which servant leadership is associated with nurses' in-role performance. Specifically, we test the indirect effect of servant leadership on in-role performance via a sequential mediating mechanism of job autonomy and emotional exhaustion.

Design: A time-lagged design was implemented using data gathered from two-wave online surveys (1 week apart) of registered nurses from Jiangsu Province, China.