Servant Leadership and Organisational Citizenship Behaviour Among Nurses of Tertiary Healthcare Institutions in Plateau State, Nigeria: Does Thriving at Work Matter?

This study examined how servant leadership is associated with organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) through the mediating role of thriving at work among nurses in public tertiary healthcare institutions in Plateau State, Nigeria. Using a quantitative, cross-sectional survey design, data were collected from registered nurses at Jos University Teaching Hospital and the Plateau State Specialist Hospital with a structured questionnaire adapted from validated measures of servant leadership, thriving at work and OCB. Data were analysed with partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). The measurement model showed satisfactory reliability and validity, and full-collinearity assessments indicated that common method bias was unlikely to distort the estimates. Servant leadership was significantly positively associated with thriving at work and OCB, and thriving at work was significantly associated with OCB. Servant leadership explained a substantial proportion of the variance in thriving, and the two predictors jointly explained a substantial proportion of the variance in OCB. Bootstrapped mediation analysis showed a significant indirect association through thriving, consistent with complementary partial mediation. The findings extend social exchange theory and self-determination theory to a resource-constrained public healthcare setting and suggest that hospital administrators should develop servant leadership capability, regularise precarious contract terms and redesign shift patterns to protect nurses' vitality, learning and voluntary extra-role performance.