BACKGROUND: Servant leadership can be viewed as a leadership theory that stresses personal integrity and focuses on protecting and promoting the interests of others.

OBJECTIVE: This article investigates whether the relationship between servant leadership and nurses’ upward voice behavior in an Egyptian hospital is contingent on prosocial motivation. Invoking substitutes for leadership theory, we propose that the relationship between servant leadership and nurses’ upward voice will be attenuated when nurses have a strong desire to protect and promote the well-being of others.
METHODS: Using a sample of 341 nurses working in a large governmental hospital in Egypt, this proposition was tested using PROCESS Macro for SPSS.
RESULTS: The results revealed that the relationship between servant leadership and nurses’ upward voice was stronger for those lower in prosocial motivation than for those higher in prosocial motivation.
CONCLUSION:These results were explained through communal impulsion which adds a newinsight into Greenleaf’s theory of servant leadership. Overall, the results of the study shed new light on the conditions through which servant leadership enhances upward voice behavior in an Egyptian hospital