The role of values in servant leadership

Abstract

The topic of values has become an important item of debate in many arenas, particularly in the field of leadership. Woodward (1994, p. 95) postulated that,``leaders lead from their values and beliefs'', but we are experiencing a leadership crisis because self-interest motivates many leaders. The primary purpose of this article is to examine the existing literature regarding the role of values in leadership. Secondarily, the paper extracts various portions of the values in leadership literature and applies it to servant leadership. The fundamental proposition of the article is that the personal values of servant leaders distinguish them from other leader types. The role of values in leadershipValues are important parts of each individual's psyche. They are core beliefs ± the underlying thoughts that stimulate human behavior. Rokeach (1973) defined values as prescriptive, enduring standards that have cognitive, affective, and behavioral components. Since values are prescriptive, they play an important role in determining the choices we make. Values are enduring standards that collectively form the value systems of our lives. Kouzes and Posner (1993) postulate that the process and practices of leadership are fundamentally amoral, but leaders are themselves moral or immoral. Consequently, the personal values of leaders have very significant effects on leader-follower relationships (Burns, 1978;Deal and Kennedy, 1982;Kouzes and Posner, 1993). In addition, values affect leaders' moral reasoning and personal behavior. Personal values of leaders

Turnover intentions in Jordanian Universities: The role of leadership behaviour, organizational commitment and organizational culture

“…Until now, most past studies had only examined the relationship between leadership behaviors, organizational culture and turnover intention in the western context (Booth and Hamer, 2007;Deery and Shaw, 1999;MacIntosh and Doherty, 2010;Russell, 2001;Sellgren et al, 2007;Sharif Heravi et al, 2010;Shim, 2010;Wells and Peachey, 2011). Thus, this study shows that despite the different cultures, leadership behaviors and organizational culture also affect turnover intention in non-Western context, especially in Asian countries (Lee and Yu, 2004;Park and Kim, 2009).…”

Work spirituality in Banking Managers and its impact on Job Satisfaction.

“…Many experts claimed that the importance of leadership spirituality in building the morality and characters of their subordinates. It has been widely claimed that it is explicitly the responsibility of the spiritual leaders to intervene in fixing the personality and character building of employees' by empowering, showing confidence and relying on them as this will leads to greater levels of satisfaction from the job that results in the vision accomplishment of the organizations (Wilkes, 1998, Russell, 2001, Block, 1993Greenleaf, 1977& Farling et al, 1999. Many cooperates of USA are too seeking the means and measures of spirituality.…”

Servant Leadership and the Effect of the Interaction Between Humility, Action, and Hierarchical Power on Follower Engagement

“…As mentioned before, humility forms the essential backbone of the servant leader (Patterson 2003;Russell 2001). As incorporated in the servant leadership construct of van Dierendonck (2011), humility is translated into three essential aspects: (1) the ability to put one's accomplishments and talents in perspective (Patterson 2003), (2) admitting one's fallibility and mistakes (Morris et al 2005), and (3) understanding of one's strong and weak points.…”

“…First of all, it allows understanding leadership from within its complex behavioral relationships and not just as a linear aggregated concept. Secondly, it helps clarifying the apparently paradoxical mix of humble service and effective action, so markedly part of servant leadership (Morris et al 2005;Patterson 2003;Russell 2001; but also present in other models like authentic leadership, level 5 leadership, and transformational leadership (Morris et al 2005).…”