To Be Accountable While Showing Care: The Lived Experience of People in a Servant Leadership Organization

Abstract

Many organizations attribute their success to the use of servant leadership. However, very few studies have been conducted with the emphasis of understanding what it is like for people to work in servant leadership organizations and how it is practiced. Thus, in-depth interviews were conducted and an observation was performed to explore the lived experience of people, both employees and managers, who work within the business sector where servant leadership has been practiced for decades. Two main themes (and a set of subthemes) emerged from the study: "Accountability as an integral part of the practice of servant leadership" and "People show care and help each other out at work." During a period with new challenges, the balance between the dimensions of "serving" and "leading" became prominent. The findings indicate that both dimensions are important for the prosperity of the organization, although participants experience the "lead" dimension of servant leadership being practiced more than the "serve" dimension. This is important, as much of current thought considers servant leadership to focus more on the "serve" dimension, and thereby to be soft.

Impact of Servant Leadership on Performance: The Mediating Role of Affective and Cognitive Trust

“…In the views of Russell and Gregory Stone (2002), van Dierendonck (2011), and Parris and Peachey (2013), servant leaders look for a higher plane of operation, and their prime motivation in leadership is their desire to serve their followers. Both dimensions of servant leadership "to serve" and "to lead" are important for prosperity of an organization (Ragnarsson et al, 2018). According to Sendjaya and Sarros (2002), "the servant leader operates on an assumption that 'I am the leader, therefore I serve' rather than 'I am the leader, therefore I lead'" (p. 60).…”

Spirituality and Business in Harmony: Case Study of Saints Movement Community Church

“…Pilar Dinamika Integra. This company is proof that SMCC not only encourage their members to find their purpose of life, but also help to provide the vision of their members (VJ) in the marketplace (Byfield, 2008;Ragnarsson, 2018). By helping VJ found this business, SMCC is encouraging him to be free from financial pressure (Chandra, 2017).…”

Servant Leadership in the Last Decade : A Systematic Review

“…It can be observed that the vast majority of SL articles reviewed (125 out of 179) explored the effect of servant leadership on a broad range of positive and negative employee outcomes. The positive employee outcomes included employee commitment (e.g., Cerit, 2010;Bobbio et al, 2012;Harwiki, 2016;Newman et al, 2018;Erdurmazli, 2019), employee motivation (e.g., Schwarz et al, 2016;Tuan, 2016;Shim and Park, 2018), organizational citizenship behaviour (e.g., Abu Bakar and McCann, 2016;Bavik et al, 2017;Linuesa-Langreo et al, 2018;Ragnarsson et al, 2018;Zhu and Zhang, 2019), employee well-being (Chen et al, 2011;Chughtai, 2018;Yang et al, 2018;Chughtai, 2019;Mustard, 2019), job satisfaction (Al-Mahdy et al, 2016;Abu Bakar and McCann, 2018;Farrington and Lillah, 2018;Megheirkouni, 2018;Al-Asadi et al, 2019), proactive behaviour (Bauer et al, 2019) and trust in leader (Chan and Mak, 2014) . The negative employee outcomes included employee burnout (Babakus et al, 2010;Rivkin et al, 2014) and turnover intentions ((Babakus et al, 2010;Kashyap and Ragnekar, 2014;Brohi et al, 2018).…”