Servant Leadership


In view of the current demand for a more ethical, people-centered management, servant leadership may very well be what organizations need now. Concern about the society we live in has increasingly become a matter of company policy and paying attention to all stakeholders will be the key-word for long-term profits. Coined by Greenleaf (1970, 1977) forty years ago, servant leadership may be particularly relevant in this time and age due to the moral component it adds to leadership thinking; furthermore, it explicitly emphasizes the needs of followers. Although influence is generally considered as the key element of leadership, servant leadership changes the focus of this influence by emphasizing the ideal of service within the leader-follower relationship. The purpose of this research program is to resolve the current confusion in the literature on what servant leadership is, and to establish an overall theoretical framework. The first step was the development and validation of a valid and reliable measurement instrument. Current research focuses on the most important antecedents, underlying processes, and consequences.

Principal Investigator: <link people dirk-van-dierendonck>Dr. Dirk van Dierendonck