The Origin of Servant Leadership

Servant leadership suffers from the same limitation as leadership studies in general. Many are now calling for a deeper study of the meaning and application of this emerging subfield of leadership study so that servant leadership could be adapted with open minds and effectively be practiced. A strong foundation must be built to support the emerging structure of servant leader scholarship. The purpose of this chapter is to analyze the origin, the meaning, the role, and the purpose of authentic servant leadership. In so doing 1) the foundation and meaning of leadership is defined and clarified, 2) the role and meaning of follower is defined and clarified, and 3) the role and meaning of management is and clarified. The chapter concludes with an explanation of the intended meaning and purpose of authentic servant leadership. In so doing, this chapter addresses the following common confusing terms in research and misused roles in corporations: leadership, follower, and management.

Ethics and Leadership

Leadership and ethics continue to be important areas of research. The devastating results of failed leadership in numerous Enron-like situations have ensured that this is the case. This chapter suggests how various leadership approaches and behaviors lead to or develop different types of employee behaviors that impact organizational outcomes. The framework reviews ethical, transformational, and servant leadership, and their relationship to self-regulatory focus. Specifically, promotion-oriented leaders tend to reflect transformational and servant-leadership behaviors and resulting organization cultures, while prevention-oriented leaders match the ethical leadership style and related organization culture. The prevention orientation is a conservative mindset guiding consistent leader and employee behavior, while the promotion orientation provides more opportunity for unique and innovative behaviors.

African American Urban School Principal Servant Leadership

The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the characteristics of African American school principals and the obstacles they experience on their path to the principalship. A secondary purpose, but very important as well, is to analyze critically the experiences of successful African American male principals to help inform the preparation of principals who lead organizations of diverse demographics. Investigating this area also contributes to the much-needed educational discourse of African American principal attitudes, beliefs, and life experiences of principals in education today, and how they are meeting the needs of a growing multicultural population. The principals are the primary units of analysis, and it is the intent of this chapter to delve into the lives of the participants to gain a better understanding of the barriers and obstacles they have to overcome to become principals.

Servant-Leadership with Cultural Dimensions in Cross-Cultural Settings

This chapter demonstrates how the power of servant-leadership characteristics and nine cultural dimensions offer intercultural leaders increased capacity in cross-cultural workplaces. Servant-leadership characteristics are paired with cultural dimensions based on their corresponding commonalities to provide intercultural leaders potential tools and strategies to successfully ameliorate cultural barriers, to productively navigate cultural differences, and to build an organizational culture of inclusion, collaboration, and participation. The main objective of the chapter is to increase intercultural leader capacity to lead in culturally mixed organizations, be they domestic or international, resulting in minimizing or avoiding institutional or organizational failure.

The Controlled Discipline of Servant Leaders

This chapter investigates claims by Johnson (2001) and Bowie (2000) that servant leaders tend not to assert authority. Twenty servant leaders were asked five open-ended questions about their use of discipline with outcomes of the discipline ranging from more training for subordinates to termination. Analysis of the responses resulted in 39 themes and 8 qualitative truths about servant leaders' use of discipline. Participants were included in the study if: (a) each scored above 3.5 on the Shepherd Leadership Inventory, (b) were leading or have led a team of at least three followers, and (c) held such a position for at least three years. This study provides a qualitative base for future research into servant leaders' use of discipline.