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Servant Leadership and Change: A Review of the Literature

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New Horizons in Positive Leadership and Change

Part of the book series: Management for Professionals ((MANAGPROF))

Abstract

One of the enduring images of Christianity is that of Christ as the good shepherd, which is a relevant metaphor for servant leadership’s emphasis on promoting enduring and desirable organizational change. Functional organizational change is a global construct that reflects the overall efficacy of servant leadership in promoting desirable employee attitudes, behaviors, and performance outcomes (Roberts, 2016). Servant leadership emphasizes two meta-dimensions of stewardship and servanthood directly promoting efficacious change management practices (Roberts, 2015). This chapter will review a large sample of servant leader empirical studies and present clear evidence of its positive influence on the attributes of servant leadership that promote effective organizational change. The research literature and subsequent analysis for this chapter is based upon 138 empirical mostly quantitative studies published from 2004 to 2019. Change related studies were then selected from this group of 138 by key word search in the 138 article abstracts. A total of 18 change related studies were identified through this process. The 138 studies generated 285 empirical outcomes of which 275 (96.5%) are favorable in directionality regarding the influence of servant leadership on change related outcomes. There were only nine nonsignificant (3.3%) and one negative (0.35%) relationships identified. Of the 138 studies, a final grouping of 104 studies was selected for the final analysis through the elimination of nonchange related dependent variables.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Regent University, Virginia Beach, VA, USA

    Gary Roberts

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  1. Gary Roberts
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Business, Woodbury University, Burbank, CA, USA

    Satinder Dhiman

  2. School of Business, Woodbury University, Burbank, CA, USA

    Joan Marques

Appendix

Appendix

Table 3.11 Master list , employee attitudes, and number of favorable direct and indirect effects of servant leadership studies
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Table 3.12 Master list, employee behaviors, and number of favorable direct and indirect effects of servant leadership studies
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Table 3.13 Master list, performance variables, and number of favorable direct and indirect effects of servant leadership studies
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Table 3.14 Master list, leadership variables, and number of favorable direct and indirect effects of servant leadership studies
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Table 3.15 Master list, character variables, and number of favorable direct and indirect effects of servant leadership studies
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Table 3.16 Master list, character variables , and number of nonsignificant and negative direct and indirect effects of servant leadership studies
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Roberts, G. (2020). Servant Leadership and Change: A Review of the Literature. In: Dhiman, S., Marques, J. (eds) New Horizons in Positive Leadership and Change. Management for Professionals. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38129-5_3

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