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Literature Review Of Servant Leadership

Decent Essays

Introduction
The Leadership Theory presented in this document is Servant Leadership. The article summarised herein is “A systematic literature review of servant leadership theory in organizational contexts” published in the Journal of Business Ethics, pages 113(3), 377-393, written by D.L. Parris and J.W. Peachey in 2012 but published in the 2013 Journal.
Abstract
The authors of the review state that they focused on providing an informed answer to how servant leadership works and how it could be applied in organisations. A systematic literature review was conducted with a final tally of 39 studies deemed appropriate for the exercise.
The chosen studies revealed the following:
1. There is no single definition for servant leadership
2. There …show more content…

The theory of Servant Leadership
This review acknowledges that additional empirical research is needed on servant leadership especially its current and potential future role in organisations. The authors state that Greenleaf warned that servant leadership would be extremely difficult to apply in an operational setting such as a company.
Several reviews have been conducted to provide insight into servant leadership as a theory. Parris and Peachey (2013) state that Russell and Stone reviewed the theoretical framework of servant leadership and listed nine distinct character traits of servant leaders, namely; integrity, honesty, vision, service, trust, modeling, pioneering, appreciation of others and empowerment. Parris and Peachey (2013) appreciate the conceptual framework in the work of Russell and Stone yet they note that it lacks a methodology.
Parris and Peachey (2013) credit Barbuto and Wheeler for developing a more integrated model of servant leadership which combined the attributes of servant leaders into five categories; altruistic calling, organisational stewardship, emotional healing, wisdom and persuasive …show more content…

The review further illustrates that the theory is valuable to individuals and organisations alike which could be leveraged to increase the effectiveness of teams and individuals.
Critical Discussion
Definition of Servant Leadership
Since this article was a systematic literature review, the authors did not provide their own definition of servant leadership and thus the theory remains under-defined. Parris and Peachey note that most researchers quote Greenleaf’s definition of servant leadership verbatim.
Attributes of servant leaders
The authors did acknowledge that several researchers listed attributes common in servant leaders. However it should be noted that some of the attributes are closely related to spiritual leadership and this is due to the close relationship of these two theories.
Perhaps the authors of this SLR should have eliminated research which encompassed large portions of spiritual

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