User:Jwills725/2sectionsforSL

The article servant leadership has multiple issues although all the information in the article is relevant to the topic.  For one, I was very distracted while reading.  The grammar was a distraction for me and it made the article a bit difficult to read.  Secondly, the attempt at defining servant leadership in the first paragraph was a distraction for me because it was broad and uninformative.  The concept of what exactly servant leadership is, was poorly defined. Another issue I found while reading was a few of the links for the articles were not working thus making the claims unsupported. Lastly, although the work is presented in a neutral fashion, many of the facts are again unsupported.  This for me is the biggest issue, between finding secondary sources that are not primary on research. Two sections proposed are a consensus on Viewpoint/Operational Definition and Experiment Research.

VIEWPOINTS/OPERATIONAL DEFINITION

Although a semi-consensus among scholars exist on Spear's definition of servant leadership, empirical research has no consensus. Here are some of the most pivotal attempts in research to captivate servant leadership in its entirety. Some research mention points toward some of benefits of servant leadership and shortcomings of the articles:

Researcher Akuchie explored the religious and spiritual articulations of the servant leadership construct. Akuchie examined a single Bible passages related to servant leadership. A passage just like the one mentioned in the opening of the essay. Akuchie suggested that the application of this lesson is for daily life. However, Akuchie did not in any way clarify servant leadership as distinct from other forms of leadership or articulate a framework for understanding servant leadership.

Researchers Sendjaya and Sarros used the same Bible account as Akuchie and made the claim that Jesus Christ, not Greenleaf, introduced the notion of servant leadership to everyday human endeavor. They argued that this leadership principle was so important to Christianity that it was captured by all four gospel writers (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John). The researchers argued that servant leaders have a particular view of themselves as stewards who are entrusted to develop and empower followers to reach their fullest potential. However, Sendjaya and Sarros research work did not propose a testable framework nor did this work distinguish between this and other leadership styles.

Researcher Graham discussion on servant leadership distinguished transformational leadership and servant leadership. The transformational leadership model was conceived in part by James MacGregor Burns in 1978 and Bernard Bass in 1985. A major distinction between transformational leadership and servant leadership is the focus of the leader. The servant leader focuses on the service to followers, customers, and the organization whereas the transformational leader focused on the goal of the organization. The servant leader influences by serving the needs of others whereas the transformation leader influences by modeling. The servant leader promotes team problem solving individualized development whereas the transformational leader uses persuasion to promote individualized influence. The servant leader motivates by providing autonomy and resources whereas the transformational leader motivates with charisma to attain a common goal. Graham's servant leadership viewpoint focused on moral development, service, and enhancement of common good. Graham identified servant leadership as the most moral of charismatic effects. Graham identified its salient characteristics as humility, relational power, autonomy, emulation of leaders' service orientation, and moral development of followers.

Researchers Farling, Stone, and Winston noted the lack of empirical evidence for servant leadership. The researchers presented servant leadership as a hierarchical model in a cyclical process. This consisted of behavioral (vision, service) and relational (influence, credibility, trust) components. However, this conceptualization made by these researchers did not differ from leadership theories such as transformational leadership. Researcher Polleys distinguished servant leadership from three predominant leadership paradigms the trait, the behavioral, and the contingency approaches to leadership. Polleys's views aligned with transforming leadership but once again made no distinctions among charismatic, transformational, and servant leadership.

Researchers Barbuto and Wheeler created a dimension called "the natural desire to serve others," by combining the 10 characteristics of Spears. These researchers developed operational definitions and scales to measure 11 potential characteristics of servant leadership. Factor analyses reduced this scale to five unique dimensions: altruistic calling (four items), emotional healing (four items), wisdom (five items), persuasive mapping (five items), and organizational stewardship (five items). This framework specified the fundamentals to servant leadership and consisted with Greenleaf's original message. Among these five dimensions, altruistic calling is most aligned with ethics.

Researchers Liden, Wayne, Zhao, and Henderson developed a seven-dimension scale to measure servant leadership. These seven dimensions are conceptual skills, empowering, helping subordinates grow and succeed, putting subordinates first, behaving ethically, emotional healing, and creating value for the community. Improving an individual in an organizational setting. Each dimension is assessed by four items, totaling 28 items for this scale. The researchers reported that servant leadership behavior explained variance in citizenship behavior and in role performance beyond that predicted by leader-member exchange and transformational leadership.

Researchers Russell and Stone reviewed the literature and proposed nine 'functional' attributes of servant leadership (vision, honesty, integrity, trust, service, modeling, pioneering, appreciation of others, and empowerment) and eleven 'accompanying' attributes (communication, credibility, competence, stewardship, visibility, influence, persuasion, listening, encouragement, teaching, and delegation). They also argued that the servant leader must be a teacher in order to develop their followers, and that values and core personal beliefs were the antecedents to servant leadership.

Lastly, researcher Patterson developed a more spiritual conceptualization of servant leadership around leader values including: agapé love, humility, altruism, creating 21 visions for followers, being trusting, serving, and empowering their followers. This work was exploratory in nature. No confirmatory analysis was performed, no criterion was posited to establish validity, and convergent/divergent validity was not established.

EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH

Experimental research on servant leadership varies. Ehrhart (2004) reported that servant leadership significantly predicted an additional 5% of the variance in employee commitment, 7% of the variance in satisfaction with supervisor, 4% of the variance in perceived supervisor support, and 8% of the variance in procedural justice above and beyond that of both leader-member exchange and transformational leadership. Similarly, Liden et al. (2008) reported that servant leadership behavior explained variance in citizenship behavior and in-role performance beyond that pre- dicted by leader-member exchange and transformational leader- ship. The evidence regarding the incremental validity of servant leadership in explaining variance in employee attitudes and behav- iors beyond leader-member exchange and transformational lead- ership is important given how strongly leader-member exchange and transformational leadership behaviors are associated with pos- itive employee attitudes and behaviors (Ilies et al., 2007; Judge & Piccolo, 2004).