Servant leadership in a large South African business organization

Abstract

This report discusses a research project undertaken to investigate servant leadership and examine the extent to which its associated behaviours are implemented within two departments of a large South African petrochemical company, and how the mean scores for respondent’s perceptions on the degree to which their direct supervisors practice servant leadership behaviours correlate with perceptions of interpersonal trust and passive management-by-exception. Based on the results of extensive research conducted on servant leadership over the past 40 years, it is clear that this leadership philosophy has a strong grounding in ethics, with its value placed upon people based on their inherent humanity and beyond their utilitarian worth to businesses in meeting their objectives. The author hypothesizes that one of the departments investigated (SSSS) does experience a high prevalence of servant leadership behaviours, based on the high levels of employee engagement prevalent within this department according to a recent survey, and that the other department (GSS) does not experience a high prevalence of servant leader behaviours. Both departments were found to have a moderate level of servant leader behaviours, but neither was found to be servant led. The author also investigates the possible relationship between servant leadership and interpersonal trust (as measured by Nyhan and Marlowe’s OTI) and servant leadership (SL) and passive management-by-exception (MBEP) (as measured by Avolio and Bass’s MLQ). The author uses Sendjaya et al.,’s SLBS to measure servant leadership. A moderate negative relationship was found between SL and MBEP and a moderately strong positive relationship between SL and interpersonal trust.