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The Effects of Servant Leadership Within an Organization

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The Effects of Servant Leadership within an Organization

Ariel Davis

Dallas Baptist University

MANA 6314 Organizational Change and Development

The Origin of Servant Leadership
The philosophy of servant leadership is attributed to the writings of Robert K. Greenleaf and based on his faith and experiences working at one of the world’s largest telephone companies. (Greenleaf, 1977; Spears, 1995). Greenleaf speculated that one individual could simultaneously be both a leader and a servant. Though the foundation of the concept is associated to Greenleaf, he states Jesus Christ amongst other biblical front runners are the greatest leaders who served others. (Greenleaf, 1977). Servant leadership gained popularity after the writings of Greenleaf in 1970. Since the original 1970 essay by Greenleaf, additional research articles, books, and lectures have been written on the topic of servant Leadership. In the article, Work, Spirituality, the Moral Point of View Kenneth E. Goodpaster describes the concept of Servant Leadership as a buzz phrase that has taken corporate America by storm,

In an environment racked with stress, insecurity, tough decisions and 60-hour weeks, you might expect a resurgence of a management model, based on Machiavelli's Prince, Leonia Helmsley or some other Theory-X icon. Instead, there's a stirring in the opposite direction: A flood of management books, articles and musings that propose the idea of leading from a service perspective; managing from the heart, value-based management, sensitivity and vulnerability. (1995, p 40)

Examples of servant leadership are dated back to biblical era of Christ. Through these illustrations we will investigate the effects of this style of leadership from and organizational point of view.

Measuring the Effectiveness of Leadership After a case study conducted in an effort to examine the

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