As the study of servant leadership expands beyond theoretical exploration, empirical research continues to validate the positive effect of servant leadership behaviors and attitudes on diverse follower and organizational measures. This study expands the conversation by engaging the theme of leader purposefulness within servant leadership studies. A sample of over 1700 employees from a large U.S. healthcare organization provided responses to five research instruments. Follower perspectives on servant leadership, leader follower-focus, leader goal-orientation, and leader purposefulness were assessed using the Purpose in Leadership Inventory and each of these independent variables were analyzed for hypothesized positive relationships with four dependent variables: follower job satisfaction, follower organizational commitment, follower person-organization fit, and follower perception of leadership effectiveness. Each of the 16 hypothesized relationships were supported at a statistically significant level (<0.001) with positive correlations ranging from 0.40 to 0.88. Regression analyses were conducted to provide predictive modeling and indicators of the relative importance of each independent variable on the related dependent variables.

The servant leadership literature has a growing body of evidence pointing to the positive relationship between servant leadership and job satisfaction. Because many of these studies have focused on quantitative analyses of the subject, the present study brings a complementary qualitative perspective. This article presents the findings of a case study focused on the servant leadership practices of the McNeff family in their network of family-owned companies in Anoka, Minnesota. Using the six servant leadership themes developed by Laub, the study focused on interviews with the owners and survey results from employees. The researchers found that the servant leadership practices of the owners are contributing to the job satisfaction of the employees. In addition, the researchers found evidence to suggest that the theme of valuing people may have a disproportionately strong effect on the culture of a business or organization, and serve as the foundation on which other servant leadership behaviors may occur.

Purpose: – The aim of this paper is to report findings from research conducted that links the role of obstacles defined by developmental antecedents to the level of resilience within a leader.Design/methodology/approach: – The study reflects responses from 167 participants and utilizes leadership antecedents categories, the Differentiation of Self Inventory, Short Form and the Connor Davidson Resilience Scale.Findings: – The results demonstrate that resiliency is positively correlated with both the leadership antecedents and differentiation of self. In light of the research findings, the authors will highlight the relationship between resiliency and the leadership antecedents (including developmental assignments, developmental relationships, developmental experiences, and developmental training), highlight the relationship between resiliency and differentiation of self, and provide rationale for the absence of a relationship between differentiation of self and the leadership antecedents.Research limitations/implications: – The study does not demonstrate how the developmental antecedents might work in combination with one another to develop resiliency. Therefore, one recommendation would be to further verify the interrelationship of developmental antecedents and the nature of their relationship with leader resiliency. If research can determine the interrelationship of these developmental antecedents on the development of resilience, then implications exist within the leadership formation process and for new forms of leadership training.Originality/value: – Based on the findings, the authors intend to provide an argument for why obstacles and developmental experiences are a logical and necessary part of the formation process for leaders and suggest the importance of emerging leaders attending to this dimension of their own leadership formation journey.

In this article, we argue for the existence of a relationship between metanarrative and leadership effectiveness that is mediated by personal meaning. After analyzing the relevant literatures, we present a model that attributes this relationship to the capacity of metanarrative to produce meaning through the interpretive frames of Telos (teleological context), Chronos (historical-narrative context), and Hermēneia (interpretive context). We begin with a review of the leadership effectiveness literature followed by a discussion of the theoretical foundations of the concepts of meaning and metanarrative. From this review, we derive a set of propositions that describe the nature of the interrelationships among the constructs of interest and present a theoretical model that captures the proposed relationships. We conclude by suggesting several streams of research designed to evaluate the proposed model and with recommendations for further study.