DOCTORAL LEVEL WRITING EXERCISE 2
Abstract
This paper examines three separate studies on servant leadership and how they each specifically
relate to Bloom’s Taxonomy. Collectively they explore the challenging landscape of servant
leadership, with special note of comparison to transformational leadership. With specific use of
Bloom’s Taxonomy’s tiers of Analyze, Evaluate, and Create, these three articles shed light onto
a model of leadership that has a measurable impact on organizational success by way of focus on
employee individuality. Together these studies help form a nuanced understanding of servant
leadership and offer practical implications for future or current leaders to navigate the
momentous task of leadership.
Keywords: Servant Leadership, Leadership, Bloom’s Taxonomy, Evaluate, Create,
Analyze
DOCTORAL LEVEL WRITING EXERCISE 3
APA Writing Exercise
The world of leadership theories changes quickly and often, at least in terms of slight
nuances to different theories and new ideas forming about them. It is imperative that exploration
of distinct aspects of leadership be done to have a fundamental understanding of their impact on
organizational success. The following trio of articles explore the challenging landscape of
servant leadership, how it compares and differs to transformational leadership, and especially
how they align within Bloom’s Taxonomy. Using Bloom’s Taxonomy as the framework for this
evaluation each of these studies adds to a deeper understanding of servant leadership and how it
has a measurable effect on both the employee individually but all the organization as a whole and
its trajectory of success. Using a detailed analysis, vital evaluation, and a charge to create more
creatively, these three articles shed valuable light on servant leadership.
Blooms Taxonomy - Analyze
In their article, Iqbal, Ahmad, and Nazir set out to compare servant leadership with
transformational leadership and ultimately to determine if there were a measurable difference
between their effects of the innovativeness of employees leading to higher success for an
organization (2023). They describe transformational leadership as, organizationally focused and
focuses on the success of the organization by means of pushing the employees to not just meet
expectations, but to exceed them (2022). Comparatively they describe servant leadership as that
of being more focused on the employees individually, and their growth and success, above and
before the organization’s success, even though they end up one in the same.;Ultimately it was
concluded that servant leadership yielded a more substantial uptick in innovation and
organizational success because it was more employee focused. This measurable increased
outcome suggests that servant leadership rather than transformational leadership has a stronger
DOCTORAL LEVEL WRITING EXERCISE 4
positive effect on employees. It is important to note that through study, experimentation, and
research, it was concluded that both leadership styles did in fact have a measurable increase in
perceived innovation, just that servant leaderships improvement was higher. This relates well
into the analyze portion of Bloom’s Taxonomy as it is breaking down the two leadership styles
into separate components through various measurement models and evaluating them
independently and against each other. It is because of this analysis and the findings that a better
understanding of the, even slight, variations between the two leadership models becomes
apparent. This analysis ultimately gives us both practical and theoretical implications for the sake
of organizational success through improved employee innovation.
Blooms Taxonomy - Evaluate
In terms of Bloom’s Taxonomy, as it relates to “evaluation” Lu, Zhang, and Jia’s article
does a great job. This article sets out to critique and weigh servant leaderships direct effect on the
emotional status of the employees. The study was challenging because in most work settings, it
is discouraged to discuss one’s feelings and emotions (Lu et al., 2019). It is important to note that
when looking at servant leadership versus other leadership theories, the model of servant
leadership is the most likely to have a positive emotional impact simply because it has the most
specific focus on the employee as an individual. After careful evaluation it was determined that
strong servant leadership did in fact have a positive impact on employee emotional status and
promoted “deep acting and reduced their surface acting” Lu et al, 2019). This is to say deep
acting in terms of their true feelings and emotional positing and surface acting to mean facial
expressions to appear a certain way. In turn, servant leadership led to employees simply and only
pretending to be happy less often and to being happy more often.
Blooms Taxonomy - Create
DOCTORAL LEVEL WRITING EXERCISE 5
Eva, Robin, Sendjaya, Dierendonck, and Liden set out to dive into the vast study of
servant leadership, reviewing 285 separate articles, trying to offer insight and clarity and
ultimately present a path forward for further research for understanding of the nuanced topic
(2019). A very good way to understand this article would be that in essence it is calling for a
commitment by future researchers to have creativity in the design models of their research,
points of measurement, and conclusions, for the sake of deepening the collective understanding
of servant leadership. It is rather obvious how this article ties into the pinnacle of Bloom’s
Taxonomy, create. Which is all about the creation of newer and more elaborate works on a topic.
The article acknowledges the growth that the field of servant leadership has undergone in over
20 years of study but proposes that further clarified study must be done. Namely in terms of its
proposed reliance on “cross-sectional, single-respondent survey designs” (Eva et al., 2019). They
also postulate that future researchers should pay careful attention to proposed outcomes of their
studies to ensure that results are provided in terms of evidence-based solutions rather than more
lists of variables to be mindful of, i.e. create better studies and outcomes.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the exploration of servant leadership found through these three articles on
servant leadership offers a rather comprehensive understanding of its distinct and measurable
effect on organizational success by way of individual employee value. Iqbal et al.’s alignment
with Bloom’s analyze tier shows a correlation between servant leadership’s role in employee
innovation. Lu et al.’s article in lieu of Bloom’s evaluation tier showed the positive effects of
servant leadership on the emotional status and well-being of employees. Finally, Eva et al.’s
charge to future academics to create more innovative and evidence-based solution studies.
DOCTORAL LEVEL WRITING EXERCISE 6
Combined these three articles bring valuable insight and deeper understanding of servant
leadership.
DOCTORAL LEVEL WRITING EXERCISE 7
References
Iqbal, A., Ahmad, M. S., & Nazir, T. (2023). Does servant leadership predict innovative behavior
above and beyond transformational leadership? Examining the role of affective
commitment and creative self-efficacy. Leadership & Organization Development
Journal, 44(1), 64-51. https://doi.org/10.1108/LODJ-01-2022-0016
Lu, J., Zhang, Z., & Jia, M. (2019). Does servant leadership affect employees’ emotional labor?
A social information-processing perspective. Journal of Business Ethics, 159(2), 507–
518. https://www.jstor.org/stable/45219429
Eva, N., Robin, M., Sendjaya, S., Van Dierendonck, D., & Liden, R. C. (2019). Servant
leadership: A systematic review and call for future research. Leadership Quarterly, 30(1),
111–132.
DOCTORAL LEVEL WRITING EXERCISE 8
Annotated Bibliography
Iqbal, A., Ahmad, M. S., & Nazir, T. (2023). Does servant leadership predict innovative behavior
above and beyond transformational leadership? Examining the role of affective
commitment and creative self-efficacy. Leadership & Organization Development
Journal, 44(1), 64-51. https://doi.org/10.1108/LODJ-01-2022-0016
Each of the authors of this article is qualified to discuss the topic. They are each a professor in
the fields of business or management at schools in Pakistan and Oman. They have each
previously written scholarly articles on such topics that have hold academic weight. This article
does a very good job and lends itself very nicely to Bloom’s Taxonomy’s tier of analyze as it
looks at and compares both transformational and servant leadership. For this fact it fits very well
in this assignment. A critique of the article could be that it uses a relatively small sample size
since its 338 surveyed employees are all in information technology fields in Pakistan. Despite
this relatively small sampling base, the principles and extrapolations seem to hold true
throughout. The unique twist to this article is that, even though there is a plethora of studies on
servant leadership and transformational leadership separately, this one unites the two fields to
compare their effects on employee innovation through their opposing mechanisms of leadership.
The main point of this article is that servant leadership, although like transformational
leadership, has a similar outcome, organizational success, its mechanism of employee centered
focus first, shows to have a greater resulting outcome. This happens through more intentional
engagement with employees. Ultimately this article concludes that a greater trust relationship is
built through servant leadership and that distinct relationship lends to a measurably better
outcome. Finally, this paper concludes that these benefits are best expressed in knowledge
intensive business such as information technology.
DOCTORAL LEVEL WRITING EXERCISE 9
Lu, J., Zhang, Z., & Jia, M. (2019). Does servant leadership affect employees’ emotional labor?
A social information-processing perspective. Journal of Business Ethics, 159(2), 507–
518. https://www.jstor.org/stable/45219429
This article is in the Journal of Business Ethics, which is a very reputable journal in the realm of
business and its authors have written serval peer reviewed academic articles in said realm. Given
the academic acceptance of the Journal of Business Ethics it can be presumed that these authors
are qualified to write about such topics. This article lends itself very well to this assignment as it
does a rather deep analysis of multiple surveys to evaluate the emotional implications stemming
from the servant leadership model. Although all study subjects were in the country of China,
there was a multitude of work units and sub corporations surveyed. Due to these variances, it can
be presumed that the findings, though limited, likely can be extrapolated to the world over.
Despite country nearly all workplaces frown on the topic of personal emotion and feeling
expression, this is rather universal, this is what makes this study challenging. Despite these
challenges, the key point of this article is that due to the personal nature of servant leadership and
its focus on the specific individual it was found that it too has a measurable and positive impact
on the emotional status of employees. It does so by way of decreasing their “putting on a happy
face” and simply pretending things are well and increasing their actual internal feelings of
happiness. Due to the anonymity of the survey, it can be assumed that these results are accurate
as there would be no reason for false responses for fear of corporate backlash.
N.;Eva,;M.;Robin,;S.;Sendjaya,;D.;Van Dierendonck,;R.C.;Liden Servant leadership: A
Systematic Review and Call for Future Research. Leadership Quarterly.,)30)(1);(2019),
pp.;111-132.
DOCTORAL LEVEL WRITING EXERCISE 10
If only by title alone this article aligns perfectly with Bloom’s Taxonomy’s tier of creation. The
authors of this paper are each Professors in aspects of Business at various schools from Australia,
the Netherlands, and the United States. Additionally, they are each very well published in the
field with multiple papers pertaining to leadership models and how they pertain to organizations
and their successes. Similarly, the article is published in The Leadership Quarterly, a very
reputable publication, especially regarding business and leadership. This article analyzes over
285 articles spanning 20 years regarding 16 separate measures of servant leadership, meaning
that it is a rather robust article. The key point and summation of this article is that there has been
a plethora of studies on servant leadership, but most of them only lead to more questions and
variable to be test. The authors of this article focus around one end goal, that the study of servant
leadership, as it pertains to the future, should be focused on results-based solutions that do not
present more variable to be surveyed and studied. They postulate there will be a continued
academic focus on the servant leadership model, as it is the preferred current method and has the
most obvious measurable results, and as such a more narrowed focus on research is necessary
going forward. This article admits that great progress in the field of servant leadership has been
made, through their analysis of 20 years of study, but that much more growth is on the horizon.
