MGMT 501 literature review servant leadership.pdf

Literature Review: Servant Leadership and Employee Creativity 1

Literature Review: Servant Leadership and Employee Creativity

Benjamin Kim

Liberty University

MGMT 501 – Executive Leadership and Management

Literature Review: Servant Leadership and Employee Creativity 2

Leadership vs management

In the realm of management, the terms management and leadership may tend to be used

synonymously. While many of the functions of management might fall under the umbrella of

leadership, the quality of leadership is a separate function that is necessary for a successful

manager to have. While management may address a problem, leadership addresses change.

produce important, positive change (Satterlee, 2018).

styles operate on opposite ends of the spectrum – transformational leaders are more dynamic,

focusing on the individuals rather than the tasks, while transactional leaders are more rigid with a

reward-for-performance perspective (Satterlee, 2018). Some of the other leadership styles

discussed in our textbook (Satterlee, 2018) are servant leadership, principle-centered leadership,

change leadership, and ethical leadership. Principle-centered leadership emphasizes core values

and principles that are aligned with the organization. Change leadership is founded on the idea

that change must always occur and it is the responsibility of change leaders to help guide and

change attitudes towards the desired change state. Ethical leaders place the focus on how

ethically leadership is carried out.

The importance of leadership style is greatly important in the success and performance of

Literature Review: Servant Leadership and Employee Creativity 3

circumstances, provide guidance for employees to face challenges, and establish organizational

superiority for continuous progress and development” (Masa’deh, Obeidat, & Tarhini, 2016,

p.682). This brings us to the final leadership style not yet explained – servant leadership. Servant

leadership emphasizes caring for the employees (or subordinates in a non-work environment)

and their quality of life and satisfaction for the betterment for the organization. So, it is a very

hand that results in a commitment to the growth of employees, valuing them, and empowering

logical, servant leadership does not have its focus on the organization, but rather on the people –

not even within the context of the organization, but fully in the context of the people and their

personal lives and ambitions (Chiniara & Bentein, 2017). Yet, despite there being no intentions

or priorities being placed on the organization, servant leadership has shown to result in more

satisfied, committed and better performing employees (Newman et al., 2017). The organization

benefits and has positive outcomes as a by-product of servant leadership. According to Opoku,

Choi, and Kang (2019), servant leadership has these following six characteristics that lead to the

positive results experienced under servant leaders: empowerment, humility, authenticity,

interpersonal acceptance of others, providing direction, and stewardship. In embodying these

characteristics, a servant leader is able to help their followers, and in the case of an organization

Literature Review: Servant Leadership and Employee Creativity 4

leader. He came to earth more powerful than any leader ever, yet He “did not come to be served,

but to serve” (Matthew 20:28, ESV). And in John 13, Jesus displays the example of his servant

leadership when He actually washes the feet, generally a task relegated to the house servant, of

all of the twelve disciples at his last meal just before Passover. Jesus laid out the model and

example for us to follow, just as a servant leader does.

“Gaining a stronger competitive advantage requires leadership to encourage employees to

(OCB), improved performance, and employee creativity and innovation (Yang, Liu, & Gu, 2017;

Chiniara & Bentein, 2017). Among these positive outcomes of servant leadership, improved

employee creativity and innovativeness is central in gaining a competitive advantage and long-

term profitability for a company (Ruiz-Palomino et al., 2018).

Opoku, Choi, and Kang (2019) explain innovation as a “multistage process involving the

generation, promotion, and realization of new ideas, with each stage requiring different activities

and individual behaviours” (p.3). These new ideas are important for establishing a competitive

advantage because they are either an improvement to an existing service, process or product, or

because they can be a solution for an identified problem (Ruiz-Palomino & Zoghbi-Manrique-

de-Lara, 2020). Servant leadership’s emphasis on the people and their engagement,

Literature Review: Servant Leadership and Employee Creativity 5

and improved employee creativity and innovation. While it may not be a direct effect from a

servant leadership approach, there have been many studies to show the indirect relationship and

affect of servant leadership on promoting innovation and creativity, as will be discussed

following.

One of the mechanisms studied is the effect of CEO servant leadership on a firm’s

majority of the other studies, where there is more of a direct relation between leader and

and implement practices that would reflect a servant leader’s characteristics of humility and

service, thus resulting in practices such as EoPART (encouragement of participation) and

EVOICE (employees’ voice), both of which are practices to enhance a firm’s innovativeness.

Survey results gathered from HR managers of hotel accommodation firms found a positive effect

on firm innovativeness as a result of practices like EoPART and EVOICE being implemented by

servant leader CEOs (Ruiz-Palomino et al., 2018).

Another indirect avenue for servant leadership to positively affect employee creativity

and innovation is a positive high quality team member exchange (TMX). TMX can best be

explained as the quality of the relationship of an individual with other members in a group,

where the higher TMX is, the more one a team will feel and the more there will be an exchange

Literature Review: Servant Leadership and Employee Creativity 6

The follower-centric and authentic nature of servant leaders can result in employees feeling like

partners in the organization’s plans and goals. What this can lead to is an increased OCB, as

mentioned previously being one of the outcomes of servant leadership. OCB is simply the level

of commitment an individual has to an organization. The greater the OCB, the more an employee

would be willing and wanting to do for the organization, and the more likely they are to feel

able to feel, providing a psychological safety net for members that allow them to be free to be

and trustworthy environment by encouraging, empowering and creating interdependence and

predictability between employees within the organization” (Malingumu et al., 2016, p.351).

In contrast to TMX, servant leadership can also more directly affect employees’ creativity

and innovation by leader member exchanges (LMX), which is a similar concept to TMX, but at

the level of leader to member. “LMX refers to the degree of emotional support and exchange of

valuable resources between a supervisor and hi/her direct subordinate” (Newman et al., 2017,

p.51), which result in high levels of trust and support. Due to the more direct nature of LMX for

influencing creativity, there are many ways that it can look.

Yang, Gu, and Liu (2019) look at the use of psychological empowerment by servant

leaders to enhance employee creativity, anticipating that the more empowered employees feel,

Literature Review: Servant Leadership and Employee Creativity 7

ideas. A sampling of eleven banks in China spanning 84 teams in 24 branches found

psychological empowerment to be partially effective and able to mediate employee creativity.

There was a level of influence, but the findings would indicate that there may be other

mechanisms needed. Ruiz-Palomino and Zoghbi-Manrique-de-Lara (2020) explored another

facet of LMX – that the creative behaviors would be a response to reciprocate a servant leader’s

Spanish hotel firms provided results that would seem to indicate there was a direct influence

support and encouragement that servant leaders display towards their followers increases self-

efficacy, which is the level of effort and persistence applied towards new and difficult tasks. Self-

efficacy, in turn would correlate to enhanced employee creativity. A cross-level survey across

several banks in China revealed that revealed that the hypothesis of self-efficacy’s correlation to

employee creativity was only partially mediated. Just as in the previous studies discussed, the

findings revealed that other mechanisms should be in place to mediate employee creativity. In

yet another study, by Williams Jr. et al. (2017), the findings again are the same – that while there

may be some level of direct influence from LMX towards enhancing employee creativity, there

were generally other mediating factors needed.

Through this review of literature about servant leadership and its many benefits, one of

Literature Review: Servant Leadership and Employee Creativity 8

approach. This may be the most impactful, either directly or indirectly, outcome from servant

leadership that leads to the other benefits – improved job attitude, increased OCB, improved

performance, enhanced employee creativity. Lu, Zhang, and Jia (2019) describe a construct of

two types of trust – affect-based and cognition based. Affect-based trust is a trust developed from

perceived affection and genuine care, while cognition-based trust results from competency,

leadership approach, where servant leaders genuinely care for the well being and betterment of

Literature Review: Servant Leadership and Employee Creativity 9

Chiniara, M., & Bentein, K. (2017). The servant leadership advantage: When perceiving low

differentiation in leader-member relationship quality influences team cohesion, team task

performance and service OCB. The Leadership Quarterly, 29(2). 333-345. https://doi-

org.ezproxy.liberty.edu/10.1016/j.leaqua.2017.05.002

social information-processing perspective. Journal of Business Ethics, 159. 507-518.

among transformational leadership, transactional leadership, knowledge sharing, job

performance, and firm performance: A structural equation modelling approach. Journal

of Management Development, 35(5), 681-705. https://doi-

org.ezproxy.liberty.edu/10.1108/JMD-09-2015-0134

Newman, A., Schwarz, G., Cooper, B., Sendjaya, S. (2017). How servant leadership influences

organizational citizenship behavior: The roles of LMX, empowerment, and proactive

personality. Journal of Business Ethics, 145. 49-62. https://doi-

org.ezproxy.liberty.edu/10.1007/s10551-015-2827-6

Opoku, M.A., Choi, S.B., & Kang, S. (2019). Servant leadership and innovative behaviour: An

empirical analysis of Ghana’s manufacturing sector. Sustainability, 11(22). 1-18.