Servant leadership: Development of a multidimensional measure and multi-level assessment

• Published in: The Leadership quarterly Vol. 19; no. 2; pp. 161 - 177
• Main Authors: Liden, Robert C., Wayne, Sandy J., Zhao, Hao, Henderson, David
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Inc 01-04-2008; Elsevier Science Ltd
• Subjects: Community citizenship; Discriminant analysis; Leadership; Leader–member exchange; Multi-level analysis; Organizational behavior; Scale development; Servant leadership; Studies; Transformational leadership; Servant leadership; Multi-level analysis; Leader–member exchange; Scale development; Transformational leadership; Community citizenship
• ISSN: 1048-9843; 1873-3409
• DOI: 10.1016/j.leaqua.2008.01.006

Servant leadership stresses personal integrity and serving others, including employees, customers, and communities. This article focuses on a servant leadership measure that was created by identifying 9 dimensions. Relevant items were then developed and subjected to factor analysis with a sample of 298 students, resulting in a 7-factor solution. Using an organizational sample of 182 individuals, we verified this 7-factor model with confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). We further validated our 28-item servant leadership scale by regressing outcomes on the servant leadership dimensions, controlling for transformational leadership and leader–member exchange (LMX) in a multi-level hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) analysis. The results suggest that servant leadership is a multidimensional construct and at the individual level makes a unique contribution beyond transformational leadership and LMX in explaining community citizenship behaviors, in-role performance, and organizational commitment. No between-leader (group-level) differences were found in the outcomes variables.