sample research paper on leadership

Leadership Research Paper

This sample leadership research paper features: 7900 words (approx. 26 pages), an outline, and a bibliography with 38 sources. Browse other research paper examples for more inspiration. If you need a thorough research paper written according to all the academic standards, you can always turn to our experienced writers for help. This is how your paper can get an A! Feel free to contact our writing service for professional assistance. We offer high-quality assignments for reasonable rates.

I. Introduction

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II. Leadership Defined

III. The Trait Approach to Leadership

IV. What Do Leaders Do? The Behavioral Approach

V. Situational Approaches to Leadership

VI. Contingency Theories of Leadership

VII. Leader-Member Exchange Theory

VIII. Charismatic and Transformational Leadership

IX. Leader Emergence and Transition

X. Leadership Development

XI. Summary

XII. Bibliography

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Introduction

There are few things more important to human activity than leadership. Most people, regardless of their occupation, education, political or religious beliefs, or cultural orientation, recognize that leadership is a real and vastly consequential phenomenon. Political candidates proclaim it, pundits discuss it, companies value it, and military organizations depend on it. The French diplomat Talleyrand once said, “I am more afraid of an army of 100 sheep led by a lion than an army of 100 lions led by a sheep.” Effective leadership guides nations in times of peril, promotes effective team and group performance, makes organizations successful, and, in the form of parenting, nurtures the next generation. Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of Great Britain during World War II, was able to galvanize the resolve of his embattled people with these words: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.” When leadership is missing, the effects can be equally dramatic; organizations move too slowly, stagnate, and often lose their way. The League of Nations, created after the World War I, failed to meet the challenges of the times in large part because of a failure to secure effective leadership. With regard to bad leaders, Kellerman (2004) makes an important distinction between incompetent leaders and corrupt leaders. To this we might also add leaders who are “toxic.” Bad leadership can perpetuate misery on those who are subject to its domain. Consider the case of Jim Jones, the leader of the Peoples Temple, who in 1978 ordered the mass suicide of his 900 followers in what has been called the Jonestown Massacre, or the corrupt leadership of Enron and Arthur Anderson that impoverished thousands of workers and led to the dissolution of a major organization. These examples remind us that there are many ways in which leadership can fail.

Leadership Defined

When you think of leadership, the ideas of power, authority, and influence may come to mind. You may think of the actions of effective leaders in accomplishing important goals. You may think of actual people who have been recognized for their leadership capabilities. Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th president of the United States, defined leadership as “the ability to decide what is to be done, and then to get others to want to do it.” Leadership can be defined as the ability of an individual to influence the thoughts, attitudes, and behavior of others. It is the process by which others are motivated to contribute to the success of the groups of which they are members. Leaders set a direction for their followers and help them to focus their energies on achieving their goals. Theorists have developed many different theories about leadership, and although none of the theories completely explains everything about leadership, each has received some scientific support. Some of the theories are based on the idea that there are “born leaders” with particular traits that contribute to their ability to lead. Other theories suggest that leadership consists of specific skills and behaviors. Some theories take a contingency approach that suggests that a leader’s effectiveness depends on the situation requiring leadership. Still other theories examine the relationship between the leader and his or her followers as the key to understanding leadership. In this research paper, we examine these various theories and describe the process of leadership development.

The Trait Approach to Leadership

Aristotle suggested that “men are marked out from the moment of birth to rule or be ruled,” an idea that evolved into the Great Person Theory. Great leaders of the past do seem different from ordinary human beings. When we consider the lives of Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr., it is easy to think of their influence as a function of unique personal attributes. This trait approach was one of the first perspectives applied to the study of leadership and for many years dominated leadership research. The list of traits associated with effective leadership is extensive and includes personality characteristics such as being outgoing, assertive, and conscientious. Other traits that have been identified are confidence, integrity, discipline, courage, self-sufficiency, humor, and mystery. Charles de Gaulle described this last trait best when he noted that “A true leader always keeps an element of surprise up his sleeve, which others cannot grasp but which keeps his public excited and breathless.”

Another trait often attributed to effective leaders is intelligence. However, intelligence is a two-edged sword. Although highly intelligent people may be effective leaders, their followers may feel that large differences in intellectual abilities mean large differences in attitudes, values, and interests. Thus, Gibb (1969) has pointed out that many groups prefer to be “ill-governed by people [they] can understand” (p. 218). One important aspect of intelligence that does predict leader effectiveness is emotional intelligence, which includes not only social skills but strong self-monitoring skills, which provide the leader with feedback as to how followers feel about the leader’s actions.

Finally, personal characteristics such as attractiveness, height, and poise are associated with effective leadership. After decades of research, in which the list of traits grew dramatically, researchers realized that the same person could be effective in one context (Winston Churchill as war leader) but ineffective in another context (Winston Churchill, who was removed from office immediately after the war was over). The failure of this approach to recognize the importance of the situation in providing clear distinctions between leaders and followers with regard to their traits caused many scientists to turn their attention elsewhere. However, theorists using more sophisticated methodological and conceptual approaches have revived this approach. Zaccaro (2007) suggests that the revival of the trait approach reflects a shift away from the idea that traits are inherited, as suggested in Galton’s 1869 book Hereditary Genius, and focuses on personal characteristics that reflect a range of acquired individual differences. This approach has three components. First, researchers do not consider traits as separate and distinct contributors to leadership effectiveness but rather as a constellation of characteristics that, taken together, make a good leader.

The second component broadens the concept of trait to refer not only to personality characteristics but also to motives, values, social and problem-solving skills, cognitive abilities, and expertise. For example, in a series of classic studies, McClelland and his colleagues (see McClelland & Boyatzis, 1982) identified three motives that contribute to leadership. They are the need for achievement, the need for power, and the need for affiliation. In their work, leader traits are not attributes of the person but the basis for the leader’s behavior. The need for achievement is manifested in the desire to solve problems and accomplish tasks. In the words of Donald McGannon, “Leadership is action, not position.” The need for power is evident in the desire to influence others without using coercion. As Hubert H. Humphrey once said, “Leadership in today’s world requires far more than a large stock of gunboats and a hard fist at the conference table.” The final motive, need for affiliation, can be a detriment to effective leadership if the leader becomes too concerned with being liked. However, it can provide positive results from the satisfaction a leader derives in helping others succeed. Lao Tse once wrote, “A good leader is a catalyst, and though things would not get done well if he weren’t there, when they succeed he takes no credit. And because he takes no credit, credit never leaves him.”

The third component of this new approach focuses on attributes that both are enduring and occur across a variety of situations. For example, there is strong empirical support for the trait approach when traits are organized according to the five-factor model of personality. Both extraversion and conscientiousness are highly correlated with leader success and, to a lesser extent, so are openness to experience and the lack of neuroticism.

What Do Leaders Do? The Behavioral Approach

Three major schools of thought—the Ohio State Studies, Theory X/Y (McGregor, 1960), and the Managerial Grid (Blake & Mouton, 1984)—have all suggested that differences in leader effectiveness are directly related to the degree to which the leader is task oriented versus person oriented. Task-oriented leaders focus on the group’s work and its goals. They define and structure the roles of their subordinates in order to best obtain organizational goals. Task-oriented leaders set standards and objectives, define responsibilities, evaluate employees, and monitor compliance with their directives. In the Ohio State studies this was referred to as initiating structure, whereas McGregor (1960) refers to it as Theory X, and the Managerial Grid calls it task-centered. Harry S. Truman, 33rd president of the United States, once wrote, “A leader is a man who can persuade people to do what they don’t want to do, or do what they’re too lazy to do, and like it.” Task-oriented leaders often see their followers as undisciplined, lazy, extrinsically motivated, and irresponsible. For these leaders, leadership consists of giving direction, setting goals, and making unilateral decisions. When under pressure, task-oriented leaders become anxious, defensive, and domineering.

In contrast, person-oriented leaders tend to act in a warm and supportive manner, showing concern for the well-being of their followers. Person-oriented leaders boost morale, take steps to reduce conflict, establish rapport with group members, and provide encouragement for obtaining the group’s goals. The Ohio State studies referred to this as consideration, the Managerial Grid calls this country club leadership, and McGregor uses the term Theory Y. Person-oriented leaders see their followers as responsible, self-controlled, and intrinsically motivated. As a result, they are more likely to consult with others before making decisions, praise the accomplishment of their followers, and be less directive in their supervision. Under pressure, person-oriented leaders tend to withdraw socially.

Leadership effectiveness can be gauged in several ways: employee performance, turnover, and dissatisfaction. As you can see in Table 68.1, the most effective leaders are those who are both task and person oriented, whereas the least effective leaders are those who are neither task nor person oriented. A recent meta-analysis found that person-oriented leadership consistently improves group morale, motivation, and job satisfaction, whereas task-oriented leadership only sometimes improves group performance, depending on the types of groups and situations.

In thinking about what leaders do, it is important to distinguish between leadership and management. Warren Bennis (1989) stated, “To survive in the twenty-first century, we are going to need a new generation of leaders— leaders, not managers.” He points out that managers focus on “doing things right” whereas leaders focus on “doing the right things.” Table 68.2 provides a comparison of the characteristics that distinguish a leader from a manager. As you look at the list, it is clear that a person can be a leader without being a manager and be a manager without being a leader.

Situational Approaches to Leadership

The Great Person theory of leadership, represented by such theorists as Sigmund Freud, Thomas Carlyle, and Max Weber, suggests that from time to time, highly capable, talented, charismatic figures emerge, captivate a host of followers, and change history. In contrast to this, Hegel, Marx, and Durkheim suggest that there is a tide running in human affairs, defined by history or the economy, and that leaders are those who ride the tide. The idea of the tide leads us to the role of situational factors in leadership. For example, Perrow (1970) suggests that leadership effectiveness is dependent upon structural aspects of the organization. Longitudinal studies of organizational effectiveness provide support for this idea. For example, Pfeffer (1997) indicated that “If one cannot observe differences when leaders change, then what does it matter who occupies the positions or how they behave?” (p. 108). Vroom and Jago (2007) have identified three distinct roles that situational factors play in leadership effectiveness. First, organizational effectiveness is not strictly a result of good leadership practices. Situational factors beyond the control of the leader often affect the outcomes of any group effort. Whereas leaders, be they navy admirals or football coaches, receive credit or blame for the activities of their followers, success or failure is often the result of external forces: the actions of others, changing technologies, or environmental conditions. Second, situations shape how leaders act. Although much of the literature on leadership has focused on individual differences, social psychologists such as Phil Zimbardo, in his classic Stanford Prison Experiment, and Stanley Milgram, in his studies of obedience, have demonstrated how important the situation is in determining behavior. Third, situations influence the consequences of leader behavior. Although many popular books on leadership provide a checklist of activities in which the leader should engage, most of these lists disregard the impact of the situation. Vroom and Jago (2007) suggest that the importance of the situation is based on three factors: the limited power of many leaders, the fact that applicants for leadership positions go through a uniform screening process that reduces the extent to which they differ from one another, and whatever differences between them still exist will be overwhelmed by situational demands. If all of these factors are present, it is probably true that the individual differences between leaders will not significantly contribute to their effectiveness. Nevertheless, in most of the situations in which leaders find themselves, they are not that powerless and their effectiveness is mostly a result of matching their skills with the demands of the situation, which brings us to a discussion of contingency theories.

Contingency Theories of Leadership

One of the first psychologists to develop a contingency approach to leadership effectiveness was Fred Fiedler (1964, 1967), who believed that a leader’s style is a result of lifelong experiences that are not easy to change. With this in mind, he suggested that leaders need to understand what their style is and to manipulate the situation so that the two match. Like previous researchers, Fiedler’s idea of leadership style included task orientation and person orientation, although his approach for determining a leader’s orientation was unique. Fiedler developed the least-preferred coworker (LPC) scale. On this scale, individuals rate the person with whom they would least want to work on a variety of characteristics. Individuals who rate their LPC as uniformly negative are considered task oriented, whereas those who differentiate among the characteristics are person oriented. The second part of his contingency theory is the favorableness of the situation. Situational favorability is determined by three factors: the extent to which the task facing the group is structured, the legitimate power of the leader, and the relations between the leader and his subordinates. The relation between LPC scores and group performance is complex, as can be seen in Table 68.3. A meta-analysis conducted by Strube and Garcia (1981) found that task-oriented leaders function best in situations that are either favorable (clear task structure, solid position power, and good leader/member relations) or unfavorable (unclear task structure, weak position power, and poor leader/member relations). In contrast, person-oriented leaders function best in situations that are only moderately favorable, which is often based on the quality of leader-member relations.

Another theory that addresses the relation between leadership style and the situation is path-goal theory (House, 1971). In this theory, path refers to the leader’s behaviors that are most likely to help the group attain a desired outcome or goal. Thus, leaders must exhibit different behaviors to reach different goals, depending on the situation. Four different styles of behavior are described:

• Directive leadership. The leader sets standards of performance and provides guidelines and expectations to subordinates on how to achieve those standards.
• Supportive leadership. The leader expresses concern for the subordinates’ well-being and is supportive of them as individuals, not just as workers.
• Participative leadership. The leader solicits ideas and suggestions from subordinates and invites them to participate in decisions that directly affect them.
• Achievement-oriented leadership. The leader sets challenging goals and encourages subordinates to attain those goals.

According to path-goal theory, effective leaders need all four of these styles because each one produces different results. Which style to use depends on two types of situational factors: subordinate characteristics, including ability, locus of control, and authoritarianism; and environmental characteristics, including the nature of the task, work group, and authority system. According to House and Mitchell (1974), when style and situation are properly matched, there is greater job satisfaction and acceptance of the leader, as well as more effort toward obtaining desired goals. A meta-analysis by Indvik (1986) is generally supportive of the theory. Studies of seven organizations found that task-oriented approaches are effective in situations with low task structure, because they help subordinates cope with an ambiguous situation, and ineffective in situations with high task structure, because they appear to be micromanagement. Additional studies have found that supportive leadership is most effective when subordinates are working on stressful, frustrating, or dissatisfying tasks. Researchers found participative leadership to be most effective when subordinates were engaged in nonrepetitive, ego-involving tasks. Finally, achievement-oriented leadership was most effective when subordinates were engaged in ambiguous, nonrepetitive tasks. A clear implication of the theory is that leaders must diagnose the situation before adopting a particular leadership style.

A third contingency approach is the normative and descriptive model of leadership and decision making developed by Vroom and his colleagues (see Vroom & Jago, 2007). This approach examines the extent to which leaders should involve their subordinates in decision-making processes. To answer this question, the researchers developed a matrix that outlines the five decision processes that range from highly autocratic through consultative to highly participative (see Table 68.4). Which of these approaches is the best? The answer is none of them is uniformly preferred, and each process has different costs and benefits. For example, participative approaches are more likely to gain support and acceptance among subordinates for the leader’s ideas, whereas autocratic approaches are quick and efficient, but may cause resentment. The theory suggests that the best approach may be selected by answering several basic questions about the situation that relate to the quality and acceptance of a decision. Some examples of the type of questions that should be asked are “Do I have enough information to make a decision? How structured is the task? Must subordinates accept the decision to make it work?” By answering such questions and applying the specific rules shown in Table 68.5, a leader is able to eliminate approaches that are likely to fail and to choose the approach that seems most feasible from those remaining.

Leader-Member Exchange Theory

A growing number of researchers have found that subordinates may affect leaders as much as leaders affect subordinates. Yukl (1998) pointed out that when subordinates perform poorly, leaders tend to be more task oriented, but when subordinates perform well, leaders are more person oriented. Similarly, Miller, Butler, and Cosentino (2004) found that the effectiveness of followers conformed to the same rules as those Fiedler applied to leaders. It may be that the productivity of a group can have a greater impact on leadership style than leadership style does on the productivity of the group. This reciprocal relation has been formally recognized in the vertical dyad linkage approach (Dansereau, Graen, & Haga, 1975), now commonly referred to as leader-member exchange (LMX) theory (Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995). This theory describes how leaders maintain their influence by treating individual followers differently. Over time, leaders develop a special relationship with an inner circle of trusted lieutenants, assistants and advisors—the in-group. The members of the in-group are given high levels of responsibility, influence over decision making, and access to resources. Members of the in-group typically are those who are highly committed to the organization, work harder, show loyalty to the leader, and share more administrative duties. Their reward is greater access to the leader’s resources, including information, concern, and confidence. To maintain the exchange, leaders must be careful to nurture the relationship with the in-group, giving them sufficient power to satisfy their needs but not so much power that they become independent. The leader-member relationship generally follows three stages. The first stage is role taking. During this stage the leader assesses the members’ abilities and talents and offers them opportunities to demonstrate their capabilities and commitment. In this stage, both the leader and member discover how the other wants to be respected. The second stage is role making. In this stage, the leader and member take part in unstructured and informal negotiations in order to create a role for the member with a tacit promise of benefits and power in return for dedication and loyalty. In this stage, trust building is very important, and betrayal in any form can result in the member’s being relegated to the out-group. In this stage the leader and member explore relationship factors as well as work-related factors. At this stage, it is clear that perceived similarities between the leader and follower become important. For this reason, a leader may favor a member who is similar in sex, race, or outlook with assignment to the in-group, although research by Murphy and Ensher (1999) indicated that the perception of similarity is more important than actual demographic similarities. The final stage is routinization. In this phase the pattern established by the leader and member becomes established.

The quality of the leader-member relationship is dependent on several factors. It tends to be better when the challenge of the job is either extremely high or extremely low. Other factors that affect the quality of the relationship are the size of the group, availability of resources, and overall workload.

Charismatic and Transformational Leadership

In a speech given at the University of Maryland, Warren Bennis said, “[A] leader has to be able to change an organization that is dreamless, soulless and visionless…someone’s got to make a wake-up call. The first job of a leader is to define a vision for the organization.…Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.” Effective leaders are able to project a vision, explaining to their subordinates the purpose, meaning, and significance of their efforts. As Napoleon once said, “Leaders are dealers in hope.” Although the idea of charismatic leadership goes back as far as biblical times (“Where there is no vision, the people perish”—Proverbs 29:18), its modern development can be attributed to the work of Robert House. House (1977) analyzed political and religious leaders and noted that charismatic leaders are those high in self-confidence and confidence in their subordinates, with high expectations, a clear vision of what can be accomplished, and a willingness to use personal examples. Their followers often identify with the leader and his or her mission, show unswerving loyalty toward and confidence in the leader, and derive a sense of self-esteem from their association with the leader. Charismatic leaders are usually quite articulate, with superior debating and persuasive skills. They also possess the technical expertise to understand what their followers must do. Charismatic leaders usually have high self-confidence, impression-management skills, social sensitivity, and empathy. Finally, they have the skills to promote attitudinal, behavioral, and emotional change in their followers. Those who follow charismatic leaders are often surprised at how much they are able to accomplish that extends beyond their own expectations. Research on charismatic leadership indicates that the impact of such leaders is greatest when the followers engage in high self-monitoring (observing their effect on others) and exhibit high levels of self-awareness. Charismatic leadership enhances followers’ cooperation and motivation.

It is important to recognize that charismatic leadership can have a dark side. We began this research paper with the example of Jim Jones, the charismatic religious leader who led his people to commit mass suicide. Howell and Avolio (1992) describe the difference between ethical and unethical charismatic leaders. According to their analysis, ethical leaders use their power to serve others, not for personal gain. They also promote a vision that aligns with their follower’s needs and aspirations rather than with their own personal vision. Ethical leaders stimulate followers to think independently and to question the leader’s views. They engage in open, two-way communication and are sensitive to their followers’ needs. Finally, ethical leaders rely on internal moral standards to satisfy organizational and societal interests, not their own self-interests.

In helping followers achieve their aspirations, Bernard Bass (1997) has noted that charismatic leadership is a component of a broader-based concept, that of transformational leadership. Bass believed that most leaders are transactional rather than transformational in that they approach their relationships with followers as a transaction, one in which they define expectations and offer rewards that will be forthcoming when those expectations are met. Transactional leaders use a contingent reward system, manage by exception, watch followers to catch them doing something wrong, and intervene only when standards are not met. Finally, transactional leaders tend to adopt a laissez-faire approach by avoiding the need to make hard decisions.

In contrast, transformational leadership goes beyond mutually satisfactory agreements about rewards and punishments to heighten followers’ motivation, confidence, and satisfaction by uniting them in the pursuit of shared, challenging goals. In the process of doing that, they change their followers’ beliefs, values, and needs. Bass and Avolio (1994) identified four components of transformational leadership. The first component is idealized influence (charisma). Leaders provide vision, a sense of mission, and their trust in their followers. Leaders take stands on difficult issues and urge their followers to follow suit. They emphasize the importance of purpose, commitment, and ethical decision making. The second component is inspirational motivation. Leaders communicate high expectations, express important purposes in easy-to-understand ways, talk optimistically and enthusiastically about the tasks facing the organization, and provide encouragement and meaning for what has to be done. They often use symbols to focus the efforts of their followers. The third component is intellectual stimulation. Leaders promote thoughtful, rational, and careful decision making. They stimulate others to discard outmoded assumptions and beliefs and to explore new perspectives and ways of doing things. The fourth component is individualized consideration. Leaders give their followers personal attention and treat each person individually. They listen attentively and consider the individual needs, abilities, and goals of their followers in their decisions. In order to enhance the development of their followers they advise, teach, and coach, as needed. Yukl (2002) offers the following guidelines for transformational leadership:

• Develop a clear and appealing vision.
• Create a strategy for attaining the vision.
• Articulate and promote the vision.
• Act confident and optimistic.
• Express confidence in followers.
• Use early success in achievable tasks to build confidence.
• Celebrate your followers’ successes.
• Use dramatic, symbolic actions to emphasize key values.
• Model the behaviors you want followers to adopt.
• Create or modify cultural forms as symbols, slogans, or ceremonies.

Perhaps Walter Lippman provided the best summary of transformational leadership. He wrote, “The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on…” The genius of good leaders is to leave behind them a situation that common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully.

Leader Emergence and Transition

Who becomes the leader? The process by which someone becomes formally or informally, perceptually or behaviorally, and implicitly or explicitly recognized as a leader is leadership emergence. Scholars have debated this question for centuries and in this research paper, so far, we have offered several possible answers. The Great Person Theory suggests that some people are marked for greatness and dominate the times in which they live. Tolstoy’s zeitgeist theory suggests that leaders come to prominence because of the spirit of the times. Trait theories suggest leaders are selected based on their personal characteristics, whereas interactional approaches examine the joint effects of the situation and the leader’s behavior. Research suggests that leadership emergence is an orderly process that reflects a rational group process whereby the individual with the most skill or experience or intelligence or capabilities takes charge. Implicit leadership theories (Lord & Maher, 1991) provide a cognitive explanation for leadership emergence. According to these theories, each member of a group comes to the group with a set of expectations and beliefs about leaders and leadership. These cognitive structures are called implicit leadership theories or leader prototypes. Typically these prototypes include both task and relationship skills as well as an expectation that the leader will epitomize the core values of the group. Members use their implicit theories to sort people into either leaders or followers based on the extent to which others conform to their implicit theory of what a leader should be. These implicit theories also guide members in their evaluations of the leader’s effectiveness. Because these theories are implicit, they are rarely subjected to critical scrutiny. As a result, it is not uncommon for followers to demonstrate a bias toward those who fit the mold of a traditional leader: White, male, tall, and vocal, regardless of the qualifications of that individual to be the leader.

Transition, rotation, succession, change of command; all are words used to describe a central facet of organizational leadership—that leaders follow one another. Despite the frequent occurrence of leader successions in nearly all groups, especially in large stable organizations, relatively little research has addressed this phenomenon. An early review by Gibb (1969) reported on studies of leader emergence and succession mode. In particular, Gibb noted the importance of establishing leadership/followership through early, shared, significant experiences; he also stressed that an important aspect of the organizational climate for the new leader derives from the policies of the former leader, the consequence of which shape followers’ expectations, morale, and interpersonal relations. In general, studies have demonstrated that leadership succession causes turbulence and instability resulting in performance decrements in most organizations and thus constitutes a major challenge to organizations. Thus, the process of becoming the new leader is often an arduous, albeit rewarding, journey of learning and self-development. The trials involved in this rite of passage have serious consequences for both the individual and the organization. As organizations have become leaner and more dynamic, new leaders have described a transition that gets more difficult all the time. To make the transition less difficult, leaders might attend to the following suggestions adapted from the works of Betty Price, a management consultant. Some of these suggestions are particularly important for newly appointed leaders in establishing an effective leadership style early in their tenure as leader.

• New leaders should show passion for their group, its purpose, and its people in order to reassure followers that the new leader is there to make the group better, not to further his or her personal ambitions.
• New leaders should think more strategically than tactically. Look for the big picture and don’t become bogged down in implementation processes.
• New leaders should first learn to listen, and then provide leadership. Leaders should be compelling in their ability to help others embrace the values that drive the group’s success. To do this the new leader must listen intently and provide feedback that demonstrates that he or she has truly heard what others have said.
• New leaders should operate in a learning mode. As the new person on the block, the new leader may be unsure about the reputation of the preceding leader. He or she should honor the insights and knowledge of others, believing that one can learn from everyone. The new leader should engage people purposefully at all levels, knowing that the distance between the front line and senior leadership is often so great that one small piece of information may have tremendous impact.
• New leaders should take particular care in doing what’s right and telling the truth, even if it is painful. One of the first tasks of a new leader is building trust. In the face of uncertainties, being honest, direct, and truthful enables people to move forward with faith. It gives them hope.
• New leaders should encourage their people to take risks in order to achieve their goals, and be prepared to pick up the pieces if they fail. The leader’s role is to cushion the risk by providing support and encouragement, and knowing and drawing from his or her people’s best capabilities.

Leadership Development

Not everyone is born with “the right stuff” or finds himself or herself in just the right situation to demonstrate his or her capacity as a leader. However, anyone can improve his or her leadership skills. The process of training people to function effectively in a leadership role is known as leadership development and it is a multimillion-dollar business. Leadership development programs tend to be of two types: internal programs within an organization, designed to strengthen the organization, and external programs that take the form of seminars, workshops, conferences, and retreats.

Typical of external leadership development programs are the seminars offered by the American Management Association. Their training seminars are held annually in cities across the country and address both general leadership skills as well as strategic leadership. Among the seminars offered in the area of general leadership are critical thinking, storytelling, and team development in a variety of areas such as instructional technology or government. Seminars on strategic leadership address such topics as communication strategies, situational leadership, innovation, emotional intelligence, and coaching.

A second approach to leadership development is a technique known as grid training. The first step in grid training is a grid seminar during which members of an organization’s management team help others in their organization identify their management style as one of four management styles: impoverished management, task management, country-club management, and team management. The second step is training, which varies depending on the leader’s management style. The goal of the training is greater productivity, better decision making, increased morale, and focused culture change in the leader’s unique organizational environment. Grid training is directed toward six key areas: leadership development, team building, conflict resolution, customer service, mergers, and selling solutions.

Internal leadership development programs tend to focus on three major areas: the development of social interaction networks both between people within a given organization and between organizations that work with one another, the development of trusting relationships between leaders and followers, and the development of common values and a shared vision among leaders and followers. There are several techniques that promote these goals. One such technique is 360-degree feedback. This is a process whereby leaders may learn what peers, subordinates, and superiors think of their performance. This kind of feedback can be useful in identifying areas in need of improvement. The strength of the technique is that it provides differing perspectives across a variety of situations that help the leader to understand the perceptions of his or her actions. This practice has become very popular and is currently used by virtually all Fortune 500 companies. Like all forms of assessment, 360-degree feedback is only useful if the leader is willing and able to change his or her behavior as a result of the feedback. To ensure that leaders don’t summarily dismiss feedback that doesn’t suit them, many companies have arranged for face-to-face meetings between the leaders and those who have provided the feedback.

Another form of internal leadership development is networking. As a leadership development tool, networking is designed to reduce the isolation of leaders and help them better understand the organization in which they work. Networking is specifically designed to connect leaders with key personnel who can help them accomplish their everyday tasks. Networking promotes peer relationships and allows individuals with similar concerns and responsibilities to learn from one another ways to better do their job. Research indicates that these peer relationships tend to be long-lasting.

Executive coaching is a method for developing leaders that involves custom-tailored, one-on-one interactions. This method generally follows four steps. It begins with an agreement between the coach and the leader as to the nature of the coaching relationship, to include what is to be done and how it will be done. The second step is an expert’s assessment of the leader’s strengths and weaknesses. The third step provides a comprehensive plan for improvement that is usually shared with the leader’s immediate supervisor. The fourth and final step is the implementation of the plan. Coaching is sometimes a onetime event aimed at addressing a particular concern or it can be an ongoing, continuous process.

Another form of internal leadership development is mentoring. The term mentor can mean many things: a trusted counselor or guide, tutor, coach, master, experienced colleague, or role model. A mentor is usually someone older and more experienced who provides advice and support to a younger, less experienced person (protégé). In general, mentors guide, watch over, and encourage the progress of their protégés. Mentors often pave the way for their protégé’s success by providing opportunities for achievement, nominating them for promotion, and arranging for their recognition. As a form of leadership development, there are several advantages to mentoring. A meta-analysis by Allen, Eby, Poteet, Lima, and Lentz (2004) indicated that individuals who were mentored showed greater organizational commitment, lower turnover, higher career satisfaction, enhanced leadership skills, and a better understanding of their organization.

In the future, leadership is likely to become more group centered as organizations become more decentralized. Other changes will come about as a result of new and emerging technologies. Avolio and his colleagues (2003) refer to this as “e-leadership.” Leadership effectiveness will depend on the leader’s ability to integrate the new technologies into the norms and culture of their organization.

Another change is that the future will most likely see more women break through the “glass ceiling” and take leadership positions. Men are considerably more likely to enact leadership behaviors than are women in studies of leaderless groups, and as a result are more likely to emerge as leaders (Eagly, 1987). Even though women do sometimes emerge as leaders, historically they have been excluded from the highest levels of leadership in both politics and business. This exclusion has been called the glass ceiling. Studies of leadership in organizational settings have found that men and women do not differ significantly in their basic approach to leadership, with equal numbers of task- versus person-oriented leaders. However, women are much more likely to adopt a participative or transformational leadership style whereas men are more likely to be autocratic, laissez-faire, or transactional (Eagly & Johnson, 1990). Women’s leadership styles are more closely associated with group performance as well as subordinate satisfaction, and in time our implicit theories about leadership may very well favor those who adopt such approaches.

Diversity and working in a global economy will provide additional challenges to tomorrow’s leaders. Project GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness) is an extensive international project involving 170 researchers who have gathered data from 18,000 managers in 62 countries (House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorman, & Gupta, 2004). A major goal of the project was to develop societal and organizational measures of culture and leader attributes that were appropriate to use across all cultures. There have been several important findings. In some cultures, leadership is denigrated and regarded with suspicion. People in these cultures often fear that leaders will acquire and abuse power and as a result substantial restraints are placed on the exercise of leadership. Twenty-two leadership traits (e.g., foresight and decisiveness) were identified as being desirable across all cultures. Eight leadership traits (e.g., ruthlessness and irritability) were identified as being universally undesirable. Some leadership traits were dependent upon the culture, including ambition and elitism. Six leadership styles common to many cultures were identified. They are charismatic, self-protective, humane, team oriented, participative, and autonomous. Although the charismatic style is familiar to us, some of the others are not. The self-protective style involves following agreed-upon procedures, being cognizant of the status hierarchy, and saving face. The humane style includes modesty and helping others. The team-oriented style includes collaboration, team building, and diplomacy. The participative style encourages getting the opinions and help of others. The autonomous style involves being independent and making one’s own decisions. Cultures differ in their preferences for these styles. For example, leaders from northern European countries are more participative and less self-protective whereas leaders from southern Asia are more humane and less participative.

Although most of us would agree that leadership is extraordinarily important, research in this field has yet to arrive at a generally accepted definition of what leadership is, create a widely accepted paradigm for studying leadership, or find the best strategies for developing and practicing leadership. Hackman and Wageman (2007) attempted to address this problem by reframing the questions we have been asking about leadership effectiveness, with the hope that these questions will be more informative than many of those asked previously.

• Question 1. Ask NOT “Do leaders make a difference?” but “Under what conditions does leadership matter?” The task here is to examine conceptually and empirically the circumstances under which leadership makes a difference and to distinguish those from the circumstances for which leadership is inconsequential.
• Question 2. Ask NOT “What are the traits that define an effective leader?” but “How do leaders’ personal attributes interact with situational properties to shape outcomes?” This approach will require that we reduce our reliance on both fixed traits and complex contingencies. To do this, we should embrace the idea that there are many different ways to achieve the same outcome.
• Question 3. Ask NOT “Are there common dimensions on which all leaders can be arrayed?” but “Are good and poor leadership qualitatively different phenomena?” Recent research has found that ineffective leaders were not ones who scored low on those dimensions for which good leaders scored high, but rather they exhibited entirely different patterns of behavior than those exhibited by good leaders.
• Question 4. Ask NOT “How do leaders and followers differ from one another?” but “How can leadership models be reframed so they treat all members of a group as leaders and followers?” Although it is clear that to be a leader requires that you have followers, it is equally true that most leaders are at times followers and most followers are at times leaders.
• Question 5. Ask NOT “What should be taught in leadership courses?” but “How can leaders be helped to learn?” Research is needed to understand how leaders learn from their experiences, especially when they are coping with crises (see Avolio, 2007).

In the 21st century, the study of leadership will be increasingly collaborative as researchers from multiple disciplines tackle the questions outlined above. Some of the disciplines that must contribute to the study of leadership include media and communications. In today’s world more and more of the relationships between leaders and followers are not face-to-face but mediated through electronic means.

John Kenneth Galbraith, in his book The Age of Uncertainty, wrote that “All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.” In the special issue of the American Psychologist devoted to leadership, Warren Bennis (2007) suggests that the four most important threats facing our world today are these: (a) a nuclear or biological catastrophe; (b) a worldwide pandemic; (c) tribalism and its cruel offspring, assimilation; and (d) leadership of our human institutions. He points out that solving the first three problems will not be possible without exemplary leadership and that an understanding of how to develop such leadership will have serious consequences for the quality of our health and our lives.

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Servant Leadership: a Systematic Literature Review and Network Analysis

Alice canavesi.

1 Business Economics, Carlo Cattaneo University (LIUC), Castellanza, Italy

Eliana Minelli

2 Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

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Servant leadership is a form of moral-based leadership where leaders tend to prioritize the fulfillment of the needs of followers, namely employees, customers and other stakeholders, rather than satisfying their personal needs. Although the concept is not new among both academics and practitioners, it has received growing consideration in the last decade, due to the fact that it can positively affect a series of individual and organizational outcomes, such as job satisfaction and organizational commitment. In particular, the latest trend in literature has focused on the identification of the antecedents, mediating and moderating mechanisms at the basis of this relationship, as well as on the development of a common scale to measure the construct across diverse economic and cultural contexts. The purpose of this paper is to depict the evolution of the scientific literature that has developed on the concept, to identify the main criticalities and provide avenues for future research. A dynamic methodology called “Systematic Literature Network Analysis” has been applied, combining the Systematic Literature Review approach with the analysis of bibliographic networks.

Introduction

With the beginning of the twenty-first century, the moral nature of leaders has started to be considered not only necessary for the good of society but also essential for sustainable organizational success (Freeman et al., 2004 ; Gulati et al., 2010 ; Padilla et al., 2007 ), thus marking a considerable shift in research. As a consequence, moral leadership theories, such as transformational, ethical, authentic and servant leadership, have recently received considerable attention from the scientific community.

Servant leadership seems to be the most promising and most investigated over the last few years, especially due to the holistic approach and broad focus adopted compared to the other philosophies, as well as to its important role in affecting individual and team-level outcomes, such as organizational commitment, organizational citizenship behaviour, job performance and job satisfaction. Like most other leadership constructs, the definition and measurement of servant leadership were primarily developed in the United States. In particular, the term servant leadership was coined by Greenleaf in 1970 in his essay “The Servant as Leader" to describe an emerging style of leadership where leaders focused on followers’ personal growth and development, by treating them in an ethical way. The author asserted that the servant leader is “primus inter pares” or “first among equals”, meaning that his/her highest priority is service to others in order to fulfill their needs, rather than fulfilling his or her personal needs. Greenleaf’s conception was then refined by many other scholars, such as Ehrhart ( 2004 ), who claimed that servant leadership is one in which the leader goes beyond the financial success of the organization recognizing his or her moral responsibility towards subordinates, customers and the entire company’s community. The emphasis of the servant leadership philosophy has been placed over time on serving and creating value for multiple stakeholders, both internal and external to the organization. Liden et al. ( 2008 ) further stressed the fundamental leadership behaviours of servant leadership, such as behaving ethically, helping followers grow and succeed, empowering, emotional healing, conceptual skills and creating value for the community.

Research on servant leadership can be categorized into three main phases: a first phase focusing on its conceptual development, a second phase investigating the measures and testing the relationships with some fundamental outcomes via cross-sectional research, and a third phase aimed at understanding the antecedents, mediating mechanisms and boundary conditions of servant leadership. The last “model development phase” is the most recent and has seen a proliferation of studies in the last twenty years. A significant contribution to provide an integrative theoretical framework has been recently made by Eva et al. ( 2019 ), who offered a clear conceptual distinction of servant leadership compared to other approaches, evaluated and assessed the most rigorous scales of the construct developed so far, and highlighted the most important antecedents, outcomes, moderating and mediating mechanisms identified in the literature.

The purpose of this research is to provide a further and complementary review of the literature on servant leadership through bibliometric methods, in order to assess the evolution of the field over time as well as the current state-of-art on the key trends and provide avenues for future research. In particular, the authors aim to identify:

• The structure of the field, the most consolidated research and its temporal and geographical evolution
• The most recurring theoretical underpinning and constructs
• The most cited articles representing milestones of the literature
• The most impactful authors and journals
• The disciplines and subject areas involved by the topic
• Research implications
• Future research directions

The structure of the paper is as follows. In the first section, the methodology adopted for the literature review and the steps taken in developing the research are presented. In the second section, the results of three different analyses are explained: namely, the paper citation network consisting in the connected components and the main path, the keywords analysis, and finally the global analysis with the basic statistics. In the third and final section, the main conclusions are drawn and questions to be addressed by future research are provided.

The paper is based on a two-step method, referred to as “Systematic Literature Network Analysis (SLNA)” (Colicchia & Strozzi, 2012 ): a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) and a further analysis of the subset of relevant articles obtained through a bibliographic Network Analysis (NA): namely, the citation network analysis, the co-occurrence networks analysis and the basic statistics. The first qualitative assessment is mainly based on the researchers’ judgements as to the selection of keywords and leverages on an explanatory approach; while the bibliometric assessment provides more objective insights through quantitative and statistical evidence (Aliyev et al., 2018). In particular, bibliographic data analysed through bibliometric methods include the most impactful author names, journal titles, article titles, article keywords and article publication years (Block & Fisch, 2020). The aim is to “complement the traditional content-based literature reviews by extracting quantitative information from bibliographic networks and detect emerging topics, thus revealing the dynamic evolution of the scientific production of a discipline” (Strozzi et al., 2017 ). This dynamic analysis has proven to be effective in different research fields, as it highlights the literature development, identifies authors network and topic clusters, examines gaps and criticalities as well as presents further research directions. In contrast to narrative literature reviews, which aim to summarize the content of the studies of a particular research field, SLNA focuses on assessing the conceptual structure of the field and its development over time (e.g. how has the number of studies evolved, how have the topics evolved, how have the outlets evolved, etc.). It goes beyond a mere descriptive summary of prior literature, by leading a discussion of what we know and where we can go, and allows the measurement of the knowledge diffusion within and between disciplines, by identifying interdisciplinary links. Moreover, compared to traditional methods which lack a clear methodological approach, quantitative bibliographic studies make it possible to avoid the researchers’ selection bias by selecting clear keywords and exclusion / inclusion criteria and by adopting clear boundaries at every stage to ensure a systematic search of papers (Fetscherin & Heinrich, 2015; Block & Fisch, 2020), to the point that the process can be replicated at any time. Lastly, SLNA is characterized by a more up-to-date and broader scope (with regards, for instance, to the journals and publication years considered), thus minimizing the risk of producing an over-reflective and biased argument by the authors but rather leading to evidence-based conclusions.

Figure  1 clarifies all the steps of the methodology.

Systematic Literature Network Analysis (SLNA)

The reference database chosen for the development of the research was Scopus, due to its coverage, convenience, and in alignment with the current literature. According to Falagas et al. ( 2017 ) as well as to Block and Fisch (2020), Scopus includes a more expanded spectrum of journals and a faster and broader citation analysis compared to other research databases, such as Web of Science (WoS). This result has been confirmed by Chadegani et al. ( 2013 ), who assessed that Scopus covers a superior number of journals compared to WoS, even though it is limited to more recent articles, and by Bergman ( 2012 ), who demonstrated that Scopus also provides higher citation counts than Google Scholar and WoS. Moreover, compared to these two other databases, Adriaanse and Rensleigh ( 2013 ) proved that Scopus delivers the least inconsistencies regarding content verification and quality, such as author spelling and sequence, volume and issue number.

The key search criteria and final query were defined on the basis of the keywords used by scholars to address the concept of servant leadership, according to one reference paper among the main pillars of the literature: “Servant leadership: a systematic review and call for future research” (Eva et al., 2019 ) from which this paper mainly differs due to its quantitative citation-based methodology. The most common keywords in literature, also employed in this study, consist of: servant leadership, servant leader, service leadership, servant behaviour and servant organization . In order to develop a more comprehensive definition and consequently to obtain a more comprehensive sample on the topic, the search criteria were loosened to “servant leader*” OR “service leader*” to include both “servant leadership” and “servant leader(s)” OR “service leadership” and “service leader(s)”. Also, considering the different spelling between British English and American English, both terms “behaviour” and “behaviour” were included. As the literature on leadership is very broad, the terms above were limited to three streams of search in the section “Article title” to include only articles that were strictly related and focused on the topic, and not dealing with it in a marginal way, but also to obtain a moderate number of papers to conduct the analysis. This systematic literature review is most suitable when the number of papers is not too limited nor too big. The authors tried to conduct a broader search stream also including keywords and abstracts, but it resulted not applicable: it provided several thousand results and the content of papers obtained was in most cases out of scope. Since the focus of the research was servant leadership from a human resource and organizational perspective, areas were investigated individually to assess whether they were pertinent or not with the topic. On the basis of this analysis, it was possible to include: Business, Social sciences, Economics, Econometrics and Finance, Psychology, Arts and Humanities, Decision sciences, Environmental science and Multidisciplinary. Papers written in languages other than English were excluded. With regards to the time span, the year in which the study was conducted (2020) was eliminated in order to consider only papers of concluded years. Finally, the search was limited to articles and conference papers, as they contain very clear citations and make it possible to achieve ideal results. See Table ​ Table1 1 for the final specification of the query.

Query final specification

This procedure allowed us to obtain a subset of 357 papers published between 1984 and 2019, which were then analysed using VOSViewer (Van Eck et al., 2010 ; Waltman et al., 2010 ) and Pajek software (de Nooy et al., 2011) to identify the main citation path emerging from the citation network and also key concepts and trends emerging from the co-occurrence network. Afterwards, the basic statistics of the whole subset of papers were examined in order to provide some general insights: the temporal and geographical evolution of the literature, the subject areas involved, the ranking of the 10 most cited papers and the most influential authors and journals. The findings of these analyses are reported in the following sections.

Citation Network Analysis

The initial procedure of the network analysis was aimed at identifying the main article clusters emerging from the citation network by using the VOS Clustering analysis (Van Eck et al., 2010 ; Waltman et al., 2010 ). “A citation network is a network where the nodes are papers and the links are citations. The arrows go from cited to citing papers representing the flow of knowledge.” (Strozzi et al., 2017 ). For the identification of the connected component, the minimum threshold of 0 was maintained in order not to exclude recent papers and less relevant authors. The largest connected component (a set of nodes connected by links) consisted of 291 items connected to each other, with 85 different clusters. No other significant connected components emerged from the literature. Figure  2 presents the network obtained with VOSviewer, where nodes are weighted by the citations and coloured with both a cluster and year overlay.

Citation network analysis (size = citation, color = cluster)

The following procedure of the network analysis consisted in implementing the key route algorithm (main path) of the network, using Pajek: a program providing powerful visualization tools. The objective was to identify the nodes that cite or have been cited the most, thus representing the most consolidated research in the field. This was possible by conducting the betweenness centrality analysis of a vertex, which is “the proportion of all geodesics between pairs of other vertices that include this vertex” (de Nooy et al., 2011, p. 131). The betweenness centrality analysis allows to focus on the importance of a node in the communication between any node pair in the network, to identify those playing a central role in information flows and being responsible for the system vulnerability (i.e. vertexes lying on many of the shortest paths between other vertexes). Figure  3 shows the flow of knowledge over time, with the network of the 25 essential articles, intensively cited and referring to other papers, labelled by Pajek with the name of the first author and the year of publication. It is clear how the research structure has changed over time: from 1996 to 2012 it developed linearly, while from 2012 on it has started to articulate towards different directions often interconnected to each other. One possible interpretation of this pattern is the following: originally, the novelty of the subject led to a straight evolution of the field over time, afterwards, once the topic gained ground and different research trends emerged, referencing papers and literature reviews started to come out.

Main path of articles from citation network

Based on the previous analysis, the most relevant papers were studied not only to identify the key concepts expressed by the single paper but most importantly to understand the evolution of the field over time. The analysis of the main path allowed for pinpointing trends and variations that would not be very visible in the general set of papers. The main findings, which are the result of a quantitative analysis and have not been selected by the authors according to a discretionary criterion, are reported in the following section with the aim of depicting a landscape of the scientific literature on the concept of servant leadership.

Main Path Analysis

The most recent paper dealing with servant leadership is the one by Yang et al. ( 2019 ), which builds on self-determination theory to investigate, through an empirical study conducted in the Chinese banking sector, how servant leadership affects employee creativity. The authors used a survey based on five-point Likert scales to assess that there is a positive relationship between servant leadership and employee creativity, mediated by follower psychological empowerment and moderated by work-family conflict. This paper can be considered as a pillar of the literature as it gathers the contributions of several articles, including a paper by the same author written two years before. Yang et al. ( 2017 ) previously provided evidence on other mechanisms influencing the relationship between servant leadership and creativity both at the individual and team level: employees’ efficacy beliefs, as a mediator, and team power distance, as a moderator. With regards to work-family balance, a similar study conducted by Tang et al. ( 2016 ) demonstrated that servant leadership is negatively related to employees’ work-to-family conflict (WFC) and positively related to work-to-family positive spillovers (WFPS), with the moderator role of reduced emotional exhaustion in both relationships and the mediator role of enhanced personal learning in the relationship between servant leadership and WFPS. Hoch et al. ( 2018 ) compared servant leadership and other moral-based forms of leadership (authentic leadership and ethical leadership) with transformational leadership, to assess whether they were able to explain incremental variance with respect to a series of relevant organizational outcomes. Servant leadership emerged as the only positive leadership style adding incremental variance to that explained by transformational leadership, thus being of significant utility. Previously, Van Dierendonck et al. ( 2014 ) leveraged on two experimental studies and one field study to differentiate servant leadership from transformational leadership in the way they affect organizational commitment and work engagement, as the former is mediated by follower need satisfaction while the latter by perceived leadership effectiveness. Hsiao et al. ( 2015 ) systematically integrated the three levels of organization, employee and customer to demonstrate that leaders displaying servant behaviours stimulate customer value co-creation (CVC) with the key mediating roles of positive psychological capital (PPC) and service-oriented organizational citizenship behaviours (OCBs). Newman et al. ( 2017 ) found that at the basis of the link between servant leadership and followers’ OCBs, there are also the mediating mechanism of leader-member exchange (LMX) and the moderating mechanism of leader proactive personality. Chiniara and Bentein ( 2016 ) previously provided other mediating mechanisms between servant leadership and individual performance outcomes such as OCBs and task performance: namely the satisfaction of three basic psychological needs of employees (autonomy, competence and relatedness). Ozyilmaz and Cicek ( 2015 ) tested the positive effects of servant leadership on OCBs and on job satisfaction, assessing that this second relationship is partially mediated by psychological climate. Hunter et al. ( 2013 ) further investigated both the direct effects generated by servant leaders at the individual level, such as decreased turnover intentions and disengagement, and the indirect effects generated at the team level, such as decreased turnover intentions, helping and sales behaviour through the mediation of service climate. Moreover, they investigated the basis for individuals enacting this mode of leadership and found that leader agreeableness represents a positive antecedent of servant leadership, while extraversion a negative one. Executive characteristics of servant leaders were also tested by Peterson et al. ( 2012 ) , who assessed that narcissism is negatively related to servant leadership while founder status (i.e. founder or non-founder) is positively related to servant leadership; both effects are partially mediated by the chief executive officer identification in the organization. Sun ( 2013 ) further concentrated on the identity of servant leaders, by explaining the psychological factors, both cognitive and behavioural, that constitute it. Neubert et al. ( 2016 ) tested servant leadership effects in hospitals, accumulating evidence that there is a positive relationship with both nurse and patient satisfaction, moderated by organizational structure. Similarly, Chen et al. ( 2015 ) explored how managers’ servant leadership affect the performance of frontline service employees’, such as hairdressers, through the partial mediation of self-efficacy and group identification. In relation to these performance behaviours, they also found that servant leadership explains additional variance above and beyond transformational leadership. Liden et al. ( 2014 ) developed a model to test servant leadership in restaurants and stores. Specifically, they demonstrated that servant leaders propagate servant leadership behaviours among employees, such as increased job performance, creativity and customer service behaviours as well as decreased turnover intentions, by establishing a serving culture at the unit level (e.g. store) and fostering employee identification with the unit. Liden et al. ( 2015 ) contributed to the literature by providing the shortest-to-date 7-item scale (SL-7) measure of global servant leadership, starting from a previous 28-item scale (SL-28) developed in 2008, and tested it across three empirical independent studies. Besides the topic of employee creativity already investigated in literature, Yoshida et al. ( 2014 ) ascertained the effects of servant leadership on individual relational identification and collective prototypicality, which, in turn, fosters team innovation. Antecedents of servant leadership discussed above have been examined by other scholars, such as Hu and Liden ( 2011 ), who identified team-level goal, process clarity and team servant leadership as three mechanisms affecting team potency, performance and organizational citizenship behaviour. The authors also emphasized the role of servant leaders in moderating the link between team-level goal and process clarity with team potency. Similar outcomes were found a year before by Walumbwa et al. ( 2010 ), whose analyses revealed that the relationship between servant leadership and OCBs is partially mediated by commitment to the supervisor, self-efficacy, procedural justice climate and service climate. Hale and Fields ( 2007 ) leveraged on three servant leadership dimensions introduced by Greenleaf (1977), namely service, humility and vision, to point out cultural differences affecting the way servant leadership is perceived in different countries. Specifically, they found that countries with a higher level of power distance and collectivism experience servant leadership behaviours less frequently. They also assessed that, when great value is placed on uncertainty avoidance, vision has a significant stronger relationship with leadership effectiveness. Previously, Dennis and Bocarnea ( 2005 ) developed and tested a scale aimed at measuring five out of the seven servant leadership constructs based on Patterson’s theory: agapao love (which means to love in a social or moral way), humanity, vision, trust and empowerment. This theoretical development was drawn on a literature review by Russell ( 2001 ), who provided an overview of the current individual and organizational values associated with servant leadership, deepening their role in three main attributes: trust, appreciation of others and empowerment. A sequential, upward-spiralling model based on the variables of vision, influence, credibility, trust and service was formerly developed by Farling et al. ( 1999 ) to explain how these variables relate one to another in defining the concept at the basis of servant leadership. This paper represented an evolution of two former analyses. The first one consists in a servant leadership model developed by Buchen ( 1998 ) within the context of higher education and based on five main dimensions: identity (the direction of ego and image), empowering (the sharing of power with collaborators), reciprocity (a relationship of mutual dependency between leaders and followers), commitment (the absolute devotion to academic discipline) and finally future (the alignment between faculty and institution). The second is a reflection paper on Greenleaf’s definition of servant leadership by Spears ( 1996 ), which, on the one hand, emphasizes the primary goal of serving the greater needs of others and, on the other hand, draws the evolution of the topic from its genesis (1970) to the current time (2019).

At first, from the mid 1990’s to the late 2000’s, research was mainly qualitative and moved towards the development of a theoretical framework of servant leadership, as well as of various scales aimed at measuring the main dimensions of the construct. The last stream of research from 2010 to 2020, instead, suggests the authors’ orientation for a quantitative approach based on surveys, experimental and field studies to investigate the antecedents, mediating mechanisms and boundary conditions of servant leadership. Recently, some qualitative studies have emerged again on the topic; however, very few scholars are taking advantage of mixed methods combining the quantitative and qualitative approach.

From a theoretical perspective, the attempt of the present paper was also that of identifying meaningful constructs, underpinnings and framework used in the most consolidated literature on servant leadership, even if not explicitly mentioned by single studies. All papers, except one, were built on the basis of the servant leadership theory, often in combination with theories on other leadership styles, such as transformational, or on antecedents, outcomes, mediators and moderators of servant leadership, such as LMX theory. Moreover, the majority of paper explicitly employed more than one theoretical basis. The most recurring theory (6 out of 25 papers) was the social exchange theory, which was defined by Blau (1964) as “voluntary actions of individuals that are motivated by the returns they are expected to bring and typically do in fact bring from others” (p. 91) and is based on the central premise that the exchange of social and material resources is a fundamental form of human interaction. Motivational theories were also found several times (6 papers), with different sub-theories, such as goal-setting theory, motivational language theory and intrinsic motivation theory, emphasizing various factors that can foster personal or followers’ motivation. The most important among these motivational theories came out to be the self-determination theory’s (SDT) basic psychological needs, which consists in an empirically-based theory of human behavior and personality development aimed at identifying the social-contextual aspects that promote or prevent motivation based on the satisfaction of basic psychological needs such as competence, relatedness and autonomy (Ryan & Deci, 2017, pag. 3). The social learning theory (SLT), then evolved in the social cognitive theory (SCT), also emerged to be fundamental (5 papers), positing that learning occurs within a social context through the combination of individual experience, social interaction and environmental factors. Finally, the least recurring theory was the social identity theory (2 papers), which is a social psychological theory examining the role of self and identity in group and intergroup dynamics (Hogg, 2016).

Co-word Network Analysis (Keywords Analysis: VOS Clustering)

A second type of analysis, focused on the authors’ keywords, was carried out in VOSviewer on the basis of the co-occurrence network. Co-occurrence analysis assumes that the article keywords chosen by various authors represent an adequate description of the content or of the relationship that the paper establishes between investigated problems (Strozzi et al., 2017 ). The aim of the analysis was to frame the development of the research trends over time: if many co-occurrences can be identified around a term, this is likely to represent a specific research pattern of the discipline. An occurrence threshold of 8 was used, with the goal of ensuring clusters’ consistency in terms of content and dimension. A set of the 17 most relevant keywords divided into 3 different clusters was obtained, as shown in Fig.  4 .

Co-occurrence author keywords network (size = total link strength, color = cluster)

The network’s nodes correspond to the keywords of the 357 papers’ authors and their link weights to how many times the words appear in the papers. Three colors (red, blue and green) differentiate the keywords belonging to one cluster from other clusters’ keywords, while the dimension of the node stands for the total link strength.

In the following section, the keywords clusters are examined in order to address the most relevant research patterns in the literature. Hence, the topics below have been discussed on the basis of the output of a quantitative analysis, aimed at addressing the most used keywords in the literature and identifying research trajectories within each cluster.

Cluster 1: Servant Leadership, Leadership, Transformational Leadership, Leadership Development, Scale Development, Trust

Servant leadership is one of the most recently investigated and adopted approaches belonging to the branch of moral leadership theories. As such, it has been studied in parallel with other similar leadership styles, such as transformational leadership. Transformational leadership is a positive form of leadership developed by Burns in 1978 as an ongoing process where “leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of morality and motivation beyond self-interest to serve collective interests”. This concept was then expanded by Bass ( 1985 ) and applied to organizations as a guideline for leaders to make followers perform beyond expectations. From a theoretical standpoint, a significant overlap between servant leadership and transformational leadership has been assessed by scholars, especially in terms of vision, influence, credibility, trust and service shown by leaders, to the point that servant leadership has often been considered as a form of transformational leadership (Farling et al., 1999 ). Trust, in particular, has been addressed in both leadership styles as central to relationship: an important factor in the interdependence existing between leaders and followers, consisting in four distinct dimensions: competence, openness, concern and reliability. Nevertheless, an attempt has been made to define the major variables involved in the servant-leader follower transformational model. On the other hand, research has tried to identify and address the main differences, or better nuances, between the two leadership approaches: while servant leadership focuses more on supporting and developing individuals within an institution, transformational leadership emphasizes the role of leaders in inspiring followers to work towards a common goal (Allen et al., 2016 ).

In 2010s, another stream of literature has focused on the development of a reliable and multidimensional scale to measure various aspects of servant leadership. Examples include the 6-item Servant Leadership Behavior scale (Sendjaya et al., 2019 ) to measure servant leadership behaviors in a leader, or the Executive Servant Leadership Scale (Reed et al., 2011 ) to measure executive servant leadership across different organizational contexts.

Cluster 2: Job Satisfaction, Organizational Commitment, Public Sector, China

Several empirical studies have analyzed the relationship between servant leadership and different organizational outcomes, both at the individual and collective level, such as job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Moreover, different mediating and moderating mechanisms as well as various antecedents of this type of relationship have been investigated. For instance, Kauppila et al. ( 2018 ) demonstrated that HR manager servant leadership positively influences organizational employees’ overall justice perception, which in turn enhances organizational commitment and job satisfaction. Moreover, they found that high leadership self-efficacy fosters a line manager’s effectiveness to emulate servant leadership behaviors from HR managers and use these behaviors to advance positive justice perceptions among their followers.

Since the general concept of leadership and the specific concept of servant leadership were developed in the US and in western societies, a consistent research stream has examined the generalizability of servant leadership constructs in completely different cultural contexts, such as China. US society is indeed highly individualistic, short-term oriented and characterized by low-power distance, meaning that relationships are expected to be participatory, democratic and consultative, while Chinese society is permeated by a collectivist culture, long-term goals and high-power distance, therefore based on the expectation that power is distributed unequally. Also, most of these studies were conducted in the public sector, where servant leadership has proven to be very effective in fostering many positive organizational outcomes. Liu et al. ( 2015 ) partially confirmed the generalizability of servant leadership constructs from Western society to China and also found a positive relationship between supervisors’ servant leadership and the public service motivation.

Cluster 3: Organizational Culture, Humans, Human, Adult, Male, Female, Article

Organizations across different fields and geographical contexts need to understand the role of a leadership that is responsive to a “service mission” in driving the company’s evolution and success. Effective servant leadership practices are “humane oriented”; they are implemented when managers or leaders invest in human resources to create a social exchange relationship with employees that makes them feel valued and repay the organization through positive outcomes (Karatepe et al., 2019 ). As a consequence, employees’ commitment and creativity are stimulated and organizational citizenship and prosocial behaviors are fostered, leading to an increase in organizational performance. For instance, Zhou and Miao ( 2014 ) found that servant leadership positively influences employees’ commitment through perceived organizational support as a mediator.

In this framework, culture, and particularly organizational culture, is strictly connected to the leadership style adopted within a company. On the one hand, servant leadership is more likely to apply in contexts characterized by specific cultural values such as paternalism, collectivism and low-power distance. On the other hand, servant leadership can be adopted to create a new organizational culture based on trust, fairness and high-quality leader–follower relationships (Lee et al., 2019 ).

Leadership attitudes also vary according to gender, as some studies reported that, relative to their counterparts, leading females are more likely to display behaviors of altruistic calling, emotional healing and organizational stewardship (Beck, 2014) and to hold service and altruistic value (De Rubio & Kiser, 2015); therefore, they more often behave as servant leaders.

Keywords Temporal Analysis

From a temporal standpoint, VOSviewer offers a graphic representation that allows us to identify the most recent keywords and therefore the core topics currently discussed in literature.

Figure  5 , overlay visualization, displays the ultimate research trends by coloring them in yellow, in contrast with the oldest, colored in blue. It is possible to infer that the concept of servant leadership has been recently discussed in relation to some important outcomes, such as organizational commitment and job satisfaction, to which it is linked by evidence. The effectiveness of this leadership style represented in several organizational contexts has encouraged the development of specific leadership practices, such as training or interventions, aimed at fostering the servant leadership behaviors. At present, most empirical studies have focused on the public sector, as it is often characterized by front-line employees who imitate servant leaders’ behaviors displayed by their managers, thus promoting the quality of relationships with end-customers and providing significant benefits to the whole organization. In this framework, the influence of organizational culture is still relevant, as it determines the way servant leadership is built by leaders and perceived by followers, along with its effectiveness in achieving the desired outcomes. In fact, according to the cultural climate, servant leadership may relate to both individual and organizational outcomes through different mediating and moderating mechanisms.

Overlay visualization

Global Analysis: Basic Statistics

In the “analyze search results” section of Scopus, it is possible to gain some general insights into the whole subset of 357 papers used for the purpose of this literature review.

Figure  6 shows how the topic of servant leadership dates back to the mid 1980s but started receiving significant attention only with the beginning of the new millennium. Particularly, it experienced exponential growth from 2007 to 2019. This corresponds to the period when the first scales for the measurement of servant leadership were developed allowing the conduction of several empirical studies across various organizational contexts.

Documents by year

From a geographical standpoint, it is possible to observe in Fig.  7 how the trend has interested primarily the United States (40.8%), where theories of servant leadership first originated, and China in the second place (13.8%), where the western construct of servant leadership was tested to assess its reliability and validity across cultures. Several cultural differences have indeed been assessed between the United States and the Chinese culture; for instance, China is a long-term and collectivist country committed to work loyalty and respect, while the United States are more individualistic and oriented to short-term business relationships. The topic has then spread in most Anglo-Saxon countries, such as Australia (7.7%), United Kingdom (7.4%), South Africa (5.8%) and Canada (4.5%), probably fostered by their use of a common language and their cultural and historical ties. The countries of Netherlands, Hong Kong, Spain and Turkey represent altogether the remaining 19.9%.

Documents by country or territory

Servant leadership is a versatile and multidisciplinary topic, as it can be applied to a variety of contexts that also fall outside that of the typical corporation. Figure  8 shows how, besides Business, Management and Accounting (38.7%), the subject areas of Social Sciences (25.3%) Psychology (11.1%) and Arts and Humanities (7.9%) are also significantly involved in the literature. This can be explained by the fact that, rather than organizations, at the core of servant leadership are humans: specifically, leaders and their followers.

Documents by subject area

Figure  9 shows the contribution of the most impactful journals over time. The Leadership and Organization Development Journal with 22 articles out of 63, is the leading in the field and has grown exponentially from 2015. The journal of Business Ethics, with its 15 articles, has also been very influential for contributions to servant leadership research in the last decade. Other articles focusing on servant leadership have been published in Leadership Quarterly (10), International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management (8), and Leadership Organization Development Journal (8), which are also the longest-running in time.

Documents per year by source

With regards to the scholars who significantly contributed to the academic research on servant leadership (Fig.  10 ), some are based in the United States, where leadership theories have originated and are still widely investigated; the remaining part are based in Europe and Australia but have worked for important American journals and communities, such as Greenleaf center for servant leadership. The most important contribution comes from van Dierendonck (2014, 2019), who has an expertise in leadership and leadership development at Erasmus University (Rotterdam, Holland) and is the associate editor of the International Journal of Servant Leadership, published by Gonzaga University (Washington, United States) in collaboration with the Spears Center for Servant-Leadership. Two other influential authors are Liden et al. ( 2008 , 2014 , 2015 ) and Sendjaya et al. ( 2008 , 2019 ), who have been writing for some of the most important journals in the field, such as Leadership quarterly, Journal of business ethics and Leadership and organizational development journal, which were also highlighted by the previous analysis (Fig.  9 ). The remaining scholars, Winston and Fields ( 2015 ), Eva (2019), Ruiz-Palomino (2018), Bande (2015), Barbuto and Wheeler ( 2006 ), Cooper (2014) and Jaramillo (2009, 2015), have to be mentioned as they also provided considerable contribution to research, as proved by the number of citations of their works.

Documents by author

Figure  11 shows the output of an analysis performed in order to identify recent breakthrough papers that have provided a significant contribution to the topic and have received considerable attention from the scientific community. The ten most cited papers have been identified by extracting all 357 papers from the Scopus database and ranking them according to the overall number of citations of the last 5 years, divided by 5 (average value of citation per year). This reduced time span has been chosen instead of the time-length of the whole dataset in order to avoid the biased result of obtaining the oldest papers as the most cited, due to the fact that they would have received a greater number of citations over time. The article with the highest number of citations is the one by Liden et al. ( 2008 ) who developed and validated a multidimensional measure of 28 items measuring 9 essential dimensions of servant leadership. This scale has been widely applied to test the construct validity in various organizational contexts in recent time, together with its shortened version of 7 item developed by Wayne et al. in 2015. The remaining most cited articles can be divided in three groups, according to the research streams. One stream has focused on the clarification of the construct and the servant leadership theories in organizations, including scale development and validation. A second stream has been investigating the mediating and moderating mechanisms through which servant leadership leads to a series of behavioral, attitudinal and performance outcomes, both at the individual and collective level. Finally, a third stream has compared servant leadership to other moral-based leadership styles, such as transformational, ethical and authentic leaderships in terms of focus and their associations with a wide range of organizationally relevant measures. All the most cited papers are part of the biggest component shown in Fig.  2 ; moreover, four out of the ten papers are included in the main path, while the remaining six are not. Being written by more than one authors, these impactful papers are the result of a significant investigation conducted on the topic by more scholars. Altogether, the articles suggest that the most consistent trend in literature is moving towards the measurement of servant leadership across various cultural and organizational contexts, at both the individual and collective levels (organization, employee, customer, etc.). This has been possible through the clarification of the common constructs composing servant leadership and the development of a scale able to test them across different organizations and organizational levels.

Ranking of the ten most cited papers in the last 5 years (mean value of citation per year)

This paper represents an attempt to rationalize the content of research developed in the context of servant leadership. The limitations of the study are mainly related to the adopted methodology. First of all, it consists in a literature review based on a citation network analysis, which may not be fully representative of a paper’s qualitative contribution to the body of knowledge, especially because VOSviewer shows only a part of the whole subset. Moreover, citations could be biased because scholars often tend to cite the most relevant articles in the literature, driven by their reputation and popularity. However, these limitations can be overcome due to the fact that the purpose of the current study is to depict an evolutionary path of the topic, rather than investigate in-depth the contribution of single papers.

The growing body of empirical studies on servant leadership, analyzed for the purpose of the analysis, has allowed to identify some consolidated streams of research and some areas of the literature deserving further investigation. First of all, there is evidence that servant leadership can foster employees’ positive outcomes, with different antecedents and through various mediating and moderating mechanisms. These outcomes have been found at the individual, team and organizational level and are of various types: behavioral, such as organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and proactive behavior (Chiniara & Bentein, 2016 ; Newman et al., 2017 ; Ozyilmaz & Cicek, 2015 ; Walumbwa et al., 2010 ) attitudinal, such as engagement and job satisfaction (Chiniara & Bentein, 2016 ; Hunter et al., 2013 ; Kauppila et al., 2018 ; Van Dierendonck et al., 2014 ) and performance, such as customer value co-creation and team performance (Hsiao et al., 2015 ; Hu & Liden, 2011 ). Moreover, servant leadership has been found to be of significant utility in explaining incremental variance above and beyond transformational, ethical and authentic leadership, with regards to these organizationally relevant criterion measures (Hoch et al., 2018 ). For this reason, scholars have addressed their attention to this leadership approach and several companies are moving towards the adoption of an organizational climate based on service, ethics and healthy work relationships that could significantly contribute to the organizational success (Eva et al., 2019 ). This aspect makes servant leadership attractive for both future research and usage. Also, in the analyses of the present study (main path, keywords clusters, global statistics), no significant criticism of servant leadership, from both an empirical and theoretical level, has emerged; the development of minor critical examinations has always started from a prior enhancement of the construct and its positive outcomes. It has to be considered, however, that the unquestioned positive praise of servant leadership may be due to the so called “Matthew effect”: the fact that those papers offering a promising perspective of servant leadership, which have previously been successful, are more likely to be cited again and again (Bol et al., 2018 ).

Although a positive interpretation of servant leadership prevails in the literature, the authors of the present study went beyond the outputs of the main analyses to identify in the literature some potential drawbacks associated with the adoption of this practice within organizations (Palumbo, 2015 ). First of all, it has to be considered that the servant leadership approach takes time to build, as it requires strong interpersonal relationships engaging the emotional, relational and ethical dimension of followers, in which both the leader and the followers play a vital role in maintaining them over time. Plus, the servant leadership style may not be suitable for all organizations, especially those characterized by a fast-changing environment where decisions have to be made quickly, due to the fact that they would require a fast top-down approach, rather than bottom-up. Another risk is losing sight of the purpose of the organization and ultimate goals in favour of people development: the servant leader is in fact devoted to the individual employee and their growth rather than to the organization. This could have negative effects on the organizational effectiveness. On the other hand, a successful company performance is not always due to a visionary leader who establishes a climate of service, as this represents a common misperception of the business world: the halo effect (i.e. the tendency to make specific inferences on the basis of a general impression).

Lastly, too much healing and empathy shown by the leader may turn into merely protective behaviour towards followers, which would discourage them from adopting a proactive role and promptly dealing with critical issues within the organization. This would challenge the prevailing arguments of the literature of servant leadership by producing a disabling environment that disempowers employees and leads to a situation of dependency on the leader (Palumbo, 2015 ). To prevent this possible counterintuitive consequence, servant leaders should act as role models and lead by example, ensuring at the same time that followers have the right degree of autonomy and responsibility. In light of these considerations, the conceptualization of servant leadership should be revisited to contemplate its side-effects, in terms of followers’ behaviour, leader–follower relationships and organizational outcomes, to prevent the impoverishment of the overall organizational effectiveness predicted by some studies (Andersen, 2009 ; Palumbo, 2015 ; Liu, 2019 ; Chenwei et al., 2021 , Wu et al., 2021 ).

In particular, the authors of the present study have leveraged on a critical assessment of the outputs of the main analyses of the literature on servant leadership to identify some research areas that have not been examined in detail and deserve further investigation:

• servant leaders’ system of beliefs and values (i.e. ethics) as well as other antecedents, that may significantly affect followers’ and organizational performance;
• other mediating or moderating mechanisms (i.e. contextual discriminants) influencing the relationship between servant leadership and positive outcomes, both at the individual and organizational level;
• servant leadership behaviours displayed by followers, that are useful to promote customers’ satisfaction, especially in the service sector;
• the utility of servant leadership in contexts where it has not yet been evaluated, such as technology, to test its validity across industries;
• longitudinal, multi-level studies confirming the effectiveness and generalizability of the most recent scale of global servant leadership assessment (SL-7) across culturally diverse countries (other than the US and China, as suggested by this literature review), according to well-known frameworks such as Hofstede’s
• critical theoretical and empirical investigation of the potential shortcomings of servant leadership often neglected by scholars, to challenge the current positive interpretation of the topic and advance the scientific knowledge

Additionally, on the basis of the authors’ considerations, the role of servant leadership, compared to other types of leadership, may be investigated within the institutional framework (e.g. public services and administration, where it has shown to be very effective) and companies’ organizational change management.

Conclusions and Managerial Implications

Due to its holistic approach, broad focus and important role in affecting both individual and team-level outcomes, servant leadership has seen a proliferation of studies in the last 20 years. In response to this research trend, the aim of this paper was threefold. First of all, the recent evolution of the field was depicted through the identification of the main articles cluster that has been cited the most, thus representing the consolidated literature. Second, the development of the research trends over time was framed on the basis of the co-occurrence of authors’ keywords. Third, by conducting analyses on the main subset of papers, the authors presented some general insights on the topic, such as its temporal and geographical development, the main contexts where it has been studied and applied, the most cited papers providing a significant contribution to the field and the most influential journals and authors. The results of the analyses conducted in the present study indicate that the interpretation of servant leadership prevailing in literature is positive, due to the promising attitudinal, behavioural and performance outcomes that it can produce on followers.

Nevertheless, scholars should examine the potential drawbacks of servant leadership, assess its validity across industries, as well as identify the best scenario where it can be implemented. From a practical standpoint, managers should consider the importance of promoting servant leadership in employment settings, to develop specific skills and ultimately improve an organizational climate of empowerment. The servant leadership approach may be particularly effective in the post covid-19 scenario and / or in contexts characterized by a high degree of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA). In these environments, leaders struggle to make all decisions, thus requiring the proactiveness and motivational orientation of all employees, which have been identified as important mediators to positive followers’ outcomes in the servant leadership research (Eva et al., 2019 ). Specifically, further considerations are needed in relation to the potential role of this leadership practice in empowering and supporting followers, as well as in giving them the right degree of autonomy and responsibility to take on new challenges and act on behalf of the company when pressured by the external environment.

Data Availability

Code availability, declarations.

We have no conflict of interest or competing interest to disclose.

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Contributor Information

Alice Canavesi, Email: ti.cuil@isevanaca .

Eliana Minelli, Email: ti.cuil@illenime .

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Thesis Helpers

Find the best tips and advice to improve your writing. Or, have a top expert write your paper.

277 Top Leadership Research Topics for Your Thesis

For most students, working on leadership research topics is a fascinating task. That’s because this subject spans different disciplines, including education, management, sociology, politics, and psychology. For this reason, many learners choose these topics when writing college and university papers.

In most cases, educators do not specify the topic for learners. That means every learner must choose or develop a topic for their academic paper. Consequently, learners look for leadership areas that interest them and then pick their leadership paper topics.

Here are pointers for selecting a topic for your leadership essay or paper:

Start by choosing a subject area Narrow down your subject area Focus on leadership, not management Bear the educator’s instructions in mind Aim to answer a question in your subject area

If interested in this subject, here is a list of leadership topics you consider for your papers.

Interesting Dissertation Topics in Educational Leadership

When pursuing a course in educational leadership, educators require learners to complete a dissertation by employing their new learning and professional knowledge. When writing this paper, a learner should demonstrate organization, transformative leadership, and the ability to initiate community change. Here are sample topics in this category.

• Interrelation between poor school results and poor leadership
• How social media affects educational leadership
• Impacts of technology on educational leadership
• How leadership in mediocre schools can simulate top performing learning institutions
• Effects of the leadership culture on running educational institutions
• How to blend strategic teaching methods with efficient organization
• How educational leadership affects society
• How educational leadership influence researchers and literature
• Educational leadership and success path
• Educational leadership and social transformation
• Educational leadership’s role in society
• Can education leadership bring about change?
• How to include the community in education leadership
• Effectiveness of interdisciplinary teams in the running of the middle schools
• Women role in education leadership
• How cultural organization affects educational institutions
• Diluting racist habits in accredited universities
• How to seamlessly pass teachers’ excellence to students
• How educational institutions can offer exceptional leadership by thinking outside the box
• How to evaluate negative traits of instructors teaching similar subjects
• How fighting for leadership positions affect schools and students
• How to compassionately develop students with dyslexia
• How to strategically blend teaching methods with efficient organization
• How culture influences educational institutions’ leadership
• How effective educational leadership helps learners achieve academic goals
• How educational leadership affect how learners think about their future and intellectual abilities
• How teachers can encourage learners to take exams and testing more seriously
• Do teachers have adequate training on how to be influential leaders?
• Should learning institutions evaluate teachers depending on their leadership abilities?
• What changes in training opportunities can encourage teachers to exercise leadership strategies?

Pick any of these educational leadership research topics and investigate them extensively to develop a brilliant dissertation.

Hot Leadership Training Topics

Leadership training is crucial for future and current leaders. Anybody that wants to become a supervisor, manager, or leader at any capacity should undergo some training to cultivate and nurture their skills. Here are some of the best leadership topics to write about in this category.

• How organizational leaders can enhance productivity
• How company leaders can retain the best employees
• How to improve decision making in an organization
• How to implement effective leadership styles
• How leaders can support succession in their organizations
• How to delegate and empower employees
• Role of organizational leaders in conflict resolution
• How to change management and executive leadership
• How leaders can command respect without issuing commands
• How leaders can motivate and engage employees
• How corporate leaders can enhance interpersonal relationships
• How decision skills can streamline organizations and nurture confidence
• How leaders can train employees on energy and time management
• How leaders can train employees about self-awareness
• Practical communication skills for organizational leaders
• How leaders can encourage peer-to-peer training
• The role of leadership in organizational development
• How to design helpful leadership training modules
• How to automate corporate learning paths
• How to measure results in leadership training
• Importance of leadership training
• How leaders can deal with organizational change
• How leaders can use coaching to enhance employee performance
• Qualities of practical leadership training and mentorship programs
• How leaders can create a learning culture in an organization
• How a company employee can benefit from a leadership course
• Which leadership strategies can enhance a team’s performance?
• Describe different leadership styles with examples
• What leadership training means for a business
• Can leadership training affect organizational success?

Any of these topics can be the basis of an excellent paper. However, take your time to research your preferred idea to come up with a high-quality paper.

Trendy Leadership Development Topics for Research

Leadership development entails expanding individuals’ capacity to perform their leadership roles in organizations. Here are topic ideas to consider in this category.

• When is leadership coaching necessary?
• Who should provide leadership coaching?
• Which are the best leadership development opportunities?
• How emotional intelligence can enhance leadership development
• Describe executive development
• How innovation can enhance leadership development
• Mentorship for leadership development- How does it work?
• Can leaders act as teachers?
• Why strategic planning matters when it comes to leadership development
• Role of leadership development in team building
• How coaching can enhance leadership development
• Can leadership development enhance accountability?
• Why change management coaching should be part of a leadership development program
• How leadership development can turn leaders into negotiators and influencers
• How communication skills can enhance leadership development
• How organizational leaders can develop creativity
• Essential skills to acquire from a leadership development program

Pick any of these topic ideas and then develop them via research to develop a winning paper. Use different information sources to gather relevant information before writing your essay.

Organizational Leadership Dissertation Topics

Organizational leadership is an exciting research field. What’s more, you can use a topic in this category to impact a difference in an organization. And this can enhance your employability when seeking a job. Depending on your dissertation requirements, you can pick and work with any of these topics.

• How blended-learning techniques can enhance the critical thinking of organizational leaders
• Essential administrative services that hospitality industry leaders should provide
• Qualities of charismatic and prevention-oriented leaders for the success of medium-sized enterprises
• How leadership behaviors affect the corporate culture
• How leadership practices influence the success of an organization
• How organizational leadership and culture affect the success of a small enterprise
• Why executive leadership is essential in developing countries
• Organizational leadership’s role in a multicultural environment
• Investigating variations in conventional organizational leadership and charismatic leadership
• How leadership quality and training can improve organizational performance
• How corporate culture can influence the leadership decisions to try a new business strategy
• How a country can produce the organizational leaders it requires
• How managers can provide leadership aspirations to subordinates
• How global company leaders can influence their overall cultures
• How corporate culture impacts a company’s leadership
• How assumption-based planning can save money for an organization
• How organizational leadership differs from management
• How differentiating leadership from management can enhance the achievement of organizational goals
• How to evaluate the effects of administration on the organizational performance
• How to examine leadership effects and vision clarity on business organizations
• How leadership affects organizational performance
• How a corporate leader can devise work teams in a company
• Impacts of leadership skills on employees performance

Any of these organizational leadership topics can be the basis of a brilliant paper. However, you must research the idea extensively to include relevant information in your writing. That way, your educator and organizational leaders will find your essay worth reading.

Fantastic Women’s Leadership Topics

It’s no secret that studies about women in leadership topics have increased over the years. Perhaps, that’s because women’s status in workplaces has improved recently. Here are brilliant ideas to explore if interested in writing a research paper in this category.

• The role of women personality in leadership
• What are the primary barriers to women’s leadership?
• Society stereotypes that threaten women leadership
• How the responsibilities of women differ from those of their counterpart males
• How the personality of women leaders differ from that of men
• How women’s leadership style differs from that of men
• How family responsibilities affect female leaders
• Do current male leaders resist female leaders?
• Must women leaders outperform their male counterparts to be considered adequate?
• How lack of sufficient household support affects women leaders
• How women leaders can help in unlocking the full economic potential of a country
• How influential women leaders juggle between family and work
• How powerful women leaders define work and success
• How gender stereotypes affect female leaders
• How modern female leaders balance careers and family
• How stereotypes shape women leaders’ performance and intellectual identity
• Family business success- What is the role of women?
• Gender, sex, and leadership
• How women can change organizational leadership
• How great women leaders can inspire people to take action

Take any of these topics and develop them into an excellent paper through research. The internet is awash with resources that cover women and leadership issues. That means you won’t have a hard time finding relevant information for your topic.

Interesting Leadership Topics

Perhaps, you’re looking for an exciting topic for your research paper or essay. In that case, here are some of the best ideas to explore.

• A case study of Bill Gates’ leadership
• Motivation and leadership- What’s the difference?
• What are the key characteristics of transformational leadership?
• Investigating leadership and management across culture
• Characteristics and distinctions of management and leadership
• Explain radical leadership with examples
• Discuss different leadership and management styles
• Ethical leadership theories and models
• Othello and Machiavelli’s leadership skills
• Leadership concepts, according to Kentucky Fried Chicke
• Moral and cultural contingencies of leadership
• An investigation into team leadership
• Discuss the hospitality industry’s leadership and management
• How diversity affects the leadership effectiveness
• Which are the best leadership practices
• Socrates and organizational leadership
• Aspects of leadership and team behavior
• Leadership and management in business- How they relate
• What is ethical leadership?
• Leadership as a strategy in human resource and company policies
• Leadership and organizational behavior- How they relate
• Why is strategic leadership essential in the business environment?
• How gender difference affects leadership styles
• What is systematic leadership?
• Why is civic leadership important?
• How negative leadership affects an organization
• Leadership role in an organization’s transformational
• Classifications of different leadership theories
• Theoretical perspectives of organizational leadership
• Human resource planning and leadership development
• Leadership contingency theories
• Military leadership style and coaching combination
• Benefits, roles, and limitations of leadership
• Supervising and leadership influence on human services
• Leadership theories and effective organization change
• Discuss various leadership style concepts
• Governance and leadership- What’s the difference?
• Troubled companies and their leadership
• Participative and situational leadership theories
• Analyzing the authoritative leadership style
• Effective management and leadership strategies
• Why strong leadership is crucial in a business organization
• Integrating different leadership styles
• Leadership and education role modeling
• How effective leadership can enhance employees productivity
• How managers can motivate employees by serving as their leaders
• How political leadership can affect an organization
• Leadership role in solving organizational challenges
• A critical perspective on leadership and management
• Evaluation of John Kennedy and Bill Clinton’s political leadership
• An analysis of the most influential leader in the world
• Effective leadership learning processes in an organization
• Servant and followership leadership
• Leadership principles of effective teachers
• Analyzing Ciulla Joanne’s The Ethics of Leadership
• Is servant leadership effective in school administration?
• Creativity and leadership revision
• Leadership and motivation theories
• The role of leadership in a multinational company
• Participative approach versus autocratic leadership
• How ethical leadership can influence decision-making
• How a company’s leadership can manage change effectively
• Innovation and leadership in a business
• How transformational leadership can benefit women
• Describe the role of leadership in a medical facility
• Variations in ethical leadership
• Scientific methods for studying leadership
• Strategy as leadership and practice
• Leadership and service quality
• How school governance affects school leadership
• How leadership and power relate
• Investigating leadership through a behavioral approach
• Effective styles for strategic leadership
• Strategic leadership- A critical examination
• Describe how contingency leadership works
• Discuss theorists and theories on leadership
• How to develop a leadership strategy in an organization
• Why leadership models are valuable
• Leadership strategies as success factors
• Qualities of effective leadership strategies

These are exciting leadership topics for discussion in an academic paper or essay. Pick an issue in this category and then research it extensively to develop a brilliant piece.

Nursing Leadership Paper Topics

Do you want to write a research paper or essay about nursing leadership? If yes, pick any of these brilliant nursing leadership paper topics.

• Strategies for developing nurse leaders
• How concept-based learning techniques affect nurse leaders
• What are the qualities of the best nurse leaders?
• How a nurse leader can manage stress
• Criteria for being considered a nurse leader’s mentor
• Essential nursing leadership areas to study
• Qualities of a practical nursing leadership program
• Why nursing leadership is vital in healthcare management
• A review of ethical nursing leadership and practice
• What are the values of ethical nursing leadership and training?
• How to balance nursing leadership and service quality
• Nursing leadership fundamentals
• The global status of nurse leaders
• Practice experience that every nurse leader should exhibit
• Nursing leadership from a patient’s perspective
• How to apply nursing leadership in a nursing home
• A comparison of nursing leadership in an adult ward and a pediatric ward
• Vital skills for a nurse leader during an emergency
• Challenges facing nursing leaders
• What leadership means to nurses
• Leadership from a nurse perspective- What does it mean?
• Disadvantages of being a nurse leader
• What are the inherent nurse leaders’ values?
• The role of nurse leaders in public hospitals
• Nursing leadership status in private hospitals
• How nursing leadership differs in private and public hospitals
• Trends in nursing leadership
• Assessing nursing leadership in third-world countries
• Long and short-term goals for nurse leaders
• Activities for enhancing nursing leadership.

Any of these nursing leadership topics can be a great idea for research. However, prepare to investigate your preferred issue to develop an excellent paper. Nevertheless, you can even seek professional assistance if you love the topic but lack adequate time to write about it.

Leadership Speech Topics

Perhaps, you want to write a speech to present to your class or during a business meeting. In that case, this category comprises some of the best leadership presentation topics.

• How to be a transformative leader
• What makes a strategic leader?
• Why organizations need moral leaders
• How to lead with inclusion and integrity
• Leadership and dissent- Doing the right versus doing something right
• Practicing leadership in an inter-agency context
• How to make a difference using leadership
• Transactional or transformational leadership- What works?
• How effective leadership looks like
• How to practice effective leadership
• How to become a leader
• How to lead with compassion
• Qualities that every great leader should exhibit
• The power of effective leadership
• How a leadership vision can propel an organization forward
• How to understand and work with followers as a leader
• How a leader can adapt and listen to changes in an organization
• How consistent efforts make great leaders
• Qualities that made great leaders in history
• The golden rule of outstanding leadership

These are brilliant leadership discussion topics. However, prepare to research your preferred idea before you write a speech about it. That way, you will come up with a presentation that will move your audience.

Leadership Topics for Managers

Perhaps, you want to write about a leadership issue that managers will find interesting to read. In that case, these leadership research paper topics will interest you.

• How managers can develop performance standards and goals
• How managers can promote effective discipline
• How a manager can improve work habits
• How company managements can manage complaints
• How a manager can provide performance feedback
• Effective conflict resolution techniques for company managers
• How a manager can support change in a company
• Effective ways for managers to delegate tasks
• How to effectively communicate with the upper management
• How a manager can train or coach others
• Essential leadership skills for managers
• How managers can create trust and transparency in their organizations
• How managers can encourage individual employees to find personal motivation
• How managers can encourage innovation and initiative
• How a manager can build self-confidence
• Practical time management skills that every manager should have
• Body language and public speaking for managers
• How company managers can minimize employee complaints
• How managers can lower stress among employees
• Why training is essential for new managers
• Why every manager should know industry-specific regulations
• How managers can create an inclusive workforce
• How managers can nurture talents and ensure employee retention
• What training methods can managers use to empower employees?
• Firing and hiring- What should know managers know about these responsibilities?
• Which skills should managers cultivate to support company employees?

These are brilliant leadership essay topics for managers. However, you need time to research any of these topics to write a winning paper.

Having an Issue Completing Your Leadership Dissertation?

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