Servant Leadership: Strengths, Weaknesses, and a Path Forward

Servant leadership, despite its popularity among academics and practitioners and consistent research findings that demonstrate its benefits for multiple stakeholders, like other leadership approaches, has not been immune to criticism. In this essay, the views of a servant leadership researcher or “insider” are presented along with the criticism of an “outsider” who has not been involved in conducting servant leadership research. The outsider identifies lack of theory development necessary to explain the mechanisms through which servant leadership affects outcomes, lack of theoretical justification of servant leadership dimensions, and measurement issues as the key problems with servant leadership research. The insider then counters these criticisms with a discussion of scale development procedures backing servant leadership measurement along with supportive empirical findings. We conclude with recommendations agreed upon by both the insider and outsider for how servant leadership theory may be enhanced and measurement improved to benefit not only academic research on servant leadership, but also its implementation in practice.