Servant Leadership: An Ancient Style with 21st Century Relevance

Servant leadership is not a new concept; it has roots in ancient history. Robert Greenleaf (1970) revitalized the practice of servant leadership in modern organizations, but little progress has been made in the decades since in conceptualizing and operationalizing servant leadership. A review of the current literature identifies the history of servant leadership and outlines the recent path this leadership style is traveling toward increased organizational acceptance. A lack of a universally accepted model, a shortage of quantifiable research, and the absence of a comprehensive instrumentation have slowed the acceptance of servant leadership amongst business scholars and practitioners and led to considerable confusion of what servant leadership is and is not. Examination of the servant leadership research and instrumentation reveals that servant leadership is at a critical moment in its journey towards becoming a fully recognized leadership style. Given that Van Dierondonck’s (2011) work brings together the previous models with a comprehensive measurement system, servant leadership is poised to enter the next stage of organizational acceptance.