Servant Leadership

Abstract

Servant leadership has solidified its position as a critical and influential leadership paradigm within organizational studies, distinguished by its emphasis on leader behaviors that prioritize the growth, well-being, and empowerment of followers. Its relevance has expanded beyond its ethical and philosophical origins to demonstrate significant impact across key organizational outcomes, including enhanced employee performance (Lee et al., 2020), increased innovative work behavior (Newman et al., 2020), strengthened organizational citizenship behavior (Liden et al., 2022), and improved employee well-being and engagement (Eva et al., 2019). Objectives: A core objective of this systematic review was to identify and examine the prevailing thematic areas within Servant Leadership (SL) research in organizational contexts over the past five years. Methods: This study employed the Systematic Quantitative Assessment Technique (SQAT), a robust framework developed by Pickering and Byrne (2014) to ensure a rigorous, transparent, and replicable review process. The SQAT protocol was selected for its ability to systematically identify, screen, and synthesize a body of peer-reviewed literature while minimizing selection bias. Its structured approach emphasizes methodological clarity and is particularly effective at revealing geographic, methodological, and thematic trends and gaps within a defined research field Results: This section presents the findings from the systematic review of 58 articles on Servant Leadership (SL) published between 2019 and 2024. The results are organized to address the predefined research questions, detailing the temporal and geographical distribution of the literature, the balance between conceptual and empirical studies, and the dominant methodological approaches. The findings are integrated with a discussion of their significance for the study of Servant Leadership in Organizational Contexts. Conclusions: This systematic review set out to analyse the landscape of Servant Leadership (SL) research within organizational contexts over the recent five-year period (2019-2024). Drawing from a final corpus of 58 peer-reviewed articles, the study mapped the temporal and geographical distribution of publications, the balance between conceptual and empirical work, and the dominant methodological approaches, ultimately identifying four primary thematic trajectories: Performance and Organizational Outcomes, Psychological and Mediating Mechanisms, Antecedents and Leader Development, and Cross-Cultural Applications and Public Service.