To date, the more prevalent research being done on Servant Leadership is in regards to ethics. Apart from realizing how Servant Leadership can have different affects on organizations and it's employees, ethics has become a major concern. From the many studies done on the topic of Servant Leadership, researchers have realized that Servant Leaders implementing their practices in an ethical way should be a main focus. In fact, a number of scales have been created to measure Servant Leadership and ethics throughout organizations[1]. One reason why these scales came about is because researchers found that, despite the fact that Servant Leadership practices have many positive affects on employees and organizations, it could have a negative affect if the leader seems to be being unethical[1]. An example of a negative affect is that an unethical leader can lower employee job satisfaction[1].
Servant Leadership is still going through the process of being accepted as a leadership theory because of Greenleaf's belief that Servant Leadership is a way of life rather than a systematized technique with a specific outline[2]. In fact, this is the main reason why these many different scales are being created by different researchers to test for the level of ethical means in the practice of Servant Leadership within organizations[2]. Although Servant Leadership was proposed many years ago, it is still considered a "newer" theory among many other theories because of the switch in focus from the traditional leadership theories[3]. Granted organizations have implemented Servant Leadership as their main way of managing their organizations, but It was not until about 2004 that Servant Leadership began to be studied in an empirical manner, thus Servant Leadership as a leadership theory may still go through major changes in the years to come[3]. This is due to all the focus being put into justifying whether the "newer" leadership theories should be acceptable in society, as well as in academia[2].
http://dx.doi.org.york.ezproxy.cuny.edu/10.1007/s10551-017-3594-3 SLBS
http://dx.doi.org.york.ezproxy.cuny.edu/10.1007/s10551-018-3823-4 is SL an ehtical leadeship style that can influence group social capital
- ^ a b c Reed, Lora L.; Vidaver-Cohen, Deborah; Colwell, Scott R. (2011-01-13). "A New Scale to Measure Executive Servant Leadership: Development, Analysis, and Implications for Research". Journal of Business Ethics. 101 (3): 415–434. doi:10.1007/s10551-010-0729-1. ISSN 0167-4544.
- ^ a b c Parris, Denise Linda; Peachey, Jon Welty (2012-04-22). "A Systematic Literature Review of Servant Leadership Theory in Organizational Contexts". Journal of Business Ethics. 113 (3): 377–393. doi:10.1007/s10551-012-1322-6. ISSN 0167-4544.
- ^ a b Spector, Paul (2014-04-11). "Introduction: The problems and promise of contemporary leadership theories". Journal of Organizational Behavior. 35 (5): 597–597. doi:10.1002/job.1930. ISSN 0894-3796.