“Leading through service“

Employees’ job experiences in a servant leadership organization

Abstract

While numerous organizations have successfully adopted servant leadership, only a few studies have focused on understanding of what it is like for employees to work in an organization that is devoted to servant leadership with regards to the practice of servant leadership. This qualitative study was conducted in an architecture and engineering services organization in the United States of America that operates in a business-to-business market and is dedicated to servant leadership. To obtain a rich description of the employees’ experiences of the practice of servant leadership and thus an understanding of the phenomenon, both in-depth semi-structured interviews with employees and observations were analyzed and interpreted according to phenomenological methodology. The following three themes emerged: selecting customers in line with the practice of servant leadership, fulfilling the needs of customers and employees, and contributing to society. The study findings provide important theoretical and practical contributions to the practice of servant leadership as it sheds new light on the relationship with customers concerning the practice of the concept. First, the findings demonstrate how employees carefully select their customers in line with the practice of servant leadership, and how the employees are equally devoted to fulfilling both the needs of employees and customers. This enables the employees to fruitfully practice servant leadership together with their customers, led by the desire to have a positive impact on society.