Content area
Full Text
Introduction
Scholars argue that effective leadership is based on altruistic motives and servant leadership, rather than self-serving and maximizing the benefits of leaders (Liden et al., 2014; Schwarz et al., 2016; Chiniara and Bentein, 2016). Servant leaders are the ones who “go beyond self-interest to bring the best in employees” (Van Dierendonck, 2011, p. 1231). Servant leaders are “ones who do not just talk a good game – they practice what they preach and are proactive role models for ethical conduct’’ (Reed et al., 2011, p. 416). Servant leadership (SL) provides effective management practices within the organization and creates a healthy work-life balance for employees (Fry et al., 2007).
Research on SL is at an “early stage” and significantly limited (Bavik et al., 2017; Lu et al., 2019; Rodríguez-Carvajal et al., 2019). There is currently sufficient evidence of the effectiveness of SL in the private sector (Ling et al., 2016). However, scholars paid less attention to the concept of SL in the public sector (Shim et al., 2021; Mostafa and El-Motalib, 2019). The public sector operates under rules, regulations and environments that are different from those in the private sector. Because the government funds, operates and regulates the public sector, it is difficult for leaders to extrinsically reward followers, and leaders must find alternative ways to inspire their followers to achieve the organization's objectives (Fernandez and Moldogaziev, 2011). Moreover, strict rules, laws and processes in the public sector prevent people from feeling empowered to be creative and inventive in their work (Fernandez and Moldogaziev, 2011). Public sector leadership is challenged by outside forces and bureaucracies, which are beyond their control (Van Wart, 2003). Such scrutiny makes it imperative for the leadership in the public sector to adopt a more positive form of leadership that focuses on the development of the follower (Hoch et al., 2018). SL can be regarded as a natural model in the public sector, primarily because leaders of public organizations have greater intentions to serve than those of private organizations (Slack et al., 2019).
Although management research suggests developing context-dependent measures, limited research has been undertaken for context-specific scales (Latif and Marimon, 2019). Despite a thorough search of peer-reviewed databases, scholars...