Servant leadership across the globe: Assessing universal and culturally contingent relevance in organizational contexts

Abstract

Servant leadership is ripe for exploration from both etic and emic perspectives investigating its robustness as a leadership style globally. Through a meta-analysis of data from 139 studies, we examine the relationship of servant leadership with 23 attitudinal, behavioral, and performance outcomes across cultures. Utilizing values and practices approaches to culture, we test the moderating influence of a profile of four GLOBE culture dimensions theoretically linked to servant leadership: assertiveness, institutional collectivism, humane orientation, and power distance. The findings provide evidence of servant leadership's association with workplace outcomes, grant insight into contingencies of cultural practices and values, and offer directions for future research.