Does Servant Leadership Work? Academic Research | Dr. Madana Kumar, PhD

Many people consider Servant Leadership as a noble and admirable concept. But I face three major questions whenever I speak about Servant Leadership

1. Does it work?
2. Can it be measured?
3. Can it be practiced in day to day work activities?

In this blog, we will try to answer the first question through Academic Research.

For my doctoral research, I studied the implementation of Servant Leadership in Indian NGOs. I did both qualitative research and empirical research on the topic.  My studies revealed the following

1. When Leaders demonstrate Servant Leadership Characteristics, it has a significant positive correlation of 18% on the Employee on-the job performance. In other words, Servant Leadership behaviour from leaders can impact employee’s on-the job-performance by as much as 18%.
2. The impact is a lot stronger in the organisational commitment of the employees. There is 69% positive correlation between Servant Leadership Characteristics and Organisational Commitment.  This means that leaders have an opportunity to influence the organisational commitment by up to 69% if they embrace Servant Leadership Characteristics.
3. Organisational commitment in turn has got a 29% positive correlation to  the on-the job-performance of the employees.  So, apart from the direct impact that Servant Leadership Characteristics have on the performance of the employees, there is an indirect impact through enhanced Organisational commitment.
4. Additionally, there is an 18% positive correlation between Servant Leadership Characteristics and Community Citizenship behaviour of employees. This translates into employees becoming better citizens, outside their job roles.

The findings thus underscore the  win-win nature of Servant Leadership. It creates better performing employees, thereby ensuring organisational success.  It also creates better citizens, thereby creating a betters world.

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For more detailed information on this study, please refer to

[1] Kumar, Madana. Servant Leadership in Indian NGOs. Unpublished Thesis submitted to Aligarh Muslim University. Available at Shodhganga : a reservoir of Indian theses @ INFLIBNET. Web accessed at http://hdl.handle.net/10603/62756 on 26 Feb 2021  . Also available at Academia.edu at https://www.academia.edu/18187593/Servant_Leadership_in_Indian_NGOs ,  Thesis repository of Aligarh Muslim University at http://ir.amu.ac.in/9480/1/T%208513.pdf and  Researchgate. Net  at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341931544_Servant_Leadership_in_Indian_NGOs_THESIS

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Author Dr. Madana Kumar, PhD is the Servant Leadership Evangelist and Chief Consultant at Leadyne. You can connect with him here or contact him here.