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Exploring Servant Leadership across Cultures: A Study of Followers in Ghana and the USA

Bible League, Chicago, USA, jhale{at}bibleleague.org

Dail L. Fields

Regent University, USA, dailfie{at}regent.edu

In the shadow of corporate scandals such as Enron and Worldcom, an increase in attention has been directed towards an approach termed `servant leadership'. To date, servant leadership has been discussed and described almost entirely in the North American context (Farling et al., 1999; Spears, 1995). In the following study, we explored the extent to which followers from Ghana and the USA have experienced three servant leadership dimensions in a work situation, and the extent to which these followers relate servant leadership dimensions to judgments about leadership effectiveness in each culture. After testing for measurement equivalence and adjusting the item weights in each culture, we found that Ghanaians reported experiencing servant leadership behaviours significantly less than North Americans. We also found that vision had a significantly stronger relationship with leader effectiveness for Ghanaians in comparison to North Americans, but that both sub-samples relate service and humility with leader effectiveness similarly. We explored possible explanations and implications based on cultural differences.

Key Words: cross-cultural • empirical study • Ghana and the USA • leadership effectiveness • servant leadership

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Leadership, Vol. 3, No. 4, 397-417 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/1742715007082964


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This Article Abstract Free Full Text (Free PDF) Free Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Hale, J. R. Articles by Fields, D. L. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?