This research provides insight into the servant leadership principles that are found in the mission, vision and values statements of companies. The primary purpose of this study is to investigate the corporate philosophies of companies to ascertain whether it contains servant leadership principles and thus to what extent these companies may utilise these principles. Mayer, Bardes and Piccolo (2008) state that servant leaders are lead by a moral orientation, which results in the likelihood of them engaging in ethical practices and being unbiased in the decision-making process. The lack of moral and ethical behaviour by leaders indicates that there is a need for a leadership method that is based on ethical practices and moral behaviour. Trompenaars and Voerman (2009) noted that companies who have implemented servant leadership are successful as a result. Spears (2004) indicated that the corporate philosophy of a company should reflect its leadership. This study will therefore aim to identify whether servant leadership principles are evident in the corporate philosophies of companies by using a framework developed to investigate servant leadership. A mixed method empirical research design was applied, using published financial statements to analyse the corporate philosophies of companies. Convenience sampling was used to identify a sample of 100 companies. Fifty companies from the top 200 listed companies at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in South Africa (JSE) and another fifty companies from the top 100 listed companies at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) were included in the sample. The values statements, missions and visions of each company were qualitatively analysed and coded. This resulted in a set of data that could be quantitatively analysed. The results show that the majority of the sample as a whole displayed at least five out of the ten servant leadership principles. The JSE sample only displayed five out of the ten xv servant leadership principles compared to the NYSE sample that displayed seven out of the ten. There was also no statistical significant difference between the results of the respondent companies of the two stock exchanges. The JSE sample referred mostly to the servant leadership principle of Integrity, while the NYSE sample referred mostly to Employee empowerment and development. It can be concluded that servant leadership principles are indeed present in the corporate philosophies of companies listed on both the JSE and the NYSE. However, these principles are present in varying degrees. This study provides research on servant leadership principles by providing an international comparison of the missions, visions and values statements of companies in two countries. The framework developed to investigate servant leadership principles can thus be further extended and used to investigate whether businesses in general are employing these principles.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:nmmu/vital:9283 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | Du Plessis, Francine |
| Publisher | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Faculty of Business and Economic Sciences |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, Masters, MCom |
| Format | xv, 174 leaves, pdf |
| Rights | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University |
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