The Integrity of the Servant Leader

The impact of the global financial crisis is still being felt today and the deeply unethical behaviour of the top level leaders at those economic and financial organizations, that were at the heart of the crisis, has served to highlight the importance of integrity, and in particular the need for servant leadership, if we are to avoid another major catastrophe in the management of both commercial and non-profit organizations. Servant leadership has many features in common with transformational leadership but is primarily focused on caring about employees and their personal development.

Ethical behaviour is one of the most important components of successful leadership yet this remains insufficiently investigated, especially from an interdisciplinary perspective. With the help of theory, empirical analysis and the relevant methodological apparatus, the authors fill the gap in the analysis of integrity and its impact on leadership and locate the significant factors which affect integrity in general.

They develop and assess the forces that impact Servant Leadership style, as well as the ability to engender trust. As a starting point they make two assumptions: An important element in leading is the ethical dimension of leadership; The ratio of factors that affect leading and the servant leadership style is complex, but the integrity of leaders is the most important among them.

The authors examine four integrated scientific areas: ethics and business ethics, human resource management and psychology and focus on the analysis of the process of leadership and the factors within that process of leading that influence its success and its ethical dimension.

Robert Sumi, PhD, is head of the Research and Social Skills Centre in the Slovenian Police.

Dana Mesner-Andolsek, PhD, is associate Professor of Sociology at the Faculty of Social Sciences, as well as a researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana (Slovenia).