The Place for Qualitative Research Methods in the Study of Servant Leadership

Abstract

Servant leadership research began with Farling et al.’s (1999) conceptual article calling for empirical research. Prior to 1999, works on servant leadership were descriptive or definitional in nature, and did not seek to provide a scholarly study of the concept. Since Farling et al.’s conceptual article, the servant leadership research has offered additional conceptual, definitional or descriptive studies (Stone and Russell, 2003; Laub, 2004), models (Patterson, 2003; Winston, 2003; Rennaker, 2005), and scale development studies (Laub, 2003; Sendjaya, 2003; Liden et al., 2008; Dennis and Bocarnea, 2005; Barbuto and Wheeler, 2006).