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Renxi Liu

EAP 507-P07
Feburary24, 2018
An Analytical Summary of Liden et al (2014)

This academic journal article, “Servant Leader and Serving Culture: Influence on Individual
and Unit Performance” by Liden, Wayne, Liao, and Meuser, investigates the servant leadership
and serving culture (Liden, Wayne, Liao, & Meuser, 2014). The authors found that the servant
leadership and servant culture are rarely studied by scholars especially between individual and
unit performance these two levels. Based on their literature review, they set up the direction of
their research. There are the two main concepts in this article servant leadership and serving
culture. The authors focus on servant leadership and servant culture these two aspects to explore
the impact of servant leadership and serving culture on individual and unit performance. The
authors illustrate the relationship between servant leadership and serving culture. At the
beginning of the article, the authors explain the servant leadership can make leader motivates the
follower to satisfying their needs (Liden, Wayne, Liao, & Meuser, 2014). Based on this idea, the
authors verify seven hypotheses to extend the theoretical development between the servant
leadership and serving culture. According to their research by survey method, they probed how
the servant leadership affects employee behavior. The authors propose seven hypotheses and
select more than seventy restaurants in six U.S. states as samples to validate these seven
hypotheses through mathematical (Liden, Wayne, Liao, & Meuser, 2014). They provided the
research theories and basis for the future researchers in the servant leadership and serving
culture. Throughout the full text, we can easily find that this research provides some applications
for both academic and practical fields. In the article, “servant leadership is more than creating a
pleasant work atmosphere, as this from of leadership positively relates to performance-related
outcomes” (Liden, Wayne, Liao, & Meuser, 2014, p. 1447), the authors not only explain the
benefit of the servant leadership for the manager, but also show the relationship between servant
leadership and serving culture. The authors propose some research directions of the servant
leadership for the researcher meanwhile they also provide some basis of management for the
company’ manager.
One of the key concepts in Liden’s (2014) project was serving culture. “Serving culture as the
extent to which all members of the work unit engage in servant leadership behaviors and
operationalize it as aggregated individual employee reports of perceived collective unit
behavior” (Liden, Wayne, Liao, & Meuser, 2014, p. 1437). The authors show their understanding
about serving culture to the audience, and they described the relationship between serving culture
and servant leadership. Moreover, they mentioned the serving culture is the work environment
(Liden, Wayne, Liao, & Meuser, 2014). They emphases serving culture is formed by the
behavior of all members not the leader’s behavior. However, the authors stated the leader’s
serving behavior can influence the followers eventually formed the serving culture in the
workplace (Liden, Wayne, Liao, & Meuser, 2014). The leaders who have the spirit of the servant
leadership can more care their followers in order to satisfying their needs; on the other hand, the
employees can imitate their leader who has the servant leadership further let their customers to
get satisfaction from their service. This serving culture is established by leaders and followers.
Moreover, the authors illustrated the function of the serving culture by borrowing the resources
from the scholars’ previous research. They also think the serving culture can pervade an
environment for servant leadership. On the other words, servant leadership can play its
advantages only in serving culture. As an international management student, I’m wondering is
the serving culture only can play a role in the service industry, and whether it can be applied to
other industries.
Reference
Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Liao, C., & Meuser, J. D. (2014). Servant leadership and serving
culture: Influence on individual and unit performance. Academy of Management
Journal, 57(5), 1434-1452.

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