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Bernard, Gerald

College of Education and Social Services

2007

Ed. D.

The purpose of this study is to explore relationships between two dominant yet theoretically distinct perspectives of leadership, namely servant leadership (Greanleaf, 1977; Spears, 1998) and transformational leadership (Bass & Avolio, 1994). Data about leadership are drawn from self-reported surveys of employees from the health care services sector. Employees assessed the leadership qualities of their supervisors using the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ form 5x-short), Organizational Leadership Assessment (OLA), Leadership Trust Inventory, and the Job Diagnostic Survey. A total of 196 respondents completed the survey. Using correlational methods including chi square and spearman rho tests, a series of findings indicate that a high degree of correlation among two leadership theories. Specifically, the concepts of servant leadership, and transformational leadership correlated with one another (rho = .781), which suggests a positive relationship between the two leadership approaches. Two additional validity assessments, leadership trust and job satisfaction, were also found to be positively correlated with the leadership measure. Trust correlated positively with both servant and transformational leadership (rho =,773; rho = .767), again suggesting that both leadership approaches contain similar characteristics that are deemed trustworthy by followers. Interestingly, job satisfaction had a lower level of correlation with trust, servant leadership and transformational leadership (rho = .466; rho = .422; rho =.454) suggesting that other variables may also have an impact on job satisfaction in addition to leadership style.