Abstract
Authored by a practicing CEO, this paper explores—and broadly calls for—a strategic approach to expand servanthood and servant leadership (SL) practice through focused scholarship by examining distinctive qualities and phenomena observed in the field. In order to move SL practice forward, scholars are urged to not only address conventional social science needs, but also practical implementation needs which limit SL’s establishment in practice. I first provide a broad strategic plan with three goals and a framework to approach SL’s strategic distinctions and competitive advantages (the main focus of this paper) consisting of four qualities—servant first, stakeholder focus, first-among-equals (or primus inter pares in Latin), and ethical basis—that differentiate SL among leadership styles. I then identify four key, but under-researched, psychological phenomena which I have observed in the field: individual-level phronesis (practical wisdom), psychological ownership, and joy, as well as group-level interdependence which are proposed as both proximal outcomes of the identified SL strategic distinctions and as distal antecedents to SL in reciprocal deterministic fashion. The nomological net resultant from this theorizing shows that all four psychological constructs have the possibility to enhance and extend the self-determination theory model of SL emergence—adding to SL theory in general and, more specifically, potentially attracting practitioners to consider SL adoption. The paper concludes with a graphical summary of how strategic SL distinctions cause and are caused by a virtuous cycle of servanthood emergence, and highlights SL’s parsimonious alignment with evolved morality to foster collaboration and collective action.
Keywords
Introduction
In most vital organizations, there is a common bond of interdependence, mutual interest, interlocking contributions, and simple joy. Max De Pree, Leadership Is an Art (2004 [1987], p. 101)
As a practicing CEO of 20 years (of EA Engineering, Science, and Technology, hereafter EA), this is not your typical research paper—rather, it is part conceptual essay, part strategic planning, part case observation, and part mini-literature review with abductive theorizing to fit my observations to your world, ultimately to define “practitioner” calls and propositions to fill research gaps I deem important for practice. In this introduction I first provide background on the firm I serve for reader context, followed by the paper’s purpose including why more global adoption of servanthood and servant leadership (SL) is important, and the paper’s structure.
Background
EA is a project-based environmental consultancy (professional services by knowledge workers in the applied environmental sciences and engineering), with roughly 750 employees and US$250 million of annual revenues, serving US federal and local government agencies and the private and nonprofit sectors. EA was founded in 1973 by a Johns Hopkins University professor (Loren Jensen, 1937–2022), and was publicly traded from 1986 to 2001, re-privatized and eventually became a partial US Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) owned company in 2005. In 2014, EA transitioned to a fully (100%) employee-owned firm and adopted legal “Benefit Corporation” status. I term EA’s legal benefit corporation status as “corporate social responsibility on steroids,” and think of these governance structures (ESOP and benefit corporation) as “constitutionally obligating” to lock-in stakeholder management as a fiduciary duty. These changes created a mix of commercial, science, and welfare institutional logics which are judged to be a hybrid social purpose organization (Berry, 2025; Kurland & Schneper, 2024).
I started attending annual Academy of Management meetings in 2015 to fuel ideas on how to strategically leverage the then-new benefit corporation structure. At Academy of Management sessions, I also discovered that organizational behavior in particular provided frameworks and theories to grapple with exploring EA’s behavioral “secret sauce” (our collaboration) and firm development from inside-out, which led the company to SL. Academy of Management meetings also became a networking opportunity to meet and partner with scholars, who would later research EA’s structures and human dynamics. For instance, Nancy Kurland studied EA’s benefit corporation and ESOP, resulting in several peer-reviewed papers (e.g., 2018), and James Lemoine and colleagues studied SL at EA (e.g., 2024). For a more comprehensive background on EA and its SL development, please refer to two chapters I wrote for a SL handbook (MacFarlane, 2023a, 2023b).
Purpose: To Expand Servanthood and SL Practice
The intent of this paper is to provide academics with practical ideas toward the perhaps lofty end of research which could spur expansion of SL toward societal normalcy—employing a research strategy to influence SL practice adoption. Beyond (just) a better way to do business (Kim & Liden, 2025; Lemoine et al., 2024), I echo Greenleaf (2012)—who stated in The Institution as Servant, that institutions (e.g., corporations), too, must learn to serve society— and Sousa and van Dierendonck (2021) who remarked that SL can serve society: I see servanthood expansion as one way to increase the chances that humans can address future crises—through improved cooperation and collective action. More people working within a serving culture, motivated to serve others, and becoming servant leaders themselves, can make for a society with more perspective taking and listening, more expressed altruism, and more willingness to compromise—in ethical ways. Seeding the greater society with organizational servanthood may also help it catalyze (Waddock, 2024) with other prosocial initiatives 1 into “a broader social movement focused on transforming our economy [and society] to prioritize the principles of regeneration and equity”, as Chris Marquis (2025) remarked on benefit corporations. Of the morals-based styles, SL alone stresses serving others through personal sacrifice, with a broad reach. No other style is so well defined to match what the interdependent world now needs (see Battilana et al., 2022), to help transcend homo economicus to homo socialis (Martin et al., 2024) and to ensure that more people will come to understand—indeed embrace—the world’s inescapable interdependence and act accordingly (Allen & Mau, 2025). Part of the parsimony of servanthood is that it has a strong moral basis which is tied from an evolutionary standpoint to who humans really are in their most beneficent state—so to me, servanthood is not only good, it is right. Righteousness comes along for the ride.
This Paper
Before getting into case observations, two contextual pieces follow. The first piece on practitioner-academic differences is provided to familiarize academics’ understanding of how practitioners think, and how we think you think, i.e., from a practitioner’s perspective. The second piece discusses a simple strategic plan from which a framework is developed to leverage SL’s unique strategically distinctive qualities (SDQ). The next four sections are each about psychologically related constructs (hereafter constructs) underexplored in the literature that (1) are evidenced in my two decades of CEO experience, (2) relate to SL’s SDQ, and (3) could be potentially attractive to decision-makers of SL adoption with more research. My observations are fit to the SL literature to identify research gaps. Each construct section describes the proximal outcome relationship with specific SDQ, and its proposed reciprocal antecedent distal relationship to SL. The final section integrates these SDQ and constructs into an extended model of SL emergence. I identify research gaps by either offering a practitioner call or a practitioner proposition to fill them, albeit theoretical cogency is not a practitioner’s forte. A total of two calls and seven propositions are specified in the text as proposed.
Practitioners as Reasoners Distinct from Academics
The Dichotomous Thinking Problem
Reasoning and Thinking Style Differences Between Academics and Practitioners.
*I personally strive to take “reflection” to its extreme: toward reflexivity, which is undoubtedly unusual, see Kinsella (2012), Table 1. I have time to invest in these efforts because the organization runs effectively and efficiently, with rich reserves of leadership.
**Learning academic theories was the most challenging and time consuming aspect of my journey to understand academia.
Divergent versus convergent thinking belongs in the onto-epistemology category, but communicating its meaning was less amenable to tabular form, so I include it here. Unlike academics creating knowledge in a field which has its own orthodox bent on how to accomplish knowledge creation, a practitioner’s focus is on building a specific organization, for which considering all views might be illuminating and provide a fuller picture. Such contrasting frameworks and views help to promote divergent thinking to imagine the possibilities more fully, much like what the role of phronesis accomplishes. Most practitioners likely use some divergent thinking to enable casting the net wide for ideas for their weight-of-evidence approaches to decision making. I contend some academics may be convergent thinkers, especially those using hypothetico-deductive quantitative methods and wedded to the perfection of their quantitative analysis (as statistician), seemingly (to some practitioners) less wedded to the practical meaning or application of their analyses (as social scientist).
The divergent-convergent thinking dichotomy can be conflictual. Divergent practitioners may view academics as too single-minded by not looking at the whole picture and therefore be less tolerant to academic input. Hardcore convergent thinkers may believe divergent thinkers are epistemologically wrong, thus be less tolerant of plurality. This conflict can come at the expense of imperfect but practicable methods 2 (e.g., perception surveys) which can adequately base practitioners’ weight-of-evidence decisional process. Some less-than-perfect information, even if qualified, is better than no information, especially if multiple studies corroborate. We practitioners would rather take what we can get, when we can get it, however imperfect it is in some eyes.
By focusing on just one primary object—their organization—the practitioner, relative to the academic, works with less efficacy certainty, multiple functional/disciplinary concerns, and different onto-epistemological reasoning and motivations. However, with their wide scope and divergent approach, they may be observant to intricacies less noticed by academics.
Applied Example: “To Serve” and the So-Called Oxymoron of Servant Leadership
To Serve is what motivates the servant leader and it, in a phrase, is what they primarily do. My interpretation is: to give oneself to benefit the other. Altruism is implicit. “Giving oneself” means opening up, exposing oneself, more than a simple act of charity. Part of the beauty of the term servant leadership is in its dual meaning—a sacrificial aspect of what is expected of the leader and what the targets (the others) of their leadership stand to gain. No other leadership style name contains such a meaningful dual construct—and the name’s meaning represents one fundamental core of human morality. To SL practitioner advocates, the name specificity is a positive: it promotes (forces) adopting leaders to more clearly and intentionally communicate what SL means and how it factors into the firm’s vision, thereby enhancing employee motivation “to serve”.
This, however, is exactly what can scare some conventionally minded practitioners who are trained to control and reside in a business culture of control. Perhaps this is why CEOs on the fence about adopting the so-called oxymoron of servant leadership balk: it too clearly points to behavior they are queasy about adopting. That is, SL and “to serve” as phrases do not contain enough superficial ambiguity for a management that desires execution flexibility. “The main reason for the difficulty [of adopting SL] is that it requires a fundamental change of attitude and some kind of inner transformation. Most leaders are unwilling to lose their sense of control because of their own insecurity” (Wong et al., 2023, p. 1015). Other leadership style names typically leave much room for interpretation. Servant in the SL style name unambiguously commits the leader to the primacy of the other and is the only style that cannot be loosely interpreted as about “me”.
Why might such practitioner reactions seem so simplistic? It is a combination of practitioners’ survival motivation, “more probable than not” decision-making tendency (standards of proof differences), and “mile-wide inch-deep” (Table 1) problems (reflectivity differences). On the latter, due to the breadth and variety of their subject arena, practitioners need to process many pieces of sometimes unfamiliar subject matter which makes them expert in inferring meaning from small bits of information—in the case of SL, just the word “servant” is judged. Without compelling information that a change will “do no harm,” they have no motivation to explore further.
Regardless, I say—so be it! The practitioners who do commit to SL, and to serving, have their “eyes wide open” about adapting to a serving style and generally know they must come to understand (and communicate) its meaning, and incorporate its ethics into the firm’s vision and actions to live up to expectations—employees can, and undoubtedly will, interpret the meanings of the terms SL and to serve, too. It is ironic that one word—servant—commands such power.
A Strategic Approach
Overall Strategic Plan
The “target market” for this “movement” is the universe of organization leaders who could influence their internal SL adoption. We get there (more adoption) in part by academia taking a strategic view to elucidate the competitive advantage distinctions of SL (the strategically distinctive qualities or SDQ), attracting and helping potential adopters (and policy makers) understand its strategic advantages—meeting practitioners on their ground. In the immediate, I am positive that more can be done in attracting SL adopters, hence my motivation for contributing to this special issue.
First though, per Table 1 (motivation), practitioners must become convinced that any organizational development such as SL adoption will NOT threaten their organization’s survival.
The Financial Performance Threshold
Practitioners want to see ample proof that a specific improvement under consideration will not worsen their financial performance, before they commit to evaluating the improvement. Two other organizational “movement” trends, for example, show this “ample proof” research dynamic: corporate social responsibility (CSR) and employee ownership. The first decades of CSR research were dominated by instrumental empirical work—showing if and how CSR investment spurred profitability and revenue growth. Similarly, the vast majority of early research on employee ownership has been on its improvement to organizational performance. Research expanded to other outcomes (e.g., employee attitudes) and descriptive theory in later years for both CSR and employee ownership. Servant leadership, being an individual-level phenomenon, has predominantly (and naturally) focused on individual-level subjective non-financial outcomes (but see Lemoine et al., 2024 on individual-level objective project manager financial outcomes), with very little work on objective group-level financial performance—however, see these four group-level exceptions: Giolito et al., 2021; Hartnell et al., 2020; Kim & Liden, 2025; Peterson et al., 2012. This paucity of objective organization-level financial performance studies is common with other moral leadership styles to the degree that no “this settles it” meta-analyses with objective financial performance exist, as they do for transformational leadership, CSR, employee ownership, employee engagement, high performance work systems, and many others.
The cumulative research on SL’s relation to group-level financial performance has not yet produced a meta-analysis, largely because not enough empirical work has been done. As I take such a meta-analysis as a surrogate for ample practitioner proof, significantly more research needs to be completed in this area as a threshold matter before we can expect on-the-fence CEOs to adopt a different and more positive attitude toward the potential of SL for their organizations. Therefore, overcoming this limitation is a high research priority for this expansion strategy:
Practitioner Call 1
With urgency, empirically research the SL and group-level financial performance (objective and subjective) relationship, to establish enough high-quality studies and a database to enable a meta-analysis.
A Conventional Strategic Framework Applied to an Unconventional Topic: Servant Leadership
Resource Based View and Its VRIO Principles Adapted to Leadership Style Competition.* The Style and Its Distinctive Elements (e.g., Servant First of Servant Leadership) Are Each Considered a Resource or Capability. VRIO Descriptions Modified by Author From Barney (1991) & (1995).
*You might ask, how do styles compete, as they have no agency? They compete just as ideas compete—they compete in the eyes of those who will choose one over the other, and it is the idea proponents who are the agents offering reasons why their idea is superior for a given user, in other words, they employ strategy. The object of competition is thus different than the agent of competition. A firm’s offerings compete with other firm’s offerings through the agency of those who developed the offerings—putting the origination of competing objects and strategy under one roof—less so with publicly owned objects, such as ideas and leadership styles. Since a practitioner may see a choice in which leadership styles to consider adopting, she sees them as competing. But it is the proponents of the various styles (e.g., “the movement”) who strategize—me in this paper’s case.
Servant Leadership Distinctions as Strategic Competitive Advantages
I offer four SL SDQ
3
, based on my perception of their rarity, that warrant further exploration (in descending order of rarity): (1) “servant first,” (2) focus on stakeholders (SL as the leading style—see Lemoine et al., 2021—along with the less developed responsible and sustainable styles), (3) “first-among-equals” (per van Dierendonck et al., 2023; van Dierendonck & Nuijten, 2011) (common to a few styles), and (4) ethical basis (common among several styles but unique within the universe of styles). For the lesser known first-among-equals concept, Houglum’s (2012) integration of primus inter pares (Latin translation) with SL is instructive: …the primus inter pares consists of a team of equal participants with a primus. The primus is a servant leader who embodies wholeness, autonomy, freedom, wisdom, and assists others in actualizing their potential and becoming more servant-like. (p. 34)
The four SDQ together comprise what servant leaders do—servant first—coupled with how they do it: across and by balancing all relevant stakeholder interests, with equal and ethical treatment of all “others”. On ethics, like Tomasello et al.’s (2012) morality evolution thesis of humans developing ingroup morality, the behaviors of the first three distinctions likely create—or awaken—ethical conduct. However, going forward, I drop the ethics SDQ as it is not associated uniquely with the psychological constructs developed next. Note that SL has a broader “formal” remit than other styles: while perhaps more challenging to implement, servant leaders are concerned with all stakeholders, not just employees. The recent “inconvenient truth” critique (Eva et al., 2024) of the proliferation of leadership styles tests common employee outcome dependent variables. Concurring with Mumford and Fried (2014) regarding the general over-reliance on follower outcomes in leadership studies, SL in particular is concerned with other stakeholders as well (such as through customer value co-creation: “the joint, collaborative, concurrent, peer-like process of producing new value, both materially and symbolically,” Galvagno & Dalli, 2014, p. 644, in addition to ”internal customer”—i.e., employee—value co-creation, Grace & Lo Iacono, 2015), and its “magic” is partly a stakeholder balancing act which is a unique challenge because it requires building intergroup (versus ingroup only) relations (Pittinsky & Simon, 2007).
Practitioner Call 2
I therefore request scholars to review and set a research agenda for SL-stakeholder group outcomes using a stakeholder framework. That is, beyond employees, which stakeholder group outcomes (e.g., for customers, investors, regulators, communities, the environment, the leaders and organization themselves) have been researched adequately and what needs to be studied to fill research gaps for this important SL function?
Four Constructs Further Studied
I started with a list of six constructs that interested me. After consulting with nine colleagues of the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership (non-academic board members, staff), I ended up with four constructs (traits, states, behaviors) in trimming down my list to those I have the greatest practical experience observing in the field: individual level phronesis (practical wisdom), psychological ownership, and joy (emotion), and group level interdependence. It is not a coincidence that each of the four constructs is “controllable” to some degree by management, as we practitioners focus on things we can change, and my experience points to these four as levers in facilitating prosociality. Figure 1 summarizes the three remaining SL SDQ and aligns them (justification in later sections) with the four selected constructs. Strategically distinctive servant leadership qualities identified and ranked (author) by rarity relative to other leadership styles, alongside associated constructs.
I hypothesize that each construct is both an outcome of one or more SL SDQ, and a distal antecedent to individual-level SL emergence, via the Paas et al. (2020) SL motivation and emergence model using self-determination theory (SDT). For the distal relationships I submit that the environment (context) and personal factors influence the emergence of individual servanthood/SL behavior in the absence of an already-existing servant leader to model, thereby creating a reciprocating system where SL positively (and proximally) influences the four constructs, and the constructs positively (and distally) influence SL emergence. Figure 2 is a conceptual nomological model showing the generalized reciprocal system discussed above, and the sequence of constructs and relationships elaborated upon in the ensuing text. In general, I would never have conceived of these constructs and their relationships with SL SDQ without years of firsthand longitudinal head-scratching and observation. This is an example of one bright spot where practitioners’ reasoning (and learning) differences have a research ideation advantage, as their depth of thinking on their organization taps multiple disciplinary, and potentially divergent, perspectives spanning a protracted timeframe. That is, they have had the opportunity to contemplate (stew might be a better word) these phenomena from many angles for a long time. Conceptualized, proposed relationships adding new elements (SL strategically distinctive qualities (SDQ), practitioner observed constructs, PNS components) to the Pass et al. (2020) SDT-based SL motivation model. A, B, and C represent the sequence discussed (except interdependence which reverses discussion of B & C), by construct, in the text: observation of the construct, theorizing causal relationships from SL SDQ to the observed constructs, then causal relationships between the constructs (as mediator or moderator) and PNS components. Thus, A, B, & C additions to the SL motivation model create a reciprocating system. Not depicted here is one alternative route (100% ESOPs) from one of the four observed constructs (psychological ownership) to SL which does not invoke SDT (instead bypassing PNS to relate directly to SL) and one reinforcing route from one construct (joy) to a second construct (phronesis). Each of these non-A-B-C routes is discussed last within the respective construct section. Notes: all relationships positive, Stakeholder O. is Stakeholder Orientation, dashed boxes are strategic differentiating qualities of servant leadership and PNS components, green depicts elements added in this paper.
Future Research Directions to Increase Practitioner Servant Leadership (SL) Adoption: Summary of Practitioner Calls and Propositions.
Construct 1: Phronesis (Practical Wisdom), a Meta-Virtue and an Acquired Trait
In order to run organizations sustainably, servant leaders need to exhibit practical wisdom and technical competence.…Practical wisdom sharpens the aptitude of leaders, allowing them to learn from past successes and failures as they strive to meet the needs of followers and support the other noble goals of their organizations… (Sison & Potts, 2022, p. 251)
I first discuss an observation: a practical example of how and why phronesis matters for a servant-led organization followed by an attempt to describe phronesis, its outcome of SL, and antecedence to SL—the latter two being SL research gaps. Phronesis appears to be a “hot” field in moral philosophy, business ethics, and education, but with little (but building) consensus on definitions or how phronesis fits into organization psychology (Kristjánsson, 2024). One could say that phronetic research is at present in a particularly frenetic phase. Phronesis is not part of existing SL models, but given my review below, I suggest it could be a cognitive and moral backbone of the servant leader’s modus operandi. Fitting this suggestion, Madison and Eva (2019, p. 135, emphasis added) explain that “the servant leaders’ approach to ethics is more malleable [than ethical leadership] and can be shaped by the context of followers and the organization”, just as phronesis enables. 4
In Search of…Phronetic Candidates to Hire
One of my first major efforts when starting my CEO tenure was as a primary on-campus interviewer for entry-level candidates. Over the years I have screened and interviewed hundreds of candidates and observed that while technical skills are usually the most important consideration in our STEM-related industry, it was more the cognitive and moral characteristics I most focused upon for candidate compatibility, due to EA’s idiosyncratic collaborative culture. I found that comparing candidate values to EA’s values (openness, prudence, balance, and challenge) through interviewing was useful for judgments. I also found myself asking about the variety of cultures and settings they had experienced, looking for adaptability, a thirst for such experiences, decision-making roles, and examples of serving.
Diverse multicultural experiences—such as with different countries and organizations—can promote intergroup contact (Pettigrew, 1998) (increased exposure of ingroup members to outgroup members) which can decrease prejudice and increase allophilia (liking or love of others) (Pittinsky & Simon, 2007)—important qualities for stakeholder management—and build an individual’s emotional diversity (a balance of positive and negative affects, emotional richness and evenness). Emotional diversity has been shown to promote wise reasoning (Grossmann et al., 2019), as well as positively affect team behavior and performance (Li et al., 2018). Such experiences also build positive attitudes and skills directly applicable to a serving culture and servant leadership, including adaptability, moral sensibility, trust building, empathy, courage (Maddux et al., 2021), and an ego-decentering mindset (Grossmann, 2017). I always ask about service-oriented summer jobs, as my ideal entry hire is someone who has been a waiter or waitress for two different seasons at the same establishment: these individuals not only know what service is all about, they have come back for more (resilience, challenge) and likely know how to mitigate customer grief (conflict resolution, emotional regulation).
I later realized that what I was looking for was someone who had grown some practical wisdom—a learned trait—through (preferably service-oriented) experience, and they sought such experience in part for self-cultivation to accelerate their (phronetic) growth. Even better: some of their experiences have been life altering—toward gaining an appreciation of “the other,” i.e., toward self-transcendence. Over the long run, I have observed that employees with developed phronesis ultimately make for strong servant leaders and stakeholder managers. Figure 3, a candidate screening triage matrix, integrates the two dimensions of values and phronesis. This practical application was the genesis of my phronesis interest. Two-by-Two candidate screening triage matrix, considering phronesis potential (to gain practical wisdom) and values congruence with the organization, assuming technical qualifications (techne in virtue ethics parlance) fit openings; author’s own depiction.
The order of hiring preference is of course highest for candidates that show demonstrated phronesis and aligned values with the company, and the opposite (fourth and last preference) for those low on both scales. Rank order of work values and their magnitude (except for the increasing desire for power and other extrinsic values in later adulthood) are fairly stable over a lifetime (Jin & Rounds, 2012). Therefore, the second order of hiring preference is the bottom right matrix quadrant with low demonstrated phronesis and high value congruence, if I believe that the candidate can eventually learn phronesis. I gauge phronetic learning potential through course choices: a greater quantity and variety of elective humanities and social science courses taken (in contrast to technical courses) signal a desire to learn outside of one’s comfort zone, i.e., critical thinking/reflection (Kinsella, 2012) and perspective taking (Grossmann, 2017) on complex human issues indicates their phronetic growth interest.
I am confident, as exampled above, that phronesis is an important quality for developing leaders (i.e., those needing to influence others) of any (positive) style. Further, answering Mumford and Fried’s (2014, p. 626) critique, I submit that a leader’s practical wisdom is the mechanism through which “multiple divergent moral and ethical concerns” are adjudicated, allowing for leader-role stakeholder boundary spanning. The literature is briefly reviewed next.
What Is Phronesis?
As a meta-virtue, McLoughlin et al. (2025, p. 2) describe phronesis as “oversee[ing] the moral values and virtues and provid[ing] them with the necessary checks and balances to secure overall ethically wise decisions”. As a learned trait, phronesis is a practical method for balancing decisions and actions appropriate for multiple stakeholders, in a morally responsible way. Leader phronesis defined: A leader who makes efforts (a) to study, reflect, and be aware of the complexities of the particular context (s)he deals with in a particular time and situation (i.e., inquiring), and (b) to obtain a deep comprehension of that reality and how to handle it considering all parties (i.e., judging), (c) is more able to proceed rightly upon her/his deliberate decision, thereby making wiser decisions and expressing wiser actions. (Rego et al., 2025, p. 164, italics in original)
Further, phronesis is “pragmatic, context-dependent and oriented toward action” (Gibson, 2012, p. 246), “an embodied and reflective, ethically committed social practice” (Rooney et al., 2021, p. 186), is learned over time through iterative experience, and enables development of “habits learned in the contexts of social practices” (Shotter & Tsoukas, 2014, p. 232, citing MacIntyre, 1981), i.e., moral habituation (Yacek and Jonas, 2023). Practical wisdom goes beyond “normal” leader conceptual skills: “…Aristotle’s depiction of practical wisdom is specifically described as.... lead[ing] to human flourishing. The notion of human flourishing then is a key aspect that distinguishes [practical] wisdom from intelligent decision-making or just good common sense” (Nusbaum, 2019, p. 227, emphasis in original). “Practical wisdom is of particular importance when values are conflicting, power is unequal and knowledge uncertain” (Caniglia et al., 2023, p. 493) to balance situation-specific multiple means and ends (akin to stakeholder management): “[t]he role of phronesis is to deliberate on the means to an end (i.e., a good)…In addition, phronesis orders the [multiple] ends…based on the ultimate end” (Martínez-Priego & Romero-Iribas, 2024, p. 999, emphasis in original). “In an interconnected and interdependent system, each stakeholder must be a means and an end. Each contributes to collective flourishing and each must also benefit for the system to continue flourishing” (Freeman et al., 2020, p. 217). Emotional regulation is essential to this balancing process: “phronesis is about complex ethical decision-making, guided by emotionally driven motivations” (Kristjánsson, 2023, p. 452, emphasis in original). In sum, through repeated experiences (habituation) and emotional regulation, phronesis builds competence in the integration of inquiry, judgment, and action—involving multiple actors and stakeholders, in moral ways, directed toward the flourishing of all.
Phronesis and Its Relation to SL
Extant literature suggests that phronesis is especially important for servant leaders (Rooney et al., 2021) who have a unique need to balance multiple stakeholders (by definition). In this role, Gibson (2012, p. 246, emphasis added) contends that phronesis’ “key distinguishing feature is that it deliberately addresses fundamental value questions in its leadership discourse”. Therefore, practicing phronesis provides competency for stakeholder management, and in the context of that competency being of organizational value, the phronetic employee gains competence psychological needs satisfaction (PNS). (Liden et al., 2014a, pp. 362-367) framed their theoretical analysis of moral SL antecedents similarly to components of phronesis. Their combined discussions on moral maturity (“a high capacity for moral judgment resulting from the adoption of personal moral codes and the ability to think in an independent way”), moral conation (“believ[ing] one is morally responsible and act[ing] in a moral way…”), and emotional intelligence (“the ability to understand and manage moods and emotions in the self and others,” e.g., empathy and emotional self-regulation) cover similar topics and relationships as phronesis in general, further suggesting a link between phronesis and SL. Additionally, the self-transcendence and leadership practice development inherent with phronesis may fit Watts et al.'s (2025, this issue) servant and leader identity integration model. 5
Empirical literature on SL, or any leadership style, with phronesis is sparce. While Barbuto and Wheeler (2006) had “wisdom” as one of their SL scale’s five dimensions, Rego et al. (2025, p. 160) argue that the named wisdom dimension “reflects mainly ‘foresight’. Envisioning the future and anticipating its consequences is, at best, a component of practical wisdom – but does not guarantee a wise decision, given that wisdom also requires deliberating and acting wisely”. Rego et al. (2025) recently produced the only validated 10-item scale (for leader expressed phronesis) with three dimensions aligned with inquiry, judgment, and action, as detailed in their previously cited definition. Their work shows that leader-expressed phronesis improves employee psychological safety (mediator) which then promotes speaking up. On Figure 1, I showed phronesis aligning with SL’s distinctions of first-among-equals and stakeholder orientation. A phronetic leader is a perspective taker who balances multiple factors and people in part through deliberation. Rego et al. (2025) list ten survey items to qualify a phronetic leader, and I judge four of their ten items likely involve group deliberation. Productive multi-party deliberation requires a first-among-equals approach to enable participant voice, and through phronesis, competence in being first-among-equals is developed, and the competence component of PNS is improved. Therefore:
Practitioner Proposition 1
SL’s strategic distinctions of (a) stakeholder orientation and (b) first-among-equals relate positively to phronesis, (c) phronesis is positively related to the competence component of PNS, and phronesis mediates between (d) stakeholder orientation and competence need satisfaction and (e) first-among-equals and competence need satisfaction.
I turn next to psychological ownership, which is much more commonly researched than phronesis. However, important research gaps exist in its relationship with SL.
Construct 2: Psychological Ownership and the Case of Employee Stock Ownership
Psychological ownership, “the state in which individuals feel as though the target of ownership or a piece of that target is ‘theirs’”, is related to personal sacrifice 6 and assumption of risk, experienced responsibility and stewardship, citizenship (Pierce et al., 2003, p. 86), and extra-role and prosocial behaviors in general (Jami et al., 2021). How does psychological ownership develop in employees? At EA I have observed two routes in particular: through common adversity and through legal ownership. The former is discussed immediately below.
Servant Leadership’s Relationship with Psychological Ownership
In the late 1990’s and early 2000s, EA was struggling as a successful publicly-traded venture, in part because the authoritarian nature of EA leadership at the time conflicted with EA’s common operational (project/team level) mode of collaboration. The conflict developed into true adversity, with middle management (me included) on the front line. We had gone through multiple layoffs in preceding years, with high turnover of survivors who judged the toxicity of the corporate-operations conflict to outweigh their continuance desire. In hindsight, I now see that continuance desire was largely driven by psychological ownership. Those who stayed truly appreciated their autonomy in project work (authoritarian leadership dared not mess with this “secret sauce”) and the resulting collaborative “sub” culture was shared amongst operating employees—it was real and it was theirs, they made it so, and they were proud of it. The interfacing middle management (who “grew up” in operations) between authoritarian and collaborative sub-cultures were “forged in fire” so to speak, and developed the most psychological ownership, owning and protecting the sub-culture they knew as the basis for EA’s success in the marketplace—speaking as one, it was a shared identity. They learned that the best leadership qualities were those opposite authoritarians, e.g., by helping each other, welcoming voice and deliberation, and viewing each other not in a class-based hierarchy, but as equals fighting for a common goal. Theirs was a collective practice-based view, “a cooperative effort among participants” (Raelin, 2011, p. 196). This awful part of EA’s history turned out to be unifying (against a common enemy) which started with esprit de corps (similar to first-among-equals) to lay the seeds for the proto-servant-like collaborative sub-culture to spread across projects and operations.
Although I found seven papers, e.g., van Dierendonck et al. (2023), with psychological ownership as an outcome of SL (so this part of the relationship is “practitioner robust” already), none have explored why, e.g., through various SL dimensions. One paper shows psychological ownership as an antecedent to PNS, Li and Atkinson (2020), in a consumer marketing context, but the authors do not discern between the three PNS components as I propose here. I posit that first-among-equals relates to psychological ownership, as first-among-equals is the SL distinctive quality related to empowerment and treating others fairly (as equals). Employees gain more autonomy to control their work environment, and as “control exercised over an object eventually gives rise to feelings of ownership for the object” (Pierce et al., 2003, p. 92), first-among-equals leads to psychological ownership. Similarly, as psychological ownership is associated with feeling autonomous, autonomy needs satisfaction is an outcome of psychological ownership:
Practitioner Proposition 2
Servant leadership’s strategic distinction of (a) first-among-equals is positively related to psychological ownership, (b) psychological ownership is positively related to autonomy needs satisfaction, and (c) psychological ownership mediates the relationship between first-among-equals and autonomy needs satisfaction.
I have personally witnessed psychological ownership growth through creating community out of negative and positive differences: toxic managerial relations and ESOP formation. While the former certainly benefitted the company culture in the long haul, I would not wish that stressful situation on anyone. ESOP formation is, however, an established organizational design tool.
An Alternative Route to SL Growth Through ESOPs (Legal Ownership)
I have used a metaphor of late (perhaps in poor taste) in employee ownership and servant leadership conference sessions to express the importance of ownership structure for the emergence of organizational prosociality and psychological ownership: employee ownership is a “gateway drug” to all things collaborative and altruistic in an organization. This section discusses psychological ownership’s potential antecedence to SL emergence in the context of the organizational event of converting ownership to 100% ESOP owned. The ESOP case exploits an “extreme context” (Hällgren et al., 2018) for potential study.
ESOP Background
US ESOPs have existed since the 1970s as a highly regulated retirement vehicle. ESOPs are classified as “broad-based employee stock ownership” practices; the “broad” is important—ESOPs are required (by law) to allocate stock ownership rights (from an ESOP trust) to all employees, typically annually and as a percent of their salary, with limits on the highest paid employees. Fairness is built into the design requirements. Currently, 100% ESOPs are estimated to comprise about half of all ESOP companies in the US (low 6000’s), hence about 3000 US ESOP companies are 100% ESOP owned. Information on ESOPs (e.g., industry, geography) can be found with the US employee ownership associations 7 , the Rutgers Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing 8 , and from Blasi et al. (2019, 2024).
Why and How Employee Ownership Conversion May Drive Psychological Ownership and SL Growth
I submit that “feelings of ownership” are important in the SL context (as do Carberry et al., 2024, for ESOPs), and relate to citizenship behaviors among other important SL outcomes. Surprisingly, there is even a greater paucity of psychological ownership research regarding US employee ownership than SL, except for instance Pierce & Rodgers (2004) and new empirical work on employee ownership by Carberry et al. (2024) and Kim (2024). Erik Olsen (2025, p. 293) noted that “the effects of employee ownership are likely to be correlated with the degree of employee ownership”—an incremental relationship. I, however, claim that in addition, the dynamic of ownership change can be viewed as a psychological triggering event. Although not conclusive, such patterns are consistent with Kramer's (2010) analysis of productivity within firms of differing ESOP trust ownership degree.
Why might the ESOP conversion itself drive attitude and behavioral change? To meet employee-owner expectations and be perceived as credible once ownership is converted, management must embrace the ESOP and attendant employee-owner voice, and overtly act with the collective in mind, e.g., by creating collaborative processes, as part of what the US ESOP community terms “ownership culture” (Thompson et al., 2013). Once ownership changes, employee owners expect more visibility into the organization’s inner workings, e.g., strategy formulation, and generally desire more control. Kaswan (2022, p. 2514) warns that “when workers are told they own their company but then find they have few control rights, it may undermine their sense of ownership.” For new ESOP formation, typically as a non-100% ESOP, Carberry et al. (2024) point out that psychological ownership may take time to develop as coming to understand the ESOP functioning and meaning to an employee takes much learning. However, as conversion to a 100% ESOP is typically preceded by an ESOP of lower stake, employees are already ESOP savvy, and should promptly understand the import of 100% conversion, and more quickly experience increased psychological ownership. 9
My logic regarding why 100% ESOPs in particular grow SL is that once employees own all of a firm as a 100% ESOP (no founder or partner ownership remaining) employees suddenly no longer feel obligated to defer control rights and related decisions to founders (or their kin) they once revered—hence employee-owners overnight expect greater participation to flex control rights they perceive to be theirs. This in turn requires leader transparency, empowerment of employees and fair processes, and adoption of serving behaviors (toward the employee owners). Therefore, management risks workforce demoralization upon “going 100%” if its leadership does not possess or develop collaborative attitudes and practices to satiate employees’ expectations to participate. When EA became a 100% ESOP in 2014 (but not in 2005 with partial ESOP ownership conversion), I observed firsthand the immediacy of psychological ownership formation: voiced participation expectations boisterously surfaced amongst employee-owners within days (this is not hyperbole). To add some substance (but not proof) to my anecdotal observation that SL is disproportionately present in 100% ESOP firms, I searched for 100% ESOP firms that claim their employment of SL, and found 30 (see Brown, 2018, for a case study on one of these 30 firms). Further, by assessing the first 100 results from a search on “servant leadership” and “ESOP” (but not “100%”) I found 16 of the 30 100% ESOPs practicing SL and only three non-100% ESOPs practicing SL, i.e., 73% of the ESOPs found in this small sample to practice SL where 100%.
Practitioner Proposition 3
Conversion to (a) 100% ESOP ownership relates positively to psychological ownership change (relative to pre-100% ownership), (b) psychological ownership change relates positively to SL change, and (c) psychological ownership change positively mediates a firm’s conversion to a 100% ESOP with changed SL.
I next shift to a subfield of psychology which has received relatively little attention in leadership studies, and one which I strongly believe is very important to building a rigorous scientific understanding of leadership: emotions and affect, and joy in specific. Evolutionary psychologists believe that emotions evolved to guide moral behavior needed to promote adaptation and survival of individuals and groups. Emotions, then, are deeply rooted in the human psyche.
Construct 3: Joy of the Giver and the Gifted
I begin this section on joy with a thought experiment to establish a general cause-effect relationship between distinctive leadership styles and their affective outcomes. I then move to joy in specific, citing personal observations related to SL, followed by practitioner propositions. I also propose an additional outcome of Joy (phronesis) which reinforces the A-B-C model of Figure 2.
Affective Responses to Distinctive Attributes of Leadership Styles
Ask yourself
what happens at the human level as a result of a leader’s actions to serve first? Servant leadership researchers have studied many “practical” outcomes like group-level performance and individual level engagement and satisfaction. But I argue these outcomes may derive from a variety of causes not singularly (or most directly) from servant first, which is indisputably distinctive to SL. So what results—perhaps more directly—from servant first as a result? What I surmise is that some (but not all) leadership styles, through their distinctive actions predicated on distinctive style qualities (like servant first), precipitate different emotional responses and affective atmospheres. I propose that (types of) affect (negative or positive) generated by the distinctive actions attributable to distinctive qualities of some leadership styles, can be distinctive themselves. Consider authoritarian leadership—fear comes to mind as an emotion probably widely felt by subjects of such a leader. But what about the leader herself? Hubristic pride (feelings of arrogance and conceit) likely results in the authoritarian (dominance seeking) leader. I therefore judge the emotional outcomes of fear (subjects) and hubristic pride (leader) to be distinctive to authoritarian leadership.
Practitioner Proposition 4
Distinctive qualities of leadership styles relate to distinctive emotions felt by leaders and followers.
The Servant as Giver, the Servant-In-The-Making as Gifted
Back to the original question, what affect or emotion results from the application of a servant leader’s serve first? With a servant identity, the servant leader in essence gives themselves to those they serve. For instance, the personal joy that comes from giving of myself by helping those I serve—with the resultant genuine gratitude of not only employee-owners, but clients and other partners as well—is what makes my day, week, and year. The leader joy I experience results in a good thing: a personal “resource gain” (Stotler et al., 2025, this issue). Gift-giving through SL is much more than a monetary donation or a few hours of volunteering (although those are good too), it is giving the most precious oneself to others. Its preciousness to the giver makes the giving and receiving emotions that much stronger. In this SL context, Scalzo et al. (2023, p. 152, emphasis added) define “the initial moment of the gift as a provision of goods or services without obligation, guarantee, or certainty of return, carried out with the intention of creating, maintaining, or regenerating a social relationship.” Yes, that is exactly what the cognitive moment of giving as a servant feels like, but I add that it is the affective moment of joy that reinforces such rationale. Even in 1985 when I joined EA, it was exceedingly clear to me how different EA was compared to prior work that evoked more despair than joy. A week before I officially started at EA, I was called in on a weekend to pick up a box of reports to read before my first day flying to a project site in Missouri (EA was/is demanding). At the same time (before I was an EA employee), I was issued a key to the building’s side door; in comparison, it took me four years to earn the right to a side door key from the employer I was leaving. A freely given side door key was joyous to me: I was trusted.
One of my favorite interactions with new EA employees is with those of seasoned experience in other organizations. They consistently tell me, relative to prior work, how wonderful their first few months at EA have been, with the internal collaborative culture, autonomy to get things done, dedication to clients and quality, and overall camaraderie with fellow employees. I see the joy in their faces. Their initial reaction of joy is followed by gratitude, the latter which has been shown empirically (Sun et al., 2019; van Dierendonck & Patterson, 2015). Why might joy be distinctive to the servant first of SL? Because the joy comes from the gift and help they are individually receiving—the time, resources, caring, and attention of their serving leader. Gift receipt (of leader service to them) is a unique aspect of SL that followers—the gifted—experience, for which they are joyous and grateful. Watkins (2020, p. 25) narrowly describes “that joy is a response to a situation appraised as bringing one in closer connection/union with someone or something important.” This is exactly what giving oneself to help others does—it brings the giver closer to someone (the gifted), who in turn through their joy is brought closer to the giver, creating ‘double’ joy.
Joy is an understudied construct in management literature and appears mired in definitional issues and confounding with similar concepts such as elation, happiness, delight, and many more. It is often discussed in generalities, such as in happiness studies, but few theoretical or empirical papers have been published specifically on the psychological construct of joy as it relates to organizational behavior studies until recently. One pertinent example of joy research in an organizational setting is a study by Petitta and Naughton (2015) on emotional contagion, finding joy to be more powerful in effect on workplace colleagues than negative emotions. But the literature connecting joy as a construct with SL is predictably non-existent. The literature on leadership and well-being, however, is well developed—effects on followers, but not the leaders, are typically studied. Although Watkins et al. (2018) found that joy is a discrete positive emotion, both trait and state joy were positively related to subjective well-being, and that joy may be an important component of well-being.
Therefore, subjective well-being and positive affect may suffice as joy surrogates to assess joy’s potential as a viable indicator of differentiating impacts from servant leadership. One well-being study by Weinstein and Ryan (2010) included helper and help recipients using SDT, well-being as a dependent variable, and PNS components of SDT (i.e., autonomy, relatedness, competence) as independent variables. They found that helper well-being was significantly increased relative to the control condition, especially when the help was volitional.
Joy/Positive Affect Influence on PNS and Phronesis
Using broaden-and-build theory (Fredrickson, 2004) and SDT, Løvoll et al. (2017) conclude that experiences of positive emotions subsequently improve intrinsic motivation. Ryan and Deci (2000, p. 71) write that with interpersonal relationships “intrinsic motivation [is] more likely to flourish in contexts characterized by a sense of security and relatedness.” Loosely integrating, relatedness improves with experiences of positive emotions, e.g., joy. Noted earlier, the “double joy” created in the event of leader serving follower(s) produces communal (dyadic) relatedness, thus (further) psychologically satisfying both servant leader and servant(s)-in-the-making. From the discussion above, I offer a multi-part proposition:
Practitioner Proposition 5
Servant leadership’s strategic distinction of servant first is positively related to (a) leader joy and (b) follower joy (as an emotional state), and taking positive affect as a joy surrogate, (c) joy is positively related to the relatedness need satisfaction component of PNS, and (d) joy mediates the relationship between servant first and relatedness PNS.
Also using broaden-and-build theory, Hodgins and Dadich (2017, p. 167) argue that knowledge creation occurs through the relation of positive affect (joy, interest, pride) and phronesis, concluding: “positive emotions and [resultant] broadened thinking enrich…tacit knowing,…explicit knowing, and subsequent phronesis.” And as I have previously proposed that phronesis is a distal antecedent to SL, likewise joy is such a distal antecedent, via phronesis, as well. I do not repeat their extensive theorizing here, but similarly posit that:
Practitioner Proposition 6
Joy relates positively to phronesis.
Emergence is a continuous process: even seasoned servant leaders (whether they know it or not) continually refresh their motivations with new learning and changing conditions, so emergence applies to all. This principle is particularly important with the next topic, contextual antecedents to SL, because contexts can be dynamic in presence and magnitude.
Construct 4: Contextual Antecedents of Servant Leadership, and Interdependence in Specific
Dealing with interdependence is the very essence of human organization. (Stoelhorst, 2023, p. 15)
This section covers two related areas: (1) contextual antecedents to SL from the literature, and (2) a case study of one under-researched antecedent: group interdependence.
Pursuing Context
Empirical Studies With Contextual Antecedents to Servant Leadership (SL) as a Mediator.
In sum, most research on antecedents to SL focuses only on the individual level, such as within-person attitudes and personality traits. These are certainly important, but are these all there is? I think not. I contend that other structural and social variables certainly should have influence on servanthood and SL, making them worthy of research. What does not show up on Table 5 is a critical contextual antecedent to all collaborative work: interdependence, discussed next, proposed as an alternative originator of SL emergence.
Questioning the Origin of EA’s Servant Leadership
I have elsewhere implied (MacFarlane, 2023a, p. 1218) that EA’s late founder was the “original” servant leader who “trickled down” (through role modeling and social learning) his own SL to the lower level leaders within the organization. I question that assumption now. So, if not (entirely) from the founder, how did EA’s now widespread servant leadership originate? From my own hindsight observation, SL was in a nascent state when I joined EA in 1985 (some practiced SL, but many did not) but it was very much present when first measured in 2017. Outside the role modeling (contagion) effects (e.g., Liden et al., 2014b) and within-person motivation work (e.g., Ng & Koh, 2010; Paas et al., 2020; Sun, 2018), more “root cause” explanations are lacking. Are there contextual conditions partially causative—or—must a focal team always have an established servant leader at the helm for followers to grow into servant leadership and create a serving culture? If so for the latter, where did the focal team leader’s (and/or followers’) servant behavior originate? Giambatista et al.’s (2020, p. 12) “study hint [ed] at a bottom-up means to further facilitate [SL] cultures.” Following their hint to answer these questions may provide a basis for practitioners to reconfigure their organization designs to become “servanthood-ready”.
While EA’s founder was an exceptionally compassionate and caring person, his influence on others’ serving behavior—that is, his servant leader contagion efficacy—appeared correlated only with (early history) customer-facing operations employees, not with relationships within corporate departments and top management which he led soon after founding—these were bereft of virtually any other-oriented behaviors. Those unaffected by servanthood (corporate department leaders) largely controlled the firm, so their influence dominated the company, despite operations employees’ more nascent (but not unified, i.e., silos persisted) collaborative behavior. I contend now that the founder practiced paternalistic leadership—he was surely a father-like figure. Bottom line: I believe other factors were at play creating the servanthood we see today. EA’s history alludes to an antecedent of collective proto-servanthood, without the need for the proverbial chicken-or-egg originating servant leader. Through group-level interdependence, I posit that the nature of EA’s work originated spontaneous servanthood development.
Interdependence as an Essence of Organization and an Essential of Servanthood
Task interdependence is the “degree to which team members’ tasks require them to coordinate activities and exchange information with each other in order to accomplish their [tasks]” (Hu & Liden, 2015, p. 1107). Team-level interdependencies for goals and knowledge are similarly about sharing responsibility for each (Raveendran et al., 2020). Complexity is both caused by (Siggelkow & Rivkind, 2005) and a cause of interdependence (e.g., Kremser & Blagoev, 2021). Environmental and sustainability problems (the subject of EA’s project work) have long been well-accepted as being highly complex and often requiring interdisciplinarity and cross-sectoral interoperability to resolve (see Klein, 2020; MacFarlane, 2023a, p. 1226), and EA’s people have always had an ecosystems worldview. The complexity of EA’s client projects requires such interdisciplinarity and often involves client stakeholders like environmental regulators and local communities, ultimately creating within-teams and stakeholder interdependencies. Danner-Schröder and Ostermann (2022) show complexity relating to interdependence, with both constructs relating positively to work outcomes. Gagné et al. (2022, p. 379) note that “higher levels of interdependence require more social, team-oriented and network-oriented behaviours” necessitating workers to be more adaptive and proactive. Indeed, Khan et al. (2024) found that task interdependence substitutes for SL, i.e., their functions are similar.
Liu et al.’s (2021, Table 4) study of group-level self-sacrificial leadership (a quality embedded within the definition of SL, Yang et al., 2023) showed antecedence by organizational collectivist culture. This demonstrates that a form of group-level leadership related to SL can develop from other group-level phenomena (see the online Supplement for other ideas on connecting to the group level), in this case by collectivism, a group quality which was coincidently shown by survey to be high at EA in 2018. I therefore propose a similar development: collective servanthood (proto-SL)—initiated by team interdependence—ultimately spurred the snowballing of serving constructs, leading to co-evolution of the most collaborative form of (vertical) leadership style which is other- and stakeholder-oriented and ethically based: servant leadership. The natural selection of more efficacious prosocial capabilities, such as servanthood, produced positive outcomes for customers, the company, and employees. From a Darwinian adaptation standpoint, these features ultimately proved to be successful for executing EA’s highly complex work, by utilizing the only vertical style (SL) which fully drives toward horizontal power.
Practitioner Proposition 7
Servant leadership’s strategic distinctions of (a) servant first, (b) stakeholder orientation, and (c) first-among-equals are positively related to team interdependence; and (d) team interdependence positively moderates relationships between individual-level PNS components and their antecedents, further cultivating motivation to serve.
Discussion and Conclusions
Figure 4 assembles nomological relations previously discussed. (See also Table 4 for a summary of practitioner calls and propositions). I dub the originating path to individual level servanthood as the spontaneous “from scratch” path where SL does not already exist and the organization-level construct—interdependence—moderates the relationships of constructs with PNS to eventually enable servanthood growth at the individual level (the Paas et al. model, 2020). The spontaneous path is prototypical of the environment-personal-behavior triad of reciprocal determinism. In the other direction, on SL effects, numerous studies have shown links between SL and all three components of PNS (Brière et al., 2021; Chiniara & Bentein, 2016). This study adds detail to the SL-PNS relationship by naming other constructs (psychological ownership, phronesis, and joy) mediating the relationships. I submit that EA’s SL origin path was more of the spontaneous path than the contagious path (modeling leader behavior), with strong team interdependence—originally without SL influence—basically “jump starting” the process. One or more of the three SL distinctive qualities is operative in all paths. Additional possibilities for reinforcement include contextual features, such as to cause significant increases of psychological ownership from becoming 100% owned by an ESOP, or an organizational purpose so socially compelling so as to create personal factors which in effect act as SL substitutes.
10
This model is applicable to any person, leader or not, at any point in their SL development, fledgling to fanatic. “[O]ne never fully becomes a servant leader; one is always becoming” (Bragger et al., 2023, p. 148). Nomological network of proposed additions to Paas et al.’s (2020) SDT-based (self-determination theory) servant leadership emergence model. Green dashed elements are additions. SL could be initiated in an organization by: (1) the spontaneous path from interdependence to personal factors to behavior (SL); (2) the more conventionally modeled contagious role modeling path (not shown), assuming an already-servant leader first “seeds” the organization; or (3) overwhelmingly positive personal factors exist, e.g., joy, phronesis, and/or psychological ownership, which grow PNS and motivation to serve, such as an organization with strong social mission (which in combination may substitute for SL and/or provide substrate for SL behavior normalization). Notes: all relationships positive; SL distinctive qualities and PNS components omitted.
Giambatasta et al. (2020, p. 12) discussed an intriguing take-away of their SL and core self-evaluation model: the potential “for a virtuous cycle between” SL and servanthood-ready organization-level developments. 11 I would term this paper’s Figure 4 triad (interdependence to personal factors to behavior, and back again) as a virtuous cycle fueled not by perpetual magic, but by complexity—which is in increasingly plentiful supply. Hodgson (2013), p. 981, claims that economic and social evolution has occurred at an increasingly rapid rate—producing more and more complexity—relative to biological evolution. Beware that an exogenous change of customer needs, or organization routines, that lessens interdependence could adversely impact the robustness of SL development; EA always seeks new highly complex project work because [we enjoy it, thrive on it, and] interdependence is the impetus for our competitive advantage.
Practical and Theoretical Implications
The ultimate success of any management concept lies in its diffusion for practical use. This paper was intended to be of practical use, not for practitioners, but for researchers. The main practical contribution is in developing a strategic approach to SL with a practitioner’s insights to entice more practitioners to adopt servanthood through (your) targeted research. If relationships between SL SDQ and constructs are robustly shown, then the constructs explored may themselves have unique and strategically distinctive value to practitioners. A second practical contribution is in offering SL as one of “our” best hopes to take evolution into our own hands—for a better future, through its consilience with natural evolution. Intended to stoke the SL research motivational fire, the implication is that advocates must envision, and be emboldened by (Badaan et al., 2022) how SL is critical for our collective future—by developing “a shared understanding of the plausible alternatives to which we aspire” (Battilana et al., 2025, p. 213, see also Sousa & van Dierendonck, 2021). Creating a credible SL strategy, however, required theoretical exploration which was a priori unscripted (i.e., abductively derived) that generated three theoretical contributions: (1) the underexplored, but observed in the field, psychological constructs discussed herein have potential to leverage SL SDQ and show additional incremental validity above-and-beyond the current state, thereby improving SL’s salience as a style to take seriously, (2) a new context-dependent origin to SL emergence has been proposed (also answering the Johns, 2024 call), and (3) investigating the micro-foundations of SL collaboration addressed Battilana et al.’s (2022) and Hodgkinson et al.’s (2025) calls for more research on redistribution of power to labor, and overcoming cognitive and emotional complexities of responsible management, respectively.
Limitations and Future Research
I am confident regarding the phenomena I have observed, and their potential in being caused by and causing servanthood, as I have seen these dynamics in action. I am also confident that one or more of the psychological constructs discussed herein—e.g., joy, ownership, and wisdom—will appeal to on-the-fence CEOs if future research shows supportive results. However, limitations, such as alternative explanations exist: regarding context as EA’s SL origin, assuming I was a full-fledged servant leader when I succeeded the founder in 2005 (which I was not) one could argue that role-modeling of me trickled down SL behaviors. Although I cannot disprove this counter explanation, I believe my role in responding to the events depicted on Table 6, organization-level development, was far more impactful than modeling of me. Second, I am but one observer observing one organization. Perhaps my overly-active pattern-seeking brain—interacting with innate optimism and advocacy bias (to catalyze transformation, Lee & Waddock, 2021)—is taking me down the proverbial rabbit hole, to the point of imagining causal illusions? Besides providing multiple practitioner calls and propositions herein, I also suggest further exploration on how the model proposed here may be compatible with the new servant-leader identity integration model presented by Watts et al. (2025, this issue). Finally, paper development yielded many questions and initial literature explorations and analyses which were not used. A short online Supplement includes select information on SL theory extension ideas to the group and organization levels (strategic plan goal 2, Table 2) that may interest researchers.
Concluding Big-Picture Remarks
Extendable to the social science context of SL, my world of environmental consulting has long championed the concept of working with, rather than against, nature 12 .
Imagine a continuum with poles corresponding to human’s two evolved drivers for survival: (1) self-centeredness, based on survival of the self, and (2) self-sacrificing, based on survival of the group (multi-level selection, Johnson et al., 2013). The former is “reptilian” (and capitalist) in nature—being instinctual and shared with other species—but the latter is uniquely human. Of the leadership styles now prevalently studied, abusive, authoritarian, and transactional styles—using extrinsic motivation as their whip—are positioned more toward the reptilian end. By incorporating evolved emotions and morality into their frameworks, the moral styles push toward the evolved “group survival” pole. (And we, broadly, certainly need more of that). Relative to the other moral styles, servant leadership expressly promotes the most extreme end of human group survival, through its servant first, other orientation, in harmony with Allen & Mau’s thesis (2025, p. 137) that “interdependence is essential to the future of our planet and for future generations to thrive”. Therefore, I see consilience (Pirson, 2020; Van Vugt & von Rueden, 2020) with nature in humans’ greater adoption of SL and servanthood, as the most evolved form of leadership—and behavior—that appears to be humanly possible. The idea of servanthood is simple—it comes to us naturally, driving us to obviate the term others for ours, to sacrifice the self for the social. Servant leadership is the glue that binds people to purpose through effective organizational collective action, with the most humanism and parsimony. Let’s use what nature has provided us.
Supplemental Material
Supplemental Material - Strategy to Expand Servanthood: Defining Desirable Distinctions Observed from the Field
Supplemental Material for Strategy to Expand Servanthood: Defining Desirable Distinctions Observed from the Field by Ian D. MacFarlane in Group & Organization Management.
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
The author gratefully acknowledges editor James Lemoine and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful and positive comments on translating practitioner thoughts into meaningful academic prose. This paper is decidedly better with their voice. All opinions and errors are of course my own.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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References
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