The importance of servant leadership characteristics in leadership succession: a qualitative study of hr professionals´ perceptions

Abstract

Is the concept of servant leadership applied in the corporate world or is it merely a theoretical construct? To examine this question, the research aims at understanding the extent to which HR professionals’ promotion criteria for leadership positions are in alignment with servant leadership and whether the applied criteria are dissonant from their espoused leadership model. A qualitative analysis with a dual approach consisting of an inductive and a deductive phase was applied. The results show that servant leadership has only partially arrived in organizations and suggest that other criteria tend to matter more when it comes to leadership succession.