CS132-6 Developing Independent Research Assignment Sample
CS132-6 Developing Independent Research Assignment Sample
Characteristics and Significance of servant leadership in retail businesses
In the words of Eliot (2020), servant leadership has this unique characteristic of putting the needs of other people first and facilitates power and role sharing within workplaces compared to the application of traditional leadership styles that focuses on power at the top-level organisational hierarchy. It depicts that servant leaders within workplaces actively contribute and engage in the personal and professional development of their team, which is why the particular leadership style is being prioritised in several companies. The servant leadership style is pillared upon ten characteristic features that are conceptualisation, community building, empathy, persuasion, listening, stewardship, healing, awareness, foresight, and commitment to the growth of others in an organisational setting (Crippen and Willows, 2019). Based on these features, the need and application of the particular leadership style have become significant in workplaces that indulge in continuous business growth by allowing workforces to grow, develop, and prosper across professional roles that are delegated within organisational premises.
As opined by Russell (2019), servant leaders in workplaces are said to carry out the roles of functioning as an example for employees that further enable the workforce to be committed towards the fulfilment of business goals. From this, it can be said that employees across retail companies would take lessons regarding how operations can be done and completed efficiently from those that are acting as servant leaders while guiding and keeping supervision of organisational performance (Passakonjaras et al., 2019). The aspect of explaining and preaching tasks from the end of higher officials such as departmental managers or team leaders across different projects that are performed on regular basis is an extremely significant feature of servant leadership since it helps in inspiring employees in the workplace. Moreover, the presence of ten different characteristics of servant leadership, as identified above can be considered significant since these can be viewed in the form of organisational or working environment’s strength for a retail firm when managers and higher officials in the workplaces engage with the employee via the application of servant leadership style.
Organisational factors affecting employee engagement and performance in workplace
According to Arifin et al. (2019), organisational performance across companies cannot be improved without the practice of employee engagement within workplaces. It is because employee engagement in a people-oriented approach allows employees to identify their gaps and then take necessary lessons and training to raise their competence level, which further adds up to raise the potential of workforce productivity that helps in improving organisational performance. Various factors and implications exist within workplaces that affect employee engagement due to which achieving better norms of organisational performance becomes a challenge. In the words of Acharya (2021), some of the factors that affect employee engagement are communication, autonomy, lack of growth opportunities, efficient pay structures, type of job, trust, peer culture, the scope of cultural diversity, and recognition opportunities. When these elements are provided or rather experienced by employees in limited forms, the rate of job satisfaction is said to reduce drastically, which hampers the overall employee engagement level in the workplace thus, creating complications across the achievement of effective organisational performance.
Theoretical Perspective
The aspect of enabling a higher level of employee engagement in workplaces and then using the same in the form of fuel for raising organisational performance can be linked to the Social Cognitive Theory that was developed by Albert Bandura. Based on the theory, the behaviour or productive outcomes from the end of employees across organisational tasks and business goals can be said to be associated with personal factors that employees experience in the workplace and environmental factors that a workplace has to offer to its workforce (Pedersen and Hammond, 2021). The role of servant leadership style could be considered an approach that enables employees to fulfil their “personal” factors or interests across working environments, which have higher essence of empathy, stewardship, persuasion, and other characteristics of the particular leadership style. It is achievable when managers and higher officials are operating as mentors and efficient leaders in the workplace for their teams (Gultekin and Dougherty, 2021). From this, it can be said that the application of servant leadership in companies can be used as an agent that helps in meeting employees’ personal and professional needs by allowing them to work in an organisational setting that aspires in putting the needs of others first.
Positive influences of servant leadership on employee engagement and performance across retail companies in UK
As stated above, companies that look forward to an increase and to have access across higher aspects of organisational and business performance have to indulge in investing time and efforts in raising the quality of employee engagement offered to every staff across their workforce. On this note, servant leadership is said to help in improving employee engagement in different ways in workplaces. In the words of Chimney (2020), the major benefits for servant leaders in the process of effectively engaging employees in the workplace are achieved from the value of listening and displaying a caring nature towards every employee in fair and equal ways. Servant leaders across retail businesses offer the value of prioritising ideas and opinions from employees so that employees at an individual level feel motivated in working across routes that have been developed by them and are recognised to be feasible and efficient by managers in the workplace. The particular listening creditability of servant leaders in the workplace enables employees to feel that they are being valued and their interests in the business are being cared for (Alam and Singh, 2020). These aspects only raise employee engagement within workplaces but also help in the development of an effective relationship based on trust between staff at an executive level and managers or higher officials across decision-making scenarios across businesses.
In the words of Gomez (2022), when employees can seek interests and participate in opportunities for career progression from the end of managers that excel in the effective practice of servant leadership style, the entire workforce is found to become competent since such scenarios encourage curiosity, innovation, and creativity. Servant leadership enables the practice of people-focused culture in companies so that workforces can be effectively engaged to come up with innovative ideas for improving work quality and operational results. Furthermore, Nguyen et al., (2019) state that when a majority of employees in workplaces experience and engage across tasks based an application of servant leadership style, the extent of employee retention rates increases. It depicts the fact that employees that were once followers of the practised servant leadership style and workplace culture can relatively participate in improving their leadership competence so that they can offer the same level of working experience to future aspirants and applicants by acting as efficient servant leaders across a company. In this way, businesses do have the benefit of not undertaking extensive labour market research for appointing effective business leaders rather they focus to recognise similar or rather more competent leading talents from within the organisational premise that has experienced and nurtured in a working ambience that practises servant leadership to full of its extent.
Negative influences of servant leadership on employee engagement and performance across retail companies in UK
As seen from the positive influences of servant leadership, every business is expected to encourage managers and employees to become participants of the particular leadership style in the workplace. However, servant leadership compared to traditional leadership styles does have certain limitations. As opined by Kenton (2022), one of the major limitations of servant leadership is very few leaders or rather managers across retail firms are familiar with the application and influences of the practice of the leadership style. Thus, the limitation stated above creates a challenge for managers within which they might witness severe difficulties in injecting cultural change in the workplace due to the switch of leadership styles from a traditional one to a servant leadership style. In the words of Ortiz-Gómez et al. (2022), servant leaders might be empathetic to an employee and provide them care within workplaces however, the application of the particular leadership style is limited in terms of rapid decision-making situations. From the limitations stated above, servant leadership not only takes a vast amount of time to be implemented and applied at full force within workplaces but also the switch of leadership mentality and the style could lead teams to lose sight of their existent operational goals. As servant leaders have to be empathetic by nature regardless of any experienced situations, those leaders have to always keep their ego and self-esteem aspects at the back of their mindsets (Lindberg, 2022). This is why not every company or rather managers in companies might become ready in practicing the servant leadership style since they fear situations where they might feel their ego, work ethics, and self-esteem are being challenged in the workplace.
Literature Gap
The data collected from secondary sources of information based on the theme of identifying and analysing the impact of servant leadership on employee engagement and organisational performance separately included appreciation and criticism of the application of the particular leadership style in retail businesses across the UK. The literature review that has been carried out as a part of the particular research study is said to eliminate the gap by comparing the extent of experienced positive influences against the witnessed limitations of servant leadership style across retail businesses.
References
Acharya, S. 2021. 10 Factors That Affect Employee Engagement | OffiNeeds. [online] OffiNeeds. Available at: https://www.offineeds.com/employee-engagement-factors/ [Accessed 17 Jan. 2023].
Alam, I. and Singh, J.S.K., 2020. Perceived Effects of Authentic, Ethical and Servant Leadership Style on Organisational Commitment of the Employees in the Information Technology Sector. PalArch’s Journal of Archaeology of Egypt/Egyptology, 17(7), pp.4445-4457.
Arifin, Z., Nirwanto, N. and Manan, A., 2019. Improving the effect of work satisfaction on job performance through employee engagement. International Journal of Multi-Discipline Science (IJ-MDS), 2(1), pp.1-9.
Chimney, V. 2020. 5 Ways Servant Leadership Improves Employee Engagement. [online] Etech Global Services. Available at: https://www.etechgs.com/blog/servant-leadership-improves-employee-engagement/#:~:text=Employees%20learn%20more%20about%20those,bolstering%20engagement%20in%20the%20workplace. [Accessed 17 Jan. 2023].
Crippen, C. and Willows, J., 2019. Connecting Teacher Leadership and Servant Leadership: A Synergistic Partnership. Journal of leadership education, 18(2).
Eliot, J.L., 2020. Resilient leadership: the impact of a servant leader on the resilience of their followers. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 22(4), pp.404-418.
Gomez, A.L. 2022. Servant Leadership: Definition Plus Benefits and Drawbacks. [online] Betterup.com. Available at: https://www.betterup.com/blog/servant-leadership-what-makes-it-different [Accessed 17 Jan. 2023].
Gultekin, H. and Dougherty, M., 2021. The Relationship between Servant Leadership Characteristics of School Teachers and Students’ Academic Achievement. Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Studies, 8(2), pp.276-295.
Kenton, W. 2022. Servant Leadership: Characteristics, Pros & Cons, Example. [online] Investopedia. Available at: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/servant-leadership.asp#:~:text=The%20disadvantages%20of%20servant%20leadership,they%20are%20able%20to%20carry. [Accessed 17 Jan. 2023].
Lindberg, C. 2022. Servant Leadership Explained by a CEO: Pros/Cons, Examples. – Leadership Ahoy! [online] Leadershipahoy.com. Available at: https://www.leadershipahoy.com/servant-leadership-what-is-it-pros-cons-examples/ [Accessed 17 Jan. 2023].
Nguyen, P.V., Le, H.T.N., Trinh, T.V.A. and Do, H.T.S., 2019. The effects of inclusive leadership on job performance through mediators. Asian Academy of Management Journal, 24(2).
Ortiz-Gómez, M., Molina-Sánchez, H., Ariza-Montes, A. and de Los Ríos-Berjillos, A., 2022. Servant Leadership and Authentic Leadership as Job Resources for Achieving Workers’ Subjective Well-Being Among Organizations Based on Values. Psychology Research and Behavior Management, pp.2621-2638.
Passakonjaras, S., Hartijasti, Y. and Rajiani, I., 2019. Servant leadership: an empirical study of Indonesian managers across different ethnic groups. Polish Journal of Management Studies, 20.
Pedersen, M. and Hammond, H.G., 2021. Let’s Collaborate! Course Content Collaboration: Global Business and Servant Leadership. Journal of Instructional Research, 10, pp.58-62.
Russell, E.J., 2019. Servant leadership and the emergency services. In In Command of Guardians: Executive Servant Leadership for the Community of Responders (pp. 11-19). Springer, Cham.
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