Citation:
P. Reeves Knyght, Alexander Kouzmin, Nada K.
Kakabadse, Andrew P. Kakabadse,
Auditing employee ownership in a
neo-liberal world, Management Decision, 2010, Volume 48, Issue 8, Pages 1304-1323
Abstract:
Purpose - This paper seeks to explore whether the Western concept of servant
leadership holds the same meaning in the public sector of the cross-cultural
context of China and to identify whether there is an alternative term in the
Chinese language that closely relates to the concept of servant leadership
Design/methodology/approach - An inductive approach is adopted based on critical
incident technique, using an open-ended survey to collect the data. Findings -
It was found that the concept of servant leadership holds parallel meaning in
China to that of the West and that the Chinese concept of servant leadership can
be described precisely as public servant leadership in the public sector and
servant leadership in the non-public sector. When asked to characterize Chinese
servant leadership in the public sector, the study respondents consider six
types of servant leadership similar to the West but also three types of Chinese
extended servant leadership. Originality/value - The paper is a first attempt to
examine servant leadership in the public sector in China. It not only reports
various forms of Chinese servant leadership orientation, but also compares and
contrasts various servant leadership forms between China and the West,
highlighting research gaps for future research within the context of the
People's Republic of China (PRC) and the West.
