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This case study used the variables of both Patterson's and Winston's models of servant leadership and examined the attitudes of employees at Heritage Bible College toward their leader to determine if the leader was a servant leader and if the variables of the two models helped explain the process by which leaders and followers serve each other in the organization. Thirteen employees and the leader provided data triangulated by three methods of data collection: the researcher's observations over a two‐year period, the data from the Servant‐Shepherd Leadership Indicator, and responses to ten in‐depth interview questions. This case study supports the use of Patterson's and Winston's models of servant leadership, or at least confirms the specific variables examined by the interview question/topics: trust, empowerment, vision, altruism, intrinsic motivation, commitment, and service.

This study defined and developed a four-item scale to measure motivation to serve (MTS) then correlated it with Cerff’s Motivation to Lead’s two scales as well as Affective and Normative Commitment scores. A convenience sample of 89 participants came from a non-denominational church in Oklahoma City, OK. The MTS showed significant correlation with Normative Commitment but not with the two Motivation-to-Lead scales or Affective Commitment. The benefit of this study lies in the development of a new scale to measure Motivation to Serve and the understanding that the new scale is significantly correlated with Normative Commitment.

The purpose of this study is to examine the role of trigger events and leadership crucibles in the lives of authentic leaders. The study was based on two theories: authentic leadership theory and born versus made theory.

Participants were included in the study if they scored between 64 and 80 on the Authentic Leadership Questionnaire (ALQ). The qualified leaders were then asked to participate in a qualitative interview utilizing an interview guide born out of the relevant literature. The interview followed the guidelines of the Critical Incident Technique (CIT).

The data indicated that trigger events and leadership crucibles play a significant role in authentic leadership development.

Practitioners should emphasize the prominent themes of self-awareness, relational transparency, balanced processing and moral perspective and the connection with other themes that emerged from the current study when developing or training leaders. Furthermore, practitioners concerned with creating an authentic leadership culture may consider the findings of the current study to develop and employ hiring and promotion strategies that increase the probabilities of hiring and promoting leaders that exhibit authentic leadership behaviors.

The findings of the research indicate that trigger events and crucibles both affect authentic leadership development. The research findings confirm characteristics associated with authentic leadership theory were predominant in the participants. However, one theme that prevailed was that of spirituality, which may or may not be considered to be part of an authentic leader's moral perspective

The purpose of this research is to focus on the development of three scales to measure the three dimensions of accountability presented by Wood and Winston (2005): responsibility; openness; and answerability.

The scale development process followed the method proposed by Spector in 1992 and DeVellis in 2003 in that each of the three constructs were defined and through a search of the literature the authors generated pools of 26, 21, and 19 items respectively. The items were submitted to a panel of six experts, who reviewed them for relevance to the construct and who made suggestions for the general improvement of the scales. The scales were then tested online by 148 participants.

Factor analyses revealed that the item pools measured one construct in each of the scales. Reliability analysis revealed Cronbach alpha coefficients of 0.98 (Responsibility), 0.99 (Openness) and 0.98 (Answerability). The scales were reduced to 10 items by removing items deemed redundant or confusing. Alpha scores for the ten‐item scales were 0.97 (Responsibility), 0.97 (Openness) and 0.98 (Answerability).

The study participants were primarily Caucasian males. Further study should be done to validate the instrument in other ethnic groups.

The three scales may be useful for leadership selection, development, and research in overall leadership effectiveness.

The purpose of this paper is to define the concept of “discernment”.

The paper defines and presents discernment in a manner that sheds light on the construct and sets the stage for future research.

Discernment, is a significantly more involving kind of approach to decision making for the leader. It does not rely on precedents, best practices, or benchmarking. It is to understand the self and organization in a holistic way, inviting constant self‐evaluation and adjustments in order to make good judgments that serve the greater whole.

Additional research is needed to empirically validate the concept through systematic investigations and devise a means to measure it.

The paper assists leaders in understanding the “what” and “why” of discernment and provides an opportunity for self‐evaluation by leaders as to how well each leader engages in discernment.

The paper is original and makes the foundational contribution for a beginning stream of research.

The purpose of this paper is to operationalize the concept of discernment and to present an instrument to measure it.

The approach takes the form of a mixed‐method exploratory design that relied on principal component analyses and internal consistency performed on the resultant data set from a pool of items developed from the literature, as well as from a panel of experts. The investigation employed in‐depth interviews conducted with eight purposively selected leaders about their decision‐making processes and augmented the findings with data from 240 leaders, generated via an online survey.

The result is a three‐factor self‐rating instrument that measures courage, intuition, and faith, with Cronbach alpha values of 0.85, 0.89, and 0.85, respectively. These three factors appear to operationalize the concept of discernment.

While the conceptual definition of the construct has merit, its completeness is subject to debate. If the conceptualization were incomplete, the results of the study would provide only a marginal understanding of the phenomenon. Moreover, an operational definition based on an incomplete conceptualization will fail to generate theory‐oriented propositions. Additional research is needed to establish population norms.

The study contributes to the ongoing task of appropriating spirituality in organizational life, demonstrates that discernment has value in contemporary leadership and organizational praxis, and provides an instrument for self‐evaluation by leaders as to how well each leader engages in discernment. The instrument offers a leadership development tool to help identify high or low discernment.

The study is original and makes the foundational contribution for a beginning stream of research.

This study conducted a factor analysis of Page and Wong’s servant leadership instrument and reduced the 99‐item scale to 20 items yielding three factors: vision (0.97 Cronbach alpha), empowerment (0.89 Cronbach alpha), and service (0.94 Cronbach alpha). While this study only confirmed three of the original 12 factors sought by Page and Wong the results indicate that Page and Wong’s instrument has merit and deserves further development and modification.

Aims to explore the relationship between employee perceptions of servant leadership and leader trust, as well as organizational trust.

Uses Laub's Organizational Leadership Assessment along with Nyhan and Marlowe's Organizational Trust Inventory.

Perceptions of servant leadership correlated positively with both leader trust and organizational trust. The study also found that organizations perceived as servant‐led exhibited higher levels of both leader trust and organizational trust than organizations perceived as non‐servant‐led.

The findings lend support to Greenleaf's view that servant leadership is an antecedent of leader and organizational trust, and to aspects of other servant leadership models.