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Servant Leadership and Frontline Outcomes

A Meta-Analytic Evaluation

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The Palgrave Handbook of Servant Leadership

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Abstract

In the evolution of theory and practice germane to managerial leadership styles, servant leadership has been advanced as an effective approach for engaging, develo**, and retaining employees. Servant leaders place their employees’ interests at the forefront and exhibit high levels of empathy. These actions are particularly important in managing frontline employees. As boundary spanners for their organization, frontline employees contend with a complex and challenging array of demands from both intra- and extra-organizational members. As such, numerous studies have examined servant leadership’s impact on frontline employee attitudes and outcomes. However, insights within the frontline employee domain have yet to be aggregated and analyzed via meta-analytic techniques. Meta-analysis is important in this area because the effect sizes between servant leadership and frontline employee variables possess considerable variance. Study findings provide aggregated knowledge from 16,350 respondents in 58 independent samples to deliver a holistic appraisal of servant leadership’s effect in frontline contexts. The meta-analytic results establish the value of servant leadership in increasing desirable frontline attitudes and outcomes (e.g., customer orientation, performance), as well as reducing undesirable associations (e.g., stress, turnover intentions).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX, USA

    Fernando Jaramillo

  2. University of Missouri-Kansas City, Kansas City, MO, USA

    Jeff Johnson

  3. Miami University, Oxford, OH, USA

    Scott Friend

Authors
  1. Fernando Jaramillo
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  2. Jeff Johnson
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  3. Scott Friend
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Fernando Jaramillo .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Business, Woodbury University, Burbank, CA, USA

    Satinder Dhiman

  2. Robertson School of Government, Regent University, Virginia Beach, VA, USA

    Gary E. Roberts

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Jaramillo, F., Johnson, J., Friend, S. (2022). Servant Leadership and Frontline Outcomes. In: Dhiman, S., Roberts, G.E. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Servant Leadership. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69802-7_30-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69802-7_30-1

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-69802-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-69802-7

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