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Social Exchange or Social Learning: A Theoretical Fork in Road for Servant Leadership Researchers

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Leading for High Performance in Asia

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Abstract

While there has been a rise in servant leadership research, especially in Asia, there has been an equal lack of consideration for the social theories that underpins servant leadership to explain how they influence followers. To address this gap, this chapter provides a review and analysis of the two most commonly used social theories in servant leadership literature; social learning and social exchange. In doing so, we first examine servant leadership within an Asian context. Second, we examine social learning and social exchange and how they have been used in servant leadership literature to date. Lastly, we propose a future research agenda for future research in order to further understand these two social theories within the context of servant leadership.

One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. ‘Which road do I take?’ she asked. ‘Where do you want to go?’ was his response. ‘I don’t know,’ Alice answered. ‘Then’ said the cat ‘it doesn’t matter.’

Lewis Carroll

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  1. Monash Business School, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

    Karryna Madison & Nathan Eva

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  1. Swinburne Business School, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, VIC, Australia

    Sen Sendjaya

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Madison, K., Eva, N. (2019). Social Exchange or Social Learning: A Theoretical Fork in Road for Servant Leadership Researchers. In: Sendjaya, S. (eds) Leading for High Performance in Asia. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6074-9_7

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