Servant leadership in the Turkish business context - Turkish Daily News May 28, 2008 Page 1 of 2

Servant leadership in the Turkish business

context
Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Zeynep Hale ÖNER

The phrase ‘servant leadership' sounds to be an oxymoron i.e. the words ‘servant' and ‘leader' are
usually considered as opposites, and this creates a paradox at first sight. But in actual fact, ‘servant
leadership' emphasizes increased service to others including employees, customers, and community
as the priority. Robert Greenleaf, the founder of servant leadership, defines this style as one, where
a leader truly takes into consideration the needs of others and makes it a priority to empower and
develop them in a spirit of true service. Thus, it is a holistic approach to work, a sense of
community and shared decision-making power.

According to Greenleaf, true leadership emerges from those whose primary motivation is a desire
to help others. Marshall, for example, symbolized servant leadership. He was not a leader of blind
ambition seeking power and self-aggrandizement, but he had limitless capacity to nurture and
inspire trust worldwide.

Serving the employees:

Servant leadership is also linked to emotional well-being of employees. Servant leaders believe
that it is their duty to see to the overall mental and spiritual well-being of those with whom they
associate by creating an environment in which the employees can flourish, unlike oppressive
leaders who are fearful of the development of their employees. Thus, it is the desire of servant
leaders to see employees to develop, grow and reach their full potential.

Block described servant leadership as an organizational choice to decide between patriarchy

(paternalism) or partnership: “Patriarchy expresses the belief that it is those at the top of the
organization who are responsible for the success of the organization and the well-being of its
members”. In line with this view, Greenleaf states that paternalism directly contradicts the servant
leadership model, as it is the difference between ‘people-using' and ‘people-building'.

On the other hand, paternalism is considered to be a term of abuse in the eyes of many
economists. It is seen as illiberal, coercive, and patronizing, as well as destroying autonomy and
freedom. But in fact, the superiority of freedom of choice can easily be rejected over paternalistic
interventions on the condition that the ultimate benefit of paternalized is genuinely kept in sight
without merely imposing the tastes of one group to another. The instrumental and intrinsic values
of a free choice are not free from negative freedom and need to be confronted with the obstacles to
good choices. Thus, there are potentials for paternalistic interventions to stimulate preference and
capacity development and to offer greater positive freedom to the subjects of the interventionist
policy.
Servant leadership in the Turkish business context - Turkish Daily News May 28, 2008 Page 2 of 2

The Turkish cultural setting:

Within this framework, the results of this quantitative research, as a pioneer study investigating
the concept of servant leadership in the Turkish business context, will firstly provide valuable
information that has theoretical implications in the conceptualization of servant leadership within
the cultural context of Turkey. Secondly it will clarify the distinction between servant and
paternalistic leadership as it is perceived and practiced in Turkish cultural setting.

This research examined the relationship between servant leadership and paternalistic leadership
perceptions of 305 middle management full time employees from 26 small, medium and large scale
business organizations in Istanbul.

The study revealed four distinct dimensions in the perception of servant leadership: relationship
building, altruism, participation and empowerment. Moreover, the results showed a high correlation
between servant leadership and paternalistic leadership perception among the employees.
However, the overlap/high correlation of these two types of leadership should be considered within
the cultural context of Turkey, characterized by high in-group collectivism, power distance and
paternalism.

Different cultural groups may have different understanding of what leadership should entail.
Depending on these conceptions, the evaluation and the assigned meaning to leader behaviors and
characteristics may show variations according to different cultures. Thus, implicit leadership
theories suggest that it is particularly important to ground the approach much more directly in
people's experiences as different social experiences and social contexts may have diverse effects on
influencing the conceptualization of leadership and in understanding its meaning to the individual
concerned.

Desire to relate and care:

Within this perspective, our study is important in the sense that it shows how paternalistic
leadership is practiced in Turkey, and how the perceptions of employees based on their experiences
at work suggest a positive connotation of paternalistic leadership unlike its negative connotations in
Western culture. For example, employees in Turkey see paternalistic leaders' desire to ‘relate' and
‘care' as an expression of their desire to ‘serve' and ‘take accountability' for employees.

As a summary, this study not only contributes to a better understanding of the way in which
servant leadership is enacted in Turkish business context, but also poses a challenge to Greenleaf 's
dichotomous conceptualization of paternalistic and servant leadership models. ..........

The writer can be reached at haleoner@gmail.com

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