Servant Leadership and African American Pastors

Robert Greenleaf (1977) took a follower’s, rather than a leader-centric, point of view of leadership by describing a leader as one who leads by serving. He identified a leader as one who sets other people’s needs above his or her own. He argued that motivation of leaders must begin with the conscious choice to serve others. Greenleaf’s concept provides the basis for a theoretical model of servant leadership. This dissertation examines the extent to which African American pastors exhibit servant leadership characteristics, using the Servant Leadership Questionnaire (Barbuto & Wheeler, 2006). A sample of 358 African American pastors from 11 denominations across the United States was included in this study. This study uses a non-experimental quantitative approach to examine the behaviors and attitudes of African American pastors through Barbuto and Wheeler’s (2006) Servant Leadership Questionnaire, which has five factors (altruistic calling, emotional healing, organizational stewardship, persuasive mapping, and wisdom). The results of this study showed that African American pastors sometimes see themselves as servant leaders: that is, they fall into the middle range of the scale. Among various demographic variables, including age, gender, denomination, and years in service, a statistically significant difference in SLQ score was found only in size of church. Contrary to the study’s initial expectations, African American pastors reported highest subscale scores on persuasive mapping and not altruistic calling. This finding invites further qualitative research. The electronic version of this dissertation is available through the OhioLink ETD Center at http://ohiolink.edu/etd.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Leadership and Change

Grantor dc:publisher

Antioch University

Year dc:date

2013

Author dc:creator

• Bunch, Clarence

Contributors dc:contributor

• Wergin, Jon

• African American Studies
• African Americans
• Clergy
• Organizational Behavior
• Religious Education
• Religion
• Theology
• servant leadership
• pastors
• Servant Leadership Questionnaire
• SLQ
• quantitative
• pastoral leadership
• Christianity
• Black ministers
• servant leader

Statement dc:rights

• unrestricted
• This thesis or dissertation is protected by copyright: all rights reserved. It may not be copied or redistributed beyond the terms of applicable copyright laws.

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=antioch1363005384

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:etd.ohiolink.edu:antioch1363005384