Servant Leadership, Article Critique Example

The Understanding and Practice of Servant LeadershipServant Leadership Research Roundtable, August 2005

Regent University, School of Leadership Studies

The article has a clear and informed title for explaining the research paper. The forward by Robert K Greenleaf is helpful in placing the subject matter into context.  In some regards this is a useful substitution for an abstract. There are nice analogies in the introduction using a trickle, stream and then a river to compare the flow of individuals that practice servant leadership principles.  The article is extremely well structured using effective headers to navigate the reader through the varying concepts of servant leadership. Greenleaf is introduced again as an interesting subject matter expert.  The paper seems to lack citations and adequate references to other learning material in this area; this in favour of certain in-text references. This leads to no listed reference or bibliography section at the end.  Most of the content appears to be of a reported factual nature and is well written and easy to understand.

A strength of the paper is consistency in the manner that it focuses on the varying aspects of servant leadership throughout and does not amble off into irrelevant territory.  The characteristics of the servant leader seem somewhat over emphasised as this is also a common thread running through the paper.  Leadership Education is rather an important area and I would have like to see this section expanded upon.  It might be argued that servant leadership is creating a quiet revolution around the world. It may have been around for four decades but the concept itself is relatively undiscovered in a lot of organizations.  Nevertheless, the subject matter is spoken from a level of authority and the author has been very objective in the points that have been made. An interesting and informative discussion paper.