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In today's healthcare industry the servant leadership model tends to provide a distinctive way through which to examine leadership behaviors and its relationship to job satisfaction among employees. Thus, this current study attempted to investigate the relationship between job satisfaction and servant leadership characteristics in a public health care facility/hospital in the Southern Caribbean. Convenience sampling has been used to draw a sample of public healthcare employees. 50 medical participants completed hard copies of two survey instruments: Executive Servant Leadership Scale (ESLS) developed by Reed, Vidaver-Cohen, and Colwell (2011) and the Job Satisfaction scale developed by Lucas, Babakus, and Ingram (1990). The Pearson's r correlation was used to determine the relationship between these two variables. The results indicated a moderately positive significant relationship between overall job satisfaction and overall servant leadership. That is, rs(50) = 0.493, p < 0.01. Further, the study found that though there was a positive correlation found between the interpersonal support component of servant leadership and job satisfaction. This was rs(50) = 0.535 p < .01. However, a more positive correlation found between the overall and the altruism component of servant leadership. This was rs(50)=0.634, p < .01.
Keywords: executive servant leadership scale; job satisfaction: servant leadership
According to Kilner and Kilner (2004), to many individuals their entrance in the healthcare field might be considered to be a calling to serve. Likewise, a particular servant leader might perceive one's leadership style as an act to serve others (Blanchard and Hodges, 2003). Therefore, theorists such as Ekundayo (2013) postulated that servant leadership might be the most appropriate for a service oriented organization such as a particular health care organization. Further theorists such as Schwartz and Tumblin (2002) argued that servant leadership is essential in a particular healthcare organization. This is because of the care provided by such an organization tends to have an inborn nature of servitude.
It is telling that according to Rad and Yarmohammadian (2006), job satisfaction among employees in healthcare organizations appears to be an issue as any other types of business organizations. As a result, one might argue that job satisfaction in the health care industry is critical in order to ensure high quality healthcare. Thus, the purpose of the paper is to examine servant leadership as...