Servant Leadership Theory And Practice

Nowadays, the research of servant leadership has already become hot in management philosophy field. But this kind of management thought is not the unique characteristic of modern society. While we know the nature of service is the activity in progress to satisfy others or society's need and management is the systematic activity to make the process of attaining individual or organization objectives accord with specially appointed request (economical , effective etc.), we will understand that management has the service characteristic. We could call any management thought as servant leadership thought if only it emphasizes to satisfy employees'need——such thought is rooted in human civilization . In the west, Plato brought forward "Ruling and benefiting for the people whom are governed"; Jesus exhorted people "to act as everybody's servant ". in the east, the Confucian School definitely suggested that "the people is lofty while the monarch is light "; Taoist advocated that "the heart is the heart with common people"; Legalism demanded rulers"obey popular feelings"; military commander believed that leaders need to achieve "looking at a private as loving his own child "; Mohist School emphasized "love-all" ; the Eclectics persists in "obeying the people "; Sun Yat-sen's thought"serve all the people"was a classical idea of public servant thought. The classical Marxist authors have been pushed forward the further development of servant leadership thought. Marx and Engels have revealed fundamentally the people's historical subjective position; Lenine raised distinct banner to opposing to bureaucracy; Mao Zedong put this thought into Chinese revolution and construction in depth with "serving the people". Contemporary servant leadership thinkers who taking Greenleaf and Deng Xiaoping as the represents suggested respectively that "the leader is service" under different society background of East and West. This was the respond to the higher request in scientizing and personalizing of management in the process transforming from industrial society to knowledge society nowadays.The servant leadership thought which rooted in human civilization becoming the hot topic in modern society need more theory explanation. The Marxian theory of dual characters of management provided the analytical implement. Taking managing practice as object of study, the dual-characters-management theory provided the fundamental analytical viewpoint of scientification and personalization. We can analyze and research the scientize level of management from management efficiency, the complexity of organization and management implement. Since human nature is a concrete historical management philosophy category, we can analyze and research the scientize level of management from the range, quality and quantity of personalizing of management. We can come to a conclusion from two aspects research above: economic formation of society is the basis of dividing fundamental management type. Therefore, management can be divided into agricultural society management, industrial society management and knowledge society management. Because the real socialist society has its particularity and belong to none of above societies, we need list its management type alone. On the whole, the agricultural society management had low level of scientification and personalization; the industrial society management had made great progress in the two respects but still has extremely large space for development; real socialist society management has lower scientification level than the level of industrial society management while it has a little higher personalization level than the level of industrial society management. The managements of industrial society and real socialist society are all in ceaseless development process in scientizing and personalizing and lead to knowledge society management.Our society are transforming into knowledge society. Sum up the research results Daniel Bell, John Naisbitt, Alvin Toffler and Peter Drucker, we can believe that knowledge society has higher request obviously than any society form in the past in two aspects of scientification and personalization. In the aspect of scientification, social product efficiency of knowledge society has reached unprecedented altitude and has brought forward higher request to management efficiency; Organization in knowledge society has show high level complexity in diversity, development, opening to the outside world, nonlinearity and Suddenly appear; Knowledge also substitutes for capital and becomes the most important implement of management. In the aspect of personalization, knowledge society takes maximization personalization range as its target and the demand put all-round and high level personalization management into practice. Facing the request of knowledge society management, the rising of knowledge workers who own higher science and technology knowledge and apply the science and technology knowledge into working make servant leadership become necessity. The development of modern science, technology and education leads to the rising of knowledge workers and provide scientize and personalization condition sufficiently for the servant leadership which has high scientize and personalization level. This adapt to the request of management of knowledge society.The servant leadership philosophy that adapts to the management demands of knowledge society includes three fundamental contents: Firstly, the nature of management is service. Service is the management essential characteristic, and management is a two level service system which facing the exterior object and the internal members of organization. Management development process is the process whose service characteristic strengthens unceasingly. Servant leadership as the highest management form has the highest service characteristic. As a result, servant leadership philosophy takes the service as the nature of management. Secondly, the relationship between managers and employees is inter-subjects relationship. The traditional subject philosophy has a lot of limits. Inter-subjects philosophy replaces subject philosophy from three aspects: replaceing subject-object relationship with subject-subject relationship, replaceing obsolute unite principle with rational diffrence principle, and replaceing subordinate principle with interactive principle. This provides philosophy explanation for the equal, interactive and close relation between managers and employees. This also becomes the philosophy base of contemporary public servant thought. Thirdly, the base target of management is to realize people's free and all-round development. The position that servant leadership taking service as its core provides fine spirit basis and material base for realization of free and all-round development. The sufficient self-management of the member of servant leadership organization makes free and all-round development become true. With the guide of servant leadership philosophy, combining contemporary management practice achievements, we can divide base servant leadership practice into building common vision, constructing developing organization, authorizing and stimulating. Building common vision refers to form synthetical concept of organize value orientation and future target and make it guide practice; constructing developing organization refers to changing study achievements into develop achievements of organization base on constructing learning organization; Authorizing refers to managers awarding authority or duty to employees and instruct the employees to be in charge of administrative or daily routine work; Stimulating refers to attain organization's objectives through high level efforts. These efforts take satisfying some individual need as condition. Building common vision is standard abstract service while stimulates is standard concrete service. Constructing developing organization and authorizing are transition service from abstract to concrete. Through these services, we bring forward new corresponding requests to enterprise, the government and administration of nonprofit organization in knowledge society. We should take concrete conditions of different organizations into account sufficiently and effort practice servant leadership.