Colleagues' Perception on Servant Leadership

ICIC International ⓒ2014 ISSN 1881-803X pp. 165–171

ICIC Express Letters Volume 8, Number 1, 2014

Colleagues’ Perception on Servant Leadership Explained by Fuzzy Measurement Dian-Fu Chang1, His-Meng Wang2 1

Graduate Institute of Educational Policy and Leadership, Tamkang University, Taiwan [email protected] 2

Yun-Ho Junior High Schools, New Taipei City, Taiwan [email protected]

ABSTRACT. Servant leadership has less been mentioned in previous leadership discussions until in recent literature. Servant leadership emphasizes respect, care, spirit and attitude of the service in organizations. The servant leadership allows leaders to pay more attention to the persons, face the challenges of uncertainty, and stimulate enthusiasm. This study aims to determine the colleagues’ perceptions on the servant leadership. A self-designed fuzzy questionnaire was used to tackle the specific servant leadership in organizations. The target groups are 425 teachers in 15 junior high schools in New Taipei City. The valid samples are 341. It represents 80.2% response rate. This study applied fuzzy statistics to transform the interval data and interpret the results. The findings provide suggestions for those who are responsible for supervising, evaluating, and developing people in leadership positions or who want to analyze their leadership performance for further development. Lessons from these schools may provide some useful information for enhancing leadership. This study suggests that the fuzzy distance is an alternative way to interpret a specific issue. Keywords: servant leadership, fuzzy distance, fuzzy means, fuzzy statistics

1. Introduction. Servant leadership emphasizes respect, care, spirit, and attitude of service in organizations. It is different from the traditional one. This kind of leadership allows leaders to pay more attention to the persons, face challenges of uncertainty, and stimulate their enthusiasm for service. But the servant leadership has less been mentioned in previous leadership discussions. Recently, the servant leadership has caused many concerns in different organizations. However, we have a little knowledge about the servant leadership in schools. This study aims to examine the colleagues’ perceptions on the servant leadership in schools. We assume that teachers have received the principal’s servant leadership and teachers’ perceptions can be used to evaluate this kind of leadership style. Given this purpose, the main research questions are as follows: 1.1 How is the importance of servant leadership perceived by colleagues? 1.2 How is the actual servant leadership perceived by colleagues? 1.3 What are the differences between the importance and the actual performance of servant 1



leadership in specific settings? 2. Literature Review. 2.1. Definition of servant leadership. Greenleaf’s “Servant Leadership”, published in the 1977, has a well defined “what is servant leadership”. He addressed the leaders have a natural sense of service to others. It is a conscious choice leading this behavior through the service to others. Servant-oriented leaders will transform their followers and make them healthy, intelligent, more freedom and autonomy [1]. Reinke also responded to this argument and claimed that the servant leader always placed the needs of others and the goals of the organization in the first [2]. Greenleaf put forward the concept of servant leadership which had influenced on the development of leadership and management theory. 2.2. The characteristics of servant leadership. There are various studies addressed the characteristics of servant leadership, however the current literature shows different views. Spears listed ten characteristics of servant leadership behaviors which have become the most commonly mentioned behaviors [3-6]. The characteristics of servant leadership include listening, awareness, healing, sympathy, stewardship, conceptualization, persuasion, foresight, building community, and commitment to the growth of people. According to the literature, the dominant ideas of servant leadership include listening and empathy, integrity to serve, and Charisma of team leadership. 3. Methods. Fuzzy has become a tool for measuring ambiguous concepts in science and social science for many years [7-9]. Previous studies have claimed that using of traditional numerical models cannot explain complex and ambiguous phenomena properly [8,10]. Fuzzy concept was proposed by Zadeh [11] and was applied to confront the issues of dynamic environment for a long time. Various studies claimed that the fuzzy measurement provides a more reasonable description of numerous data and their transformations [12,13]. Followed the idea, we assumed that the perception measurement for servant leadership is fit the fuzzy logics. 3.1. Sampling and fuzzy questionnaire. In this study, we use stratified random sampling to select 15 high schools and invite 425 teachers to fill the fuzzy questionnaires to determine their perceptions on servant leadership. The total validated samples are 341, it represents 80.24% return rate. The questionnaire was designed to tackle the vague behaviors of servant leadership exerted by principals. The participants were asked to answer the questions according to their perceptions on the importance of servant leadership and the actual performance by their principals. The importance of servant leadership and actual performance can be evaluated in 0 to 9 scales according to the membership function (possibility). For example, when the participant expressed that the “importance” of servant leadership is in the range of 4-7, it means 4 is the lower bound 2



and 7 is the upper bound of the membership in the question. Similarly, the actual performance can be expressed as 6 and 8 on the scale [13,14]. The example of questionnaires is listed as follows: Degree of importance 0

1

2

3

4 5 ○

6

Actual performance 7 8 ○

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6 7 ○

8 9 ○

3.2. Research framework. In this study, we considered the teachers’ demography and principals’ servant leadership in our research framework. According to the previous literature, the principals’ servant leadership might include listening and empathy, integrity to serve, and Charisma of team leadership. The research framework is shown as FIGURE 1. Principals’ Servant Leadership Degree of importance

Background variable

1. Listening and empathy 2. Integrity to serve 3. Charisma of team leadership

Principals’ Servant Leadership Gender

Actual Performance 1. Listening and empathy 2. Integrity to serve 3. Charisma of team leadership

FIGURE 1. A framework of research 3.3. Fuzzy mean and defuzzification (R). This study applied fuzzy mean and defuzzification to transform the fuzzy interval data. The transform methods have shown in Definitions 1 and Definition 2 [10,13,15]. Definition 1. Fuzzy mean (data with interval values). Let U be the universal set and {Fxi  [ai , bi ], ai , bi  R, i  1,...,n} be a sequence of random fuzzy samples on U. The fuzzy mean is

defined as follows: 1 n 1 n Fx  [  ai ,  bi ] n i 1 n i 1

(1)

Example 1. Let x1 =[3,5], x 2 =[4,6], x3 =[3,4], x 4 =[5,7], and x5 =[3,6] be the evaluation of satisfaction in Math course by five students with fuzzy interval scale. Then the result of fuzzy mean for the evaluation is listed as follows: 3



Fx =[

3 4  353 5 6 4 7 6 ] ＝[3.6, 5.6] , 5 5

Definition 2. Defuzzification for a fuzzy number on R [10,15]. Let χ=[a, b] (a≠b) be an interval fuzzy number on U. The defuzzification number Rχ of [a, b] is then defined as follows:

Rx 

ln(1  b  a ) ab  (1  ) 2 ba

(2)

Example 2. Let χ=[2, 5], then Rχ= 2  5  (1  ln(1  5  2 ) )  4.04. 52

2

3.4. Distance between triangular samples with interval data. Definition 3. Distance between triangular samples of interval data set (as FIGURE 2). Let U be the universe of discourse. Let {χi=(a, b, c), i=1,2,3} be three samples from U, with center

c  ai  * hi , the distance between the triangular ai  bi  ci , high hi =1, and area Ai = i 2 3 samples χ1, andχ2 (χ1 = important of servant leadership, χ2 = actual performance of servant Ci 

leadership) are defined as χ1[C1,A1] , and χ2[C2,A2], then the transform formula is listed as follows [10, 15]: d(χ1, χ2)= Ci  C j + ln(1  Ai )  ln(1  A j ) Ai

| Aj |

Membership function

FIGURE 2. Triangular fuzzy numbers Example 3. Let two sets of interval data be χ1=[1,3,5 ], χ2=[4,6,7] Then χ1=[(1+3+5)/3, (5-1)/2]=[3,2], χ2=[(4+6+7)/3, (7-4)/2]=[5.7,1.5] d(χ1, χ2)= 3  5.7  ln(1  2)  ln(1  1.5) =2.64 2

1.5

4

(3)



4. Results. This study analyzed the high school teachers’ perceptions on servant leadership in schools in terms of the teachers evaluate their perceptions on the important and actual performance of servant leadership for principals. The fuzzy questionnaire was designed to collect interval data and the results of data transformation are listed as follows: 4.1. The importance of servant leadership. TABLE 1 shows the rankings of importance of teachers' perceptions on principals’ servant leadership. The first three importance of the perceptions are 3-1 “my principal do not compel teachers through her/his authority to obey (7.91)”, 3-2 “my principal can communicate her/his own ideas and thoughts clearly to teachers (7.53)”, and 3-3 “my principal can deliver things to teachers and do not interfere with them (7.51)”. In this study, we found all the defuzzifications of importance of servant leadership are over 7.0 in our fuzzy scale range from 0-9. TABLE 1. The importance of principals’ servant leadership perceived by teachers Items 3-1

Contents of servant leadership My principal do not compel teachers through her/his

Fuzzy means

R

[6.7,8.3]

7.91

[6.1,8.1]

7.53

[6.1,8.1]

7.51

[5.8,8.2]

7.50

authority to obey 3-2

My principal can communicate her/his own ideas and thoughts clearly to teachers

3-3

My principal distributes things to teachers and s/he does not interfere with them

3-4

My principal can observe the traits of teachers cautiously and take their strength

2-1

My principal can unselfish and dedicate to the school

[6.0,7.9]

7.40

1-1

My principal can enlighten teachers and relieve their

[5.9,7.9]

7.35

emotion and distress 1-2

My principal can take into account of different views

[5.8,7.9]

7.34

2-2

My principal can keep servant attitudes to deal with

[5.8,7.8]

7.29

school affairs

4.2. The actual performance of servant leadership. TABLE 2 shows that the teachers’ perceptions on actual servant leadership in their schools. Typically, the fuzzy means and their defuzzifications (Rs) are declined. The better three are 1-2 “my principal can take into account of different views (5.08)”, 2-1 “my principal can unselfish and dedicate to the school (4.73)”, and 2-2 “my principal can keep servant attitudes to deal with school affairs (4.53)”. The principals’ actual performance in “charisma of team leadership” has shown lower fuzzy mean and defuzzification (R) than do the other items. 5



TABLE 2. Actual performance of principals’ servant leadership perceived by teachers Items 1-2 2-1 2-2 1-1 3-1 3-3 3-2 3-4

Contents of servant leadership My principal can take into account of different views My principal can unselfish and dedicate to the school My principal can keep servant attitudes to deal with school affairs My principal can enlighten teachers and relieve their emotion and distress My principal do not compel teachers through her/his authority to obey My principal distributes things to teachers and s/he does not interfere with them My principal can communicate her/his own ideas and thoughts clearly to teachers My principal can observe the traits of teachers cautiously and take their strength

Fuzzy means [3.6,5.7] [3.3,5.2] [3.3,4.9]

R 5.08 4.73 4.53

[3.3,4.7]

4.40

[3.3,4.6]

4.33

[2.0,5.2]

4.12

[2.5,4.3]

3.88

[1.2,3.3]

3.26

4.3. The fuzzy distance of importance and actual performance of servant leadership. The fuzzy distance is used to examine the gap between the importance and the actual performance of servant leadership perceived by teachers. The fuzzy distance is transformed by fuzzy mean using definition 3 and Formula 3. The greater fuzzy distance value indicates it has larger gap between the importance and the actual performance of servant leadership. The results of transformation show in TABLE 3. The range of fuzzy distance is from 2.27 to 4.34. It means there is a gap between the importance and the actual performance of servant leadership perceived by teachers. Especially, the item 3-4 “my principal can observe the traits of teachers cautiously and take their strength” (d=4.34) has indicated the biggest gap. TABLE 3. The fuzzy distance of importance and actual performance of servant leadership Servant leadership Listening and empathy Integrity to serve

Charisma of team leadership

1-1 My principal can enlighten teachers and relieve their emotion and distress 1-2 My principal can take into account of different views 2-1 My principal can unselfish and dedicate to the school 2-2 My principal can keep servant attitudes to deal with school affairs 3-1 My principal do not compel teachers through her/his authority to obey 3-2 My principal can communicate her/his own ideas and thoughts clearly to teachers 3-3 My principal distributes things to teachers and s/he does not interfere with them 3-4 My principal can observe the traits of teachers cautiously and take their strength

Note. Ranking was used to indicate the relative fuzzy distance. 6

Fuzzy distance 2.94

Ranking 5

2.27

8

2.87

6

2.57

7

3.58

4

3.66

2

3.59

3

4.34

1



4.4. The fuzzy distance between importance and actual performance of servant leadership. We also considered the gender of those teachers to examine their different perceptions on the importance and the actual performance of servant leadership. The fuzzy distance was used to determine the differences. The results reveal there are larger gap in the items of 1-1, 1-2, and 2-2 (i.e., their |dM-dF| are over 1.0), see TABLE 4. In this case, the findings may suggest that the principals need to take more effort to enlighten and relieve female teachers’ emotion and distress issues in schools. When principals face the female teachers, they need to exert better servant attitudes to deal with school affairs. Principals also need to take into account of different views, especially when the views come from the male teachers. TABLE 4. The fuzzy distance between importance and actual performance of servant leadership perceived by gender \ Servant leadership Listening and empathy

Integrity to serve

Charisma of team leadership

Gender \

Male dM

1-1 Enlighten and relieve teachers’ emotion and distress 1-2 Take into account of different views 2-1 Unselfish and dedicate to the school 2-2 Servant attitudes to deal with school affairs 3-1 Do not compel teachers through her/his authority to obey 3-2 Communicate her/his ideas and thoughts to teachers clearly 3-3 Distribute things to teachers and do not interfere with them 3-4 Observe the traits of teachers cautiously and take their strength

Female dF

|dM-dF|

1.61

4.51

2.90

3.43

2.22

1.21

2.74

2.54

0.20

1.76

4.51

2.75

3.56

3.63

0.11

3.91

3.47

0.44

4.49

4.27

0.22

4.03

4.01

0.02

Notes. 1. |dM-dF| means the fuzzy distance between the importance and the actual performance of principals’ servant leadership perceived by gender; 2. The items of 1-1, 1-2, and 2-2 show |dM-dF| > 1.0 5. Conclusions. The result reveals the teachers recognized the importance of servant leadership in schools. While the principal’s actual servant leadership is low perceived by teachers. According to the findings, we suggest that the school principals need to change their leadership style to fit the servant leadership. This study also provides suggestions for those who are responsible for supervising, evaluating, and developing people in leadership positions. Lessons from these schools may provide some useful information for enhancing leadership. This study shows that the fuzzy questionnaire is a reasonable way to collect interval data from 7



ambiguous issues for further study. The fuzzy statistics can be applied to interpret the importance and actual performance of principals’ servant leadership. This study suggests that the fuzzy distance is an alternative way to interpret a specific issue in future study. REFERENCES

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