Abstract:
Since Robert Greenleaf put down his seminal leadership ideas dubbed The Servant as Leader, in 1970, there has been a tremendous growth in interest in his ideas and philosophy of servant leadership. Varied reasons have been attributed to this growth of interest. Though this paper will not review the reasons for the growth in interest in Greenleaf ideas, by various scholars, this paper will try to establish whether there are any justifications for labelingServant Leadership “Christian theory.” To do this, this paper looks into the background of the proponent of the theory of servant leadership-Greenleaf and assesses the definition of the concept of servant leadership. Then the paper raises four key arguments that lead to the current argument of whether or not there are any justifications for labelingservant Leadership “Christian theory”? Finally, the paper critically dissects into the philosophical grounding of the concept of servant leadership and illustrates its spiritual vacuity and dogmatic distortion. This study found that there were significant conceptual differences between Greenleaf‟s and the biblical perspective of servant leadership. In general, this study concludes that, Greenleaf concept of servant leadership is deficient in its foundation and cannot be labelled as a Christian theory of leadership.
