Leadership beyond Narcissism: On the Role of Compassionate Love as Individual Antecedent of Servant Leadership
Open accessAbstract
While we already know a lot about the outcomes and boundary conditions of servant leadership, there is still a need for research on its antecedents. Building on the theory of purposeful work behavior and further theorizing by van Dierendonck and Patterson (2015), we examine if leaders’ propensity for compassionate love will evoke servant leadership behavior. At the same time, we contrast compassionate love to leaders’ narcissism as psychological counterpart to compassionate love, because narcissism is not associated with leader effectiveness, but with leader emergence instead. We collected data from 170 leader-follower-dyads in a field study in Germany, while measuring leaders’ compassionate love and narcissism, and followers’ perceptions of servant leadership. We found a positive association between leaders’ compassionate love and servant leadership behavior, while narcissism was negatively associated with servant leadership. Theoretical and practical implications, as well as pathways for future research are discussed.
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Leader's narcissism is negatively associated with servant leadership behaviour.
“Narcissism was negatively associated with servant leadership”
From Whither compassionate leadership? A systematic review (2024) · cites this paper as Brouns et al. (2020)
Compassionate love is positively associated with servant leadership.
“Compassionate love is positively associated with servant leadership”
From Whither compassionate leadership? A systematic review (2024) · cites this paper as Brouns et al. (2020)
Leaders' self-assessment of compassionate love is positively correlated with servant leadership behaviour as perceived by employees.
“Leaders’ self-assessment of compassionate love was positively co-related with the servant leadership behaviour as perceived by the employees”
From Whither compassionate leadership? A systematic review (2024) · cites this paper as Brouns et al. (2020)
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- Authors
- Brouns, T., Externbrink, K., & Blesa Aledo, P. S.
- Affiliations
- Universidad Católica de Murcia (ES)
- FOM University of Applied Sciences for Economics and Management (DE)
- Economía y Empresa, UCAM Universidad Católica San Antonio de Murcia, 30107 Murcia, Spain
- Corresponding author
- Brouns, Tim
- Venue
- Administrative Sciences
- Publisher
- MDPI AG
- Published
- 2020-03-26
- Volume
- 10
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 20
- ISSN
- 2076-3387 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3013925275
- Cited by
- 20
- References
- 37
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 1
- FWCI
- 2.98
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- dx.doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Administrative Sciences (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- RIUCAM (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Econstor (Econstor) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management › Job Satisfaction and Organizational Behavior
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Strategy and Management › Leadership and Management in Organizations
- Social Sciences › Demography › Workplace Spirituality and Leadership
- Keywords
- servant leadership, compassionate love, narcissism, leadership emergence, leader-follower dyads
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