Servant and transformational leadership: a supply chain management perspective

We examine the association between leadership style (transformational and servant) and the type of supply chain (efficient or responsive) and the impact of employee engagement on customer satisfaction. We propose a model for examining the influence of transformational and servant leadership on the efficient and responsive type supply chains. We present 7 propositions and present a novel view of leadership by viewing it through the lens of contextual leadership theory in which the context is defined by the type of supply chain, effective or responsive. While both transformational and servant leadership are viewed as positive, even normative, forms of leadership, we have found that the efficacy of each type of leadership can be influenced by the context in which they operate and especially in supply chain environments.


Conceptual Model
Supply chains have different needs for customer satisfaction. Transformational leaders focus on organizational effectiveness and creating team cultures necessary for the efficient supply chains to optimize production processes and get the product to the customer quickly at the best cost. Servant leaders create employee work engagement and serving cultures to be responsive to customers changing needs. While there is evidence that transformational leaders also create employee work engagement (Zhu [57], Avolio, & Walumbwa [54], 2009), the processes through which this happens are different between the two leadership styles as servant leadership works via follower need satisfaction, and transformational leadership works via perceived leadership effectiveness (van Dierendonck et al., 2014).
In essence, because of the nature of efficient supply chains, in that they require speed and large uniform orders and therefore have a greater need for leadership effectiveness to optimize efficiency, transformational leaders would be more appropriate. In responsive supply chains, there is a fast pace and customized orders and servant leadership would be more appropriate (deSouza & van Dierendonck, 2013). The context under which leaders operate has a strong effect on outcomes, such as customer service satisfaction and perceived leadership efficacy.
We propose the following model in figure 1 for examining the influence of transformational and servant leadership on the efficient and responsive type supply chains. Transformational and servant leadership create a team and servant culture, respectively, as influenced and directed by the context of the supply chain.

Propositions
We propose the link between transformational leadership and supply chain management as follows:

Proposition 1: Transformational leadership has a greater effect on efficient supply chain systems than responsive supply chain systems.
Leadership can be defined as a process of influencing a group or individuals to achieve a common goal [36] (Northouse, 2013). Transformational leadership influences individuals and teams to achieve organizational goals by focusing on followers' motives, meeting those needs and moves the followers beyond self-interest to achieve more than what is usually expected of them from a top-down perspective (Northouse, 2013). What distinguishes transformational leadership from other leadership concepts is the focus on four factors (Bass, 1985).
First, the factor of idealized influence moves the follower beyond self-interest through inspiration, intellectual support and a focus on the individual (Bass, 1999). In doing so, the transformational leader creates higher levels of maturity in the follower. The inspiration is amplified when the leader creates a vision, communicates how it can be achieved and is determined the vision can be achieved. Intellectual support for followers occurs when the leader supports and allows followers to be more innovative and creative. The transformational leader supports the development of the individual follower.
Second, the transformational leader provides the factor of inspirational motivation by communicating high standards of performance and expectations to meet the vision and shared values of the firm (Northouse, 2013). At a high level of follower maturity, followers dedicate themselves to the vision and achieving the standards of performance to support the firm as a whole (Bass, 1999).
Factor three involves the leader that stimulates followers to be innovative and creative by challenging their own beliefs and values and that of the organization (Barling, Weber, and Kelloway, 1996) to develop new ways of viewing old problems. In studies done where leaders exhibited intellectual stimulation, followers exhibited significant increases in organizational commitment (Barling et al., 1996).
Factor four of transformational leadership is individualized consideration (Northouse, 2013). This concept creates the leader's perspective in the follower that the leader does not simply satisfy the individual follower's needs but recognizing and developing the follower's potential to achieve increasingly higher levels of performance.
We now will discuss the following proposition:

Proposition 2: Servant leadership has a greater effect on responsive supply chain systems than efficient supply chain systems.
A bottom-up form of leadership, servant leadership was introduced by Greenleaf [22] (1977) in a series of essays, having been inspired by Herman Hesse's [24] novel A Journey to the East (Hesse, 1956). It is perhaps best described using Greenleaf's definition: Trisha D. Anderson (2020) healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become a servant? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society; will they benefit, or, at least, will they not be further deprived? (Greenleaf, 1977, p. 27) Greenleaf describes servant leadership as a lifelong personal journey in which one's principal concern is to serve with an aspiration to lead (Greenleaf, 1977). Most research concerning servant leadership has been largely theoretical or aimed towards developing assessment tools. Researchers struggled to operationalize the concept, largely due to Greenleaf's description of servant leadership as a way of life [49,50] (Spears, 2004) and his assertion that servant leadership would be difficult to operationalize and apply (Greenleaf, 1977). Parris  leadership that focuses on individual follower needs and transforms self-concern into concern for others within the organization and larger community. The motive of a servant leader is not to promote their agenda but to serve others.
Altruism and morality are important to their self-concept, and those that are unwilling to serve others are unable to engage A team with high potency means that their members collectively see the team as being able to exert effort to reach high performance. We therefore propose: Trisha D. Anderson (2020) Salanova, González-Romá, & Bakker, 2002). Sharma and Kaur [47] (2014) conducted a qualitative content analysis and defined employee work engagement as "the extent to which an employee feels a sense of psychological investment in his/her work so that he/ she is behaviorally (social) and intellectually focused on organizational goals" (p. 45 Our final proposition, proposition 7, is as follows:

Proposition 7: Employee work engagement has a positive association with customer satisfaction.
Employee work engagement is critical to customer satisfaction [25] (Heymann, 2015). The link between customer satisfaction and employee work engagement is of particular interest to employers. A firm that provides survey tools to help evaluate and facilitate performance in the service sector revamped its tools to more closely tie their measures of employee work engagement to customer satisfaction. It was found they were more specifically able to answer the essential questions of their constituents, such as how to cost-effectively increase a customer's intent to recommend and return, how to increase customer retention through employee work engagement, how to correlate employee work engagement and customer satisfaction to customer loyalty, and how employee training efforts impact customer satisfaction and rates of return (Heymann, 2015).
There are examples that relate employee work engagement to various outcomes.

Conclusion
This paper presents a novel view of leadership by viewing it through the lens of contextual leadership theory in which the context is defined by the type of supply chain, effective or responsive (see Figure 1). Both transformational and servant leadership have been studied extensively, but rarely through the context of supply chain. Servant leadership, in particular, has enjoyed a recent upsurge in empirical research (see Eva et al., 2019).While both transformational and servant leadership are viewed as positive, even normative, forms of leadership, the efficacy of each type of leadership can be influenced by the environment. ESCs are utilized by companies because they need to fill large, uniform orders at a fast pace. Transformational leaders are able to create a team culture and we propose that this type of leadership is more effective in ESCs because the ability for employees to work together efficiently and effectively is vital in producing the type of products demanded and getting them to customers quickly and cost-efficiently through the reduction of errors. RSCs are utilized by companies that specialize in small batch, customized orders. Customer demands change frequently and uniquely. Employees must respond to the numerous requirements placed on them by their customers on an individual basis. In order to do so, employees must be highly engaged with their work to meet the specific task requirements. Servant