Morris, Hurt Explore Community-Building through Servant Leadership in New Study

In their article appearing in a recent issue of the International Journal of Servant-Leadership, the Turner College’s Kasey Morris and Kevin Hurt provide a conceptual model depicting how servant leadership can lead to community-building in an organization through various interceding mechanisms at an individual, organizational, and societal level.  Morris and Hurt point out that the individual level of an organization, the stakeholders that servant leaders focus on are individual employees.  Each employee is valued as being capable of growth and development to varying extents.  The servant-leader has a genuine desire to serve followers at an individual level and in doing so, servant leaders can cultivate the best in their followers through one-on-one communication to understand their abilities, needs, desires, goals, and potential.  Morris and Hurt contend that this personalized communication between servant leaders and their followers at the individual level of an organization can be fostered through mentorship.  At the organizational level, the stakeholders are employees as a whole, including managers and executives.  Here, servant leaders attempt to cultivate psychological closeness and high-quality relationships with and between the employees in order to build a sense of relational community throughout the organization in which all employees feel accepted by, valued by, cared for by, and committed to, the group.  Morris and Hurt explain that at this level the culture of the organization will determine how well community is built in the organization at the organizational level.  Servant leaders can encourage a serving culture to develop throughout the organization, which would promote building community through service.  Lastly, servant leaders who are concerned with the societal level of an organization focus on external stakeholders, specifically the communities and societies that the organization serves.  Building close, trusting relationships with these stakeholders facilitates a sense of relational community, as communities and societies outside of an organization are more likely to trust the organization when they believe that they are valued by that organization.  Here, Morris and Hurt assert that relational community, through mutual trust and commitment between the organization and its external stakeholders, can be built at the societal level through the organization’s practice of corporate social responsibility. 

“Perhaps the primary contribution of this study is that it provides further understanding of an understudied characteristic of servant-leadership – building community. Specifically, it our model depicts how servant leadership could foster community-building in an organization at an individual level through mentorship, an organizational level through serving culture, and a societal level through corporate social responsibility.”                          

                                                                                             Kevin Hurt, Turner College of Business

Morris is a graduate student in the Turner College pursuing a Master’s of Science in Organizational Leadership, with a concentration in Leader Development.  She is interested in continuing her research in servant leadership regarding how servant leadership may relate to positive psychology in academic and religious contexts.  In her current position as Career Development Specialist in CSU’s Center for Career Design, she has gained much experience with customer service and creative project development, which she hopes to be able to utilize in her future career as an executive coach.  She plans to conduct research on the interconnections between servant leadership, positive psychology, transformational travel, and experiential learning, with the goal of creating a unique leadership training program for current and up-and-coming organizational leaders.  Prior to entering Columbus State University, Morris earned a B.S. in psychology from Middle Georgia State University.  Hurt is an associate professor of management in the Turner College and a member of the Academy of Management.  Prior to academia, he worked for 15 years with two Fortune 500 companies in the fields of banking and manufacturing.  His primary research interests include servant leadership, conflict, and human resource management.  His work has been published in numerous professional journals and presented at numerous national and international conferences.  Hurt has been recognized as an Outstanding Reviewer by the Academy of Management OB division and is a recipient of the Graduate Faculty of the Year award at CSU.  Finally, he served 6 years in the United States Marine Corps, 4th Marine Division, where he was nationally recognized for his leadership abilities.