PERCEPTIONS OF FACULTY MEMBERS’ REGARDING SERVANT LEADERSHIP PRACTICES OF THE DEPARTMENT HEADS

Abstract

Servant leadership is considered to be the most influential leadership styles at present time. Provision of Service to followers is the essence of this leadership. The followers work best under such leaders and their development rate excels. This study was intended to explore the practices of department heads in a public sector University. Interpretivist paradigm, qualitative method and case study design was used to accomplish the intended objective. Semi-structured interviews were conducted on saturation-based sample of n=16 faculty-members using pre-defined themes of servant leadership in higher education and explored the perceptions of faculty-members. The findings revealed that department heads are servant leaders in terms of behaving ethically, development, emotional healing, empowerment, pioneers, relation building and wisdom. This study confirmed that servant leadership is practiced in given context.