Um estudo sobre os atributos da liderança servidora na percepção de estudantes de uma instituição cristã privada de ensino superior

Abstract

The theory of servant leadership, supported by the intrinsic values of human dignity, proposes a model of servant leader, one whose priority is to serve, who seeks to put the well-being of his followers first. In this sense, this Dissertation is an exploratory-descriptive research, with a cross-section and a quantitative approach, on the Attributes of Servant Leadership in the Perception of Students at a Private Christian Institution of Higher Education in the interior of Bahia. The theoretical basis of the research sought to describe the concepts that involve the theory of Leadership, its historical evolution going through classical and contemporary approaches, resulting in the arguments that record servant leadership in the literature. Thus, the study aimed to “Identify the aspects of servant leadership that are most valued by students of Administration and Theology courses at a Private Christian Institution of Higher Education”. As a data collection instrument, the model developed and validated by Van Dierendonck and Nuijten (2011) was adopted, which measures servant leadership in eight dimensions characterized as essential behaviors of the servant leader: empowerment; support/support; responsibility; forgiveness; courage; authenticity; humility; and stewardship/administration, in the Portuguese version prepared by Martins (2019) and revised for this research by an English language teacher, adapted according to the needs of the study, composed of Likert-type scales. The sample was made up of 225 academics from the Administration and Theology courses of the studied unit, duly enrolled, who responded to the questionnaire in printed format and in person. The data were analyzed using procedures linked to descriptive statistics, taking the mean as a measure of central tendency and the standard deviation as a measure of dispersion, in addition to the percentage frequency represented in graphs. Thus, through the results of the comparative analysis between the two courses, it is clear that for each group researched, some dimensions seem to be more important than others, in common we have that the dimensions of stewardship/administration, humility and empowerment respectively occupied the first, second and third place in the importance of the dimensions, courage occupies the seventh position and forgiveness the last position, both in the perception of the respondents when analyzed by course and by gender. While the support, responsibility and authenticity dimensions occupied different positions in the opinion of the researched group, for Administration respondents the responsibility dimension occupies the fourth position; support/support for the farm; and authenticity in sixth position. In the opinion of Theology respondents, the support/support dimension occupies the fourth position; authenticity the farm; and responsibility in sixth position. Thus, the findings of this research highlight the importance of people in leadership positions adopting behaviors and characteristics inherent to servant leadership.