Campus Location
Dallas Campus (Online)
Date of Award
1-2021
Document Type
Dissertation
Department
Organizational Leadership
Degree Name
Doctor of Education
Committee Chair or Primary Advisor
Brian Cole
Second Committee Member or Secondary Advisor
Robert Haussmann
Third Committee Member or Committee Reader
Jose Perez
Abstract
Workplace conflict depletes nonprofit organizations of valuable time and energy. Organizations spend millions of dollars because of the financial and human cost of unresolved interpersonal conflict in the workplace that stem from ineffective leadership behaviors. A leader’s ineffective behaviors have been linked to the organizational pressures that can cause and spread counterproductive workplace behavior, which results in interpersonal conflict and great financial cost. The purpose of this quantitative correlational study was to determine the relationship between servant leadership behaviors and interpersonal workplace conflict in nonprofit organizational settings in the United States. Specifically, the intended goal of this research was to understand if leaders utilizing a servant leadership style reduced interpersonal conflict in the workplace. Correlational analysis investigated the relationships between servant leadership and interpersonal workplace conflict, using an online survey of 329 nonprofit employees in the United States. Participants completed the Servant Leadership Survey that measures servant leadership behaviors through eight subscales and the Interpersonal Conflict in Organizations Scale that measures interpersonal workplace conflict through four subscales. Overall, results suggested a significant negative relationship between higher levels of servant leadership and lower levels of interpersonal workplace conflict. The results support the initial hypothesis that higher levels of servant leadership lead to lower levels of interpersonal conflict in the workplace.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
M. Freeborough, Lorena, "The Effect of Servant Leadership on Nonprofit Workplace Conflict" (2021). Digital Commons @ ACU, Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 299.
https://digitalcommons.acu.edu/etd/299