Servant leadership and its relationship with organizational learning

The study of servant leadership represents a new trend in the research on leadership in the West, and it is extremely important in the process of building a service-oriented society in China. The concept of servant leadership was coined by Greenleaf (1977) as leaders who can put the needs, wishes and interests of others above their own, and the namral feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. The purpose of servant leadership is to make followers more intelligent, more liberated, better at self-management and more willing to be service providers. In the literature, there are many studies on how servant leadership influences individuals and teams, but more research is needed on the relationship between servant leadership and organizational learning. In view of the purpose of servant leadership, it defines and explores the relationship between leaders and subordinates from a new perspective, and it defines leadership in the mode of mutual sendees, which is particularly important for organizational learning that needs internal impetus, just as Senge (1990) believed that in order to create a learning organization, we need a coaching leadership that provide greater service for subordinates and enterprises. Therefore, servant leadership is of vital importance for organizational learning.

The presentation of learning leadership and questions to be studied

Although learning leadership has been discussed in practice, scholars' definitions of learning leadership are disparate. Senge (1990) believes that learning leadership requires leaders to show coaching leadership style. This study believes that learning leadership is a process of interaction effect between leaders and subordinates, in which leaders constantly motivate subordinates to strive for self-improvement and lead the whole company to continuously improve organizational learning capability.

In exploring the construct of learning leadership, this study uses the research model of competency in strategic human resource management of Ulrich and Brockbank (2005) to define learning leadership. According to the earlier synthetic analysis of the literature, from the perspective of effect, learning leadership may be the integration of four leadership styles to comprehensively play an effective role in promoting organizational learning. It can be concluded that, first, the learning leadership of Chinese companies cannot exist outside the context of Chinese traditional culture and should instead show some paternalistic leadership style with Chinese culmral characteristics. Second, in today’s China with deepening reform, learning leadership needs to involve the transformational leadership, and in the maintenance and coordination of daily management, it also needs a certain transactional leadership style. Finally, as China's sendees attract more attention in world economic development and as China increasingly advocates for a service-oriented society, if firms genuinely want to tap into the potential of learning and growth from within, a sen-ant leadership style is needed. Therefore, the following hypothesis is set forth:

Hypothesis 14:

The structural model of learning leadership is the integration of the four leadership styles covered in this chapter.

In terms of the effect of learning leadership, although this study defines learning leadership from the perspective of leadership style that can promote organizational learning, different aspects of learning leadership have different effects on different aspects of organizational learning. Likewise, according to the contingent theory, in different development stages of a corporate organization, the organization will have to solve different main business management problems, and the environment and requirements for the organization will also vary and the requirements for the learning leadership model will differ. Therefore, this smdy proposes the following hypotheses:

Hypothesis 15:

Learning leadership has different significant effect on the specific dimensions of organizational learning.

Hypothesis 16:

In different development stages of the company, the model of learning leadership on organizational learning is different.