| Information technology management is essential to organizational decision-making, strategy, and success. While information technology impacts stakeholders at all levels of the organization, information technology managers have been criticized for practicing an autocratic command-and-control management style, showing minimal concern for the human element. Servant leadership theory provides a method for cultivating human resources as an essential organizational asset. Given potential benefits to organizational performance, many contemporary organizations across diverse industries have accepted servant leadership theory, practiced in the form of leadership characteristics; however, a deficit of empirical research exists examining the relationship between servant leadership and information technology management. The purpose of this non-experimental, quantitative study was to determine to what extent information technology managers demonstrated the characteristics of servant leadership theory and to identify what correlations existed, if any, among the servant leadership characteristics exhibited by information technology management, based on stakeholder perspectives using organizational position groupings of information technology management, information technology non-management, and non-information technology. A survey was administered to collect study participant demographics and to determine the extent to which the presence of servant leadership characteristics were exhibited by information technology management as perceived by study participants. The survey, using a Likert type scale, was distributed to study participants via the professional website LinkedIn(c) utilizing QualtricsRTM, an online survey tool. Excel(c) was used to import, scrub and code the data into a readable format for the SPSS(c) software, which was used to conduct statistical analysis on the resulting 214 surveys. Tests included means, ANOVA, and multiple regression. Findings of this study are intended to enrich the existing body of knowledge connecting servant leadership theory and information technology management and should provide useful information about organizational leadership behavior. Results from this study indicated a relationship between servant leadership characteristics and information technology management as perceived by study participants does exist. The strength of the relationship differed based on the individual characteristics. Recommendations were made for areas of future research and application. |
