Impact of Servant Leadership on Employee Engagement in Asian Organizations

A systematic review of 14 high-quality studies reveals conflicting results regarding the indirect effects of servant leadership within Asian organizations. The principles of servant leadership, when implemented within the context of Asian organizational culture, encounter distinct challenges compared to Western environments. Such a situation represents a considerable concern as organizations globally increasingly adopt servant leadership models, thus highlighting the necessity to comprehend cross-cultural effectiveness. This systematic review synthesizes peer-reviewed literature from the EBSCO and Consensus AI databases from 2005 to 2024 to examine the influence of servant leadership on employee engagement in Asian organizational settings. Four principal themes emerged from the analysis: the cultural impact on the dimensions of servant leadership, favorable employee outcomes mediated by trust and competency development, the indirect effect of servant leadership through mediators, and methodological concerns inherent in cross-cultural research. These themes highlight the imperative for culturally tailored leadership strategies and measurement tools in Asian organizations. Future research can employ longitudinal designs with more substantial sample sizes to establish causality and ethnographic studies to investigate the lived experiences of servant leadership across diverse Asian cultural contexts, thereby reflecting the variety in the continent’s sub-regions. This approach will enhance the comprehension of the effectiveness of servant leadership across different cultural frameworks and further improve organizational leadership practices.