S
Service Leadership in the
Service Era
Daniel T.L. Shek1, Po Chung2 and Xiaoqin Zhu1
1
Department of Applied Social Sciences, The
Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong,
China
2
Hong Kong Institute of Service Leadership and
Management, Hong Kong, China
Synonyms
HKI-SLAM (Hong Kong Institute of Service
Leadership & Management) Model; Service lead-
ership education; Service Leadership Theory
Background and Definition of Service
Leadership
Throughout the past few decades, a transforma-
tion has been seen in advanced economies,
whereby these economies are shifting from an
industrial to post-industrial model. This means
that service sectors are playing an increasingly
important role in the global market while
manufacturing industries are gradually shrinking
in relative size. This is especially true in Hong
Kong, where service economies accounted for
92.2% of the gross domestic product (GDP) in
2016 (The World Bank 2018). While manufactur-
ing economies are characterized by mass-
# Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018
D. C. Poff, A. C. Michalos (eds.), Encyclopedia of Business and Professional Ethics,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23514-1_367-1
produced goods through standardized procedures,
proficient task-related skills, and by using top-
down leadership styles with highly-centralized
decision making, the main outputs in service
economies are personalized services that involve
substantial interactions between service providers
and recipients. Service economies favor a service
mindset and “bottom-up” leadership style with
distributed leadership and empowerment (Shek
et al. 2018). Since interpersonal interactions play
a key role in service delivery, “doing the right
thing” by adopting “correct” values is more
important than merely “doing the things right”
by following the proper procedures. Indeed, a
leader’s morality has been historically empha-
sized in Chinese communities, given the morals-
oriented nature of Confucian values and collective
Chinese culture.
The development of service economies calls
for leaders who have humanistic orientation,
ethics, and willingness as well as capability to
satisfy a wide range of needs of different stake-
holders. However, existing leadership models
only partially address the leadership qualities
most appropriate for service economies. For
example, the transformational leadership model
points to ethical concerns of leadership but rarely
discusses as service leader’s competence and ser-
vice mindset (Shek et al. 2018). Hence, there is an
urgent need for a holistic leadership model that
can guide leadership education and practice in the
service era. In order to address such need in Hong
Kong, Po Chung, the co-founder of DHL
2 Service Leadership in the Service Era
International and Chairman Emeritus of DHL
Express (Hong Kong) and Chairman of the
Hong Kong Institute of Service Leadership &
Management (HKI-SLAM), proposed the concept
of “service leadership” and the Service Leader-
ship Theory. Chung defined service leadership as
a service “satisfying needs by consistently provid-
ing quality personal service to everyone one
comes into contact with, including one’s self,
others, groups, communities, systems, and envi-
ronments” (Shek et al. 2015a).
The Service Leadership Theory has been used
to guide leadership education at the eight univer-
sities funded by the Hong Kong Government,
with the aim of nurturing students toward greater
effectiveness as service leaders (Shek and Chung
2015). We have further examined this Service
Leadership Theory by investigating the “dark
side” of service leadership and developing assess-
ment tools measuring service leadership attributes
(Shek et al. in press, 2017a; Shek and Lin 2017).
In the following sections, we will outline propo-
sitions from Service Leadership Theory, the dark
side of service leadership, education of service
leadership in Hong Kong universities, and the
development of service leadership assessment
tools.
Propositions from Service Leadership
Theory
Service Leadership Theory shares some common-
alities with some existing leadership models, such
as ethical concerns and the concept of satisfying
followers’ needs in the transformational leader-
ship model (Shek et al. 2018). Nevertheless, Ser-
vice Leadership Theory has its distinct features,
including the service mindset, a new paradigm for
defining leadership, key determinants of effective
service leadership, and the consideration of con-
textual values, particularly from Confucianism
(Shek et al. 2015a).
First, Service Leadership Theory strongly
emphasizes service orientation. Unlike traditional
leadership models where a leader-follower rela-
tionship is hierarchical in nature and a leader
holds high status and power to maximize personal
interests, Service Leadership Theory regards lead-
ership itself as a service that satisfies a wide scope
of needs. These needs include the needs of the
self, others, groups, communities, Societies, and
environments (Shek and Lin 2015a). According to
this, a good service leader collaborates with
others, values others’ and one’s own well-being,
and transcends self-interest to serve others. In
other words, a good service leader is expected to
have a service heart and willingness to provide
high-quality service to others.
Second, Service Leadership Theory differs
from other models that call for leading others as
the main focus. Service Leadership Theory asserts
that leadership manifests in three realms, includ-
ing self, others, and systems. This reflects the
multilevel and systemic approach to leadership
(Shek and Lin 2015a). In fact, self-leadership in
terms of managing and improving oneself in var-
ious areas is strongly emphasized. The underlying
belief is that a person is unable to lead others well
or contribute to society’s well-being unless he or
she can lead him or herself productively. This
philosophy incorporates the Chinese Confucian
thoughts holding that one should engage in con-
stant self-evaluation and self-reflection in order to
regulate oneself well and improve continuously.
This subsequently results in interpersonal har-
mony and social stability, as The Great Learning
(“Daxue,” 大學) maintains that “only after culti-
vating yourself, can you manage your household;
only after managing your household, can you
govern the country; only after governing the coun-
try can you bring harmony to the world” (“shen
xiu er hou jia qi, jia qi er hou guo zhi, guo zhi er
hou tian xia ping,” 身修而後家齊, 家齊而後國
治, 國治而後天下平).
Third, while the traditional belief portrays a
leader as a superior, talented, and great individual,
Service Leadership Theory claims that everyone
can be and is a leader at any given moment (Shek
and Lin 2015a). Primarily, this notion recognizes
each individual’s potential to lead with his or her
own strengths. With this in mind, a service leader
is humble and open-minded, able to identify his or
her followers’ potential and nurture them to
become service leaders as well. In other words,
good service leaders serve as mentors to their
Service Leadership in the Service Era
followers (Shek and Lin 2015c). Second, this
notion appreciates distributive leadership in ser-
vice economy in terms of encouraging everyone
to optimize his or her competence for assuming a
leading role. To achieve this goal, one should take
the initiative to continuously improve and fully
utilize one’s personal service leadership qualities.
Thus, good self-leadership is the prerequisite to
actualize the theoretical notion that everyone can
be a leader.
Fourth, Service Leadership Theory asserts that
effective service leadership is dependent on three
fundamental components: competence, character,
and care (i.e., the 3Cs) (Shek and Lin 2015a).
Competence refers to both intrapersonal skills
(e.g., resilience and emotional intelligence) and
interpersonal skills (e.g., the ability to resolve
conflicts and build positive relationships) that
make a leader competent in fulfilling his or her
duties and inspiring teammates to do the same. As
for character, a service leader should demonstrate
character strengths that are valued across cultures
and philosophies. Strengths of character, such as
integrity and trustworthiness, let a service leader
“do the right thing” and lead in a moral way. The
third C is care, as one should be sensitive and
willing to meet others’ needs. A caring leader
will not satisfy his or her own needs at the expense
of others’ benefits. More than that, a caring leader
will sacrifice his or her interests for the benefits of
others. By equally emphasizing these three essen-
tial leadership qualities, Service Leadership The-
ory addresses leadership ethics (“being”) in
addition to leadership skills (“doing”), and estab-
lishes a holistic model to explain how to better
oneself and others and ultimately build a harmo-
nious and functional society in the service era
(Chung and Elfassy 2016).
The Dark Side of Service Leadership
As aforementioned, the “3Cs” are globally valued
and indispensable for effective service leadership.
Consequently, a weakness or lack of any of these
attributes can give rise to the dark side of a service
leader, which is considered a “virus” by Chung
and Bell (2015). A software virus can infect a
3
computer simply through an infected email or
download, to then attack and corrupt the com-
puter’s operation system by making numerous
copies of itself. Likewise, a virus in leadership
can start small but reinforces and replicates itself
through repeated negative behaviors. This ulti-
mately brings a corruption of a service leader’s
“Personal Operating System” (POS), which then
influences how a leader collects and processes
information, uses resources, and takes action
(Chung and Bell 2015). By this mechanism,
even a minor service leadership virus can create
personal failures and organizational ineffective-
ness. Empirical findings support this idea by
showing the negative impacts of the dark side of
leadership in multiple areas, including the leader’s
own life, followers’ working attitude, mental
health, job performance, and organizational out-
comes, such as climate, turnover rate, and com-
mitment (Shek et al. in press).
Some scholars conceptualize the dark side of
leadership as ineffective and destructive leader-
ship, with the former associated with incompe-
tence and the latter related to unethical and
uncaring attributes (Shek et al. in press). This
echoes Chung’s argument that a lack of any aspect
of the 3Cs constitutes the dark side of service
leadership. Chung further claims that viruses in
leadership are “anti-virtues” (Chung and Bell
2015). In other words, viruses in service leader-
ship are characterized by negative attributes that
represent the opposites of virtues that reflect pos-
itive traits and high morality. With specific refer-
ence to Chinese tradition, viruses are antitheses of
traditional Confucian virtues (Chung and Bell
2015; Shek et al. in press), such as kindness
(“ren,” 仁), righteousness (“yi,” 義), respectful-
ness (“li,” 禮), wisdom (“zhi,” 智), and trustwor-
thiness (“xin,” 信). The corresponding viruses
would be unkindness, unrighteousness, disre-
spectfulness, being unwise and untrustworthy,
respectively.
To achieve effective service leadership, being
free of viruses is critical. This is particularly
important in Chinese societies where Chinese
people have the high tolerance toward and unwill-
ingness to report unethical behaviors of leaders
(Zhuang et al. 2005). To some extent, this makes
4 Service Leadership in the Service Era
leadership viruses more harmful in the Chinese
context. Chung has recommended several ways to
prevent and reduce viruses in service leadership,
such as cultivating virtues by providing service
leadership education and creating a positive envi-
ronment, restoring moral strength through reflec-
tion, taking action to remove viruses, and
repairing interpersonal relationships (Shek et al.
in press). Among these, the key principle is that
we should not do viral things like cheating and
lying if we do not wish to have these things done
to ourselves. As Confucius advocated, “do not do
unto others what you do not want others to do unto
you” (“ji suo bu yu, wu shi yu ren,” 己所不欲, 勿
施於人, The Analects 15:23),
Service Leadership Education in
Hong Kong
Traditional leadership education highlights the
importance of professional and leadership skills
in the field. Such approach applies well in
manufacturing economies, where operations
require hands-on skills. However, in the contem-
porary service era, production-related skills are no
longer the only qualities that make one an effec-
tive leader. Thus, leadership education in services
societies like Hong Kong should include broader
concepts in response to the demanding call for
effective service leaders. To this end, with the
financial support provided by the Victor and Wil-
liam Fung Foundation, and the collaborative
effort from HKI-SLAM, a multiyear project enti-
tled “Fung Service Leadership Initiative” (FSI)
was initiated at Hong Kong’s eight public univer-
sities since 2012. The initiative is a strategic
attempt to strengthen service leadership education
based on the Service Leadership Theory. The goal
is to sustain Hong Kong’s competitiveness and
keep its position as a leading service economy.
Since the start of the initiative, the universities
have designed and implemented their own service
leadership curriculum and programs to enrich uni-
versity students’ knowledge of service leadership,
help them cultivate their 3Cs, develop their ser-
vice spirits, and improve leadership practice in
their daily lives (Shek and Chung 2015). For
example, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
(PolyU) developed credit-bearing subjects as well
as noncredit-bearing training programs and car-
ried out evaluation studies adopting different
strategies. These have included subjective out-
come evaluation, objective outcome evaluation,
and qualitative evaluation (Shek and Lin 2015b).
With regard to the credit-bearing course, a
subject entitled “Service Leadership” is embed-
ded in the General Education curriculum and
offered to students at PolyU. This classroom-
based course helps students learn leadership
models regarding the service sector; realize the
importance of the 3Cs in determining effective
service leadership; reflect on their own strengths
and weaknesses regarding service leadership
characteristics; develop and apply essential ser-
vice leadership qualities; and understand the sig-
nificance of effective service leadership to the
well-being of oneself, others, and the society
(Shek et al. 2015c). To date, approximately
1,000 students have enrolled in this subject. As
reflected by the positive response, to evaluation
studies, students were highly satisfied with their
learning experience and the subject is effective in
cultivating students’ service orientation and help-
ing them improve core service leadership attri-
butes (Shek et al. 2014, 2015b; Shek and Li
2015b). Additionally, a service-learning subject
entitled “Service Leadership through Serving
Children and Families with Special Needs” is
offered to undergraduates with the aim at helping
them apply service leadership knowledge and
skills through serving children with special psy-
chosocial needs. These children include those
with social and economic deprivation, behavioral
and emotional problems, or developmental disor-
ders (Shek et al. 2015c). This course is also help-
ful in enhancing service leadership qualities in
university students (Ma et al. in press-a, in press-
b; Leung et al. 2016). These subjects were
awarded the Bronze Awards in the QS Reimagine
Education Awards 2016.
Besides, a modified version of the above-
mentioned “Service Leadership” subject was
designed as an academic component of several
leadership training programs, including “Silk
Road Youth Leadership Programme,” “Global
Service Leadership in the Service Era
Youth Leadership Programme,” and “SOAR
Youth Leadership Programme,” which were col-
laboratively organized by PolyU and higher insti-
tutions in China mainland, such as Xi’an Jiaotong
University and Peking University. The modified
service leadership course is offered to university
students taking these leadership programs in an
intensive mode (i.e., 3.5–4.5 days) with the pur-
pose of promoting their understanding of service
leadership concepts and enhancing their service
leadership attributes. Evaluation findings also
demonstrated that students were very satisfied
with the innovative service leadership education
programs (Shek et al. 2017d; Shek and Li 2015a).
In addition, participants showed significant
improvement after the completion of the intensive
course in fundamental service leadership attri-
butes, such as self-leadership, care, and character
strengths (Shek et al. 2017c; Shek and Lin 2016).
Assessment Tools
In Hong Kong, evaluation work has been done to
assess the effectiveness of service leadership edu-
cation. However, tools used in existing studies to
measure service leadership qualities have not been
customized for the Service Leadership Theory
(Shek et al. 2017c; Shek and Lin 2016). Effective
measurement of service leadership qualities is not
only vital to the legitimacy and future develop-
ment of concepts and theories of service leader-
ship, but also fundamental to scientific research.
For example, it is important to investigate deter-
minants and outcomes of service leadership qual-
ities and evaluate the effectiveness of service
leadership training programs (Slavec and
Drnovsek 2012). We argue that the lack of vali-
dated assessment tools to measure service leader-
ship qualities (i.e., knowledge, attitude, and
behavior) has hindered education and research in
service leadership in Hong Kong and other
regions.
In view of this research gap, the research team
at PolyU launched a research project entitled
“development and validation of measures based
on the service leadership model,” and designed as
well as validated three related assessment tools.
5
These included service leadership knowledge,
attitude, and behavior scales with the involvement
of seven other Government-funded universities in
Hong Kong. To elaborate, the knowledge scale
measures what one knows about service leader-
ship in an objective way using multiple-choice
questions. The original long-form knowledge
scale for service leadership (i.e., SLK-LF-200)
consists of 200 questions covering key points
from the Service Leadership Theory, such as the
core belief that “everybody can be a leader” and
the three components of an effective service
leader (i.e., the 3Cs). After initial content valida-
tion and criterion-related validation, a short-form
knowledge scale containing 50 items (i.e.,
SLK-SF-50) was obtained (Shek et al. 2017b;
Shek and Lin 2017). The attitude scale addresses
one’s perceptions of service leadership as to what
extent one agrees with the basic ideas of the
Service Leadership Theory. A long-form attitude
scale including 132 items (i.e., SLA-LF-132) was
first designed and a short-form of 73 items (i.e.,
SLA-SF-73) was constructed after initial content
validity test (Shek et al. 2017a). The behavior
scale assesses whether one’s leadership practices
demonstrate leadership skills cherished in a ser-
vice economy. The original long-form behavior
scale (i.e., SLB-LF-97) had 97 items, among
which 65 were retained in the short-form scale
(i.e., SLB-SF-65) after initial validation studies.
To further validate the three assessment tools, a
large-scale validation study was collaboratively
carried out by the eight public universities in
Hong Kong involving 4,486 undergraduates. Spe-
cifically, the three mentioned short-form scales
(i.e., SLK-SF-50, SLA-SF-73, and SLB-SF-65)
were administered via online surveys to those
students recruited from the universities. For
knowledge, attitude, and behavior scales, 40, 46,
and 38 items were retained, respectively, in the
finalized short-form scales (i.e., SLK-SF-40,
SLA-SF-46 and SLB-SF-38). These finalized
scales indicated good psychometric properties
and can be regarded as valid, reliable, and robust
measurement tools in assessing service leadership
qualities. Related findings of the large-scale vali-
dation study are reported in a special issue.
6 Service Leadership in the Service Era
Cross-References
▶ Business Ethics and Quality of Life
▶ China and Business Ethics
▶ Destructive Leadership
▶ Economics, Ethics and the Environment
▶ Ethical Leadership
▶ Future of Work: Values and Ethical Issues
▶ Humanistic Management
▶ Leadership Integrity
▶ Leadership Moral Foundations
▶ Leadership Motives or Intentions
▶ Leadership Theory
▶ Pseudo-Transformational Leadership
▶ Toxic Leadership
▶ Transactional Ethics
▶ Transformational Leadership
▶ Trust and Business ethics
▶ Values, Chinese Approach to Business Ethics
▶ Virtue Ethics
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