The Impact of Servant Leadership on the Performance of Commercialised State-owned Enterprises in Zimbabwe: An Empirical Study

Servant leadership with its strong orientation towards ethical business practices could assist state-owned enterprises in improving their performance in a challenging environment, but no known study has ever been carried out in the Zimbabwean context. The majority of the commercialised state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in emerging economies, and Zimbabwe in particular, seemed to have not been applying servant leadership model. This is evidenced by continued poor performance characterised by unethical business practices that suggest lack of integrity, stewardship and empowerment, among other vital attributes of servant leadership. Hence, this article investigated the impact of the servant leadership model on the performance of Zimbabwe's SOEs. A quantitative research design using a multi-factor servant leadership questionnaire was adopted. A stratified cluster sampling method was used to select the respondents. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse the data. The study discovered that the servant leadership model had a positive and statistically significant impact on the performance of Zimbabwe's SOEs at 5% level of significance. The charisma/role, altruism, stewardship, and standing back attributes were 2.197, 1.463, 2.277 and 1.943 times respectively and are likely to improve the performance of SOEs in Zimbabwe if practised by managers. The study recommended that Zimbabwe's SOEs should adopt the servant leadership model with a strong emphasis on the charisma/role model, altruism, stewardship, and standing back attributes to enhance the performance of their underperforming enterprises.