Servant leadership: Development and validation of a multidimensional measure in the Chinese hospitality industry

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate an instrument intended to measure servant leadership behavior in the Chinese hospitality industry. Design/methodology/approach After reviewing the literature, a scale of nine dimensions with 81 items was generated and then subjected to exploratory factor analysis (EFA) using a sample of 600 participants from a polytechnic college and hospitality industry, resulting in 6-factor-33-item solution. The derived measure was then shortened to 24 items by using item response theory (IRT). Drawing on the data from 440 respondents in the hospitality industry, this 6-factor-24 item measure was subsequently validated with confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and the test of construct validity. Findings Difference in factors has been found between this instrument and western-developed scales. This study resulted in 6-dimension-24-items scale. These dimensions were named integrity, self-sacrifice, building community, empowering people, emotional healing and visioning. This servant leadership scale was demonstrated to have good internal consistency reliability and strong construct validity. Originality/value This is the first study that used IRT as a statistic tool to shorten a servant leadership scale and also this study provided additional support to cultural psychology theory.