The construct validity of servant leadership in Nigerian public utility organizations

Servant leadership could be seen as one of the humane way of leadership in organizations and has important positive emotional, psychological, and behavioral consequences for organizations. Despite the importance of servant leadership construct in the life and activities of organizations, studies about it validity across contexts and setting remain highly neglected.This study validated the Liden, Wayne, Zhao, and Henderson’s (2008) seven dimensional servant leadership construct in three specific Nigerian public utility organizations, namely Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN), Telecommunications Company Limited (NITEL) and Water Board (KSWB).Specifically, the results demonstrated that five servant leadership constructs including emotional healing, creating value for the community, conceptual skills, helping subordinates grow and succeed, as well as putting subordinates first are valid and acceptable measures of their respective constructs based on their parameter estimates are valid and acceptable based on their parameter estimates. All validity indicators including items’ loading's, composite reliability, average variance extracted (AVE), and square roots of the AVE have demonstrated high coefficients.Hence, findings demonstrated that the Liden et al.(2008) servant leader behavior constructs could be used for future studies in Nigerian context.Using the PLS technique, this study provides significant contribution to knowledge by validating the Liden et al’s. (2008) five servant leader behaviors constructs in newer context and settings