Abstract:
This study sought to understand how servant leadership tenets affect policy implementation through follower behavior within the nonprofit institutional context of religious nonprofit organizations in Nairobi County. The study was undertaken in response to calls in extant literature for extension of servant leadership empirical work into new contexts and addressed the conceptual and theoretical gaps in the extant literature. The objectives of the study were: to determine the effect of servant leadership tenets on policy implementation among nonprofit religious organizations in Nairobi County; to determine the mediating effect of follower behavior on the relationship between servant leadership and policy implementation in nonprofit religious organizations in Nairobi County; and, to examine the moderating effect of the nonprofit institutional context on the relationship between servant leadership and policy implementation in nonprofit religious organizations in Nairobi County. A mixed methods approach was used to collect and analyze the data. The unit of analysis was 291 religious nonprofit organizations in Nairobi County with a total of 2,328 potential respondents. The sample size was 365 respondents drawn from 73 sampled religious nonprofit organizations. Factor analysis was used to extract factors for each study variable that were used for the descriptive and inferential analysis. Descriptive statistics used were the means and standard deviation while multiple regression analysis was used to test hypotheses. The study response rate was at 88% for the quantitative data with 320questionnaires received back out of 365 targeted respondents. Ten key informants from 10selected nonprofit organizations in Nairobi County took part in the in-depth interviews. The qualitative data was analyzed thematically. The study found out that holistic approach and service to others components of servant leadership had a significant negative effect on policy implementation, while sense of community and uprightness components of servant leadership had significant positive effect on policy implementation, there was significant statistical partial mediating effect of follower behavior on the relationship between servant leadership and policy implementation, and finally, there was a partial modering effect of nonprofit institutional context on the relationship between servant leadership and policy implementation with uprightness being the only component whose interaction term was significant. The study observed that the extracted servant leadership dimensions are applicable in the nonprofit sector. The findings of the study extended previous research by integrating the set of servant leadership attributes applicable to the non profit sector and validated a conceptual model of the operation of servant leadership for community development in the nonprofit sector. The study calls on the Boards of Directors and management to entrench servant leadership in the organizations, through their strategic management practices and leadership development programs. The study called on future research to expand the contextual and methodoligical scopes to include organizations in other regions and all levels of management and their followers using the 10 extracted servant leadership dimensions.
