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Servant leadership: a case study of a Canadian health care innovator



Perspectives

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Authors: Vanderpyl TH

Published Date February 2012 Volume 2012:4 Pages 9 - 16
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.2147/JHL.S28810

Received: 04 December 2011
Accepted:09 January 2012
Published:17 February 2012
Tim H Vanderpyl

School of Global Leadership, Regent University, Virginia Beach, VA, USA

Abstract: Both servant leadership and innovation are easier to theorize than to actually implement in practice. This article presents a case study of a Canadian health care executive who led a remarkable turnaround of St Michael's Health Centre, a floundering and almost bankrupt nursing home. In less than 7 years, Kevin Cowan turned around the finances and changed numerous broken relationships into strategic alliances. Under his leadership, St Michael's Health Centre went from being one of the most underperforming health care organizations in Canada, to one of the most innovative. This article describes some of Cowan's strategies and argues that a servant leadership approach has a direct impact on an organization's ability to innovate. As far as the author is aware, this is the first published article on this specific change effort, which presents a unique perspective on the topics of servant leadership and innovation.

Keywords: servant leadership, innovation, Canada, health care, case study




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