Trevor,
As you know, a version of this statement also appears at the beginning of Greenleaf's essay "The Institution As Servant" (1972) and it ticked off a lot of his corporate buddies. They thought the idea of an individual servant-leader was dandy, but to speak of an entire institution as servant meant that traditional ways of wielding power would be under the microscope, especially when Greenleaf advocated consensus decision making.
By the way, criticism of this essay came from church bishops and university presidents too. As a group, Catholic sisters were the only ones who seemed to support it. It was nothing new to them; their institutional orders were not only based on service (doing) but on an identity as servant (being).
Don
Trevor,
I'm currently finishing my comprehensive exams and one of the questions is related to Greenleaf's ideas about creating a better society combined with Marx's ideas about class conflict constrainted by a hierarchical societal structure (don't ask). I've used this very quote and believe that one of Greenleaf's underlying assumptions for bringing servant leadership into the academic literature was to provide a more caring framework for creating a better society. Unfortunately, what constitutes the definition of better is an unresolved political question in this country, but I'm willing to try to work at Greenleaf's admonition!
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