Guest editorial

Citation

Guchait, P., Madera, J. and Peyton, T. (2020), "Guest editorial", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 32 No. 6, pp. 2029-2034. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-06-2020-027

Leadership research in hospitality and tourism

Welcome to IJCHM’s special issue on Leadership research in hospitality and tourism. I would like to specially thank to our guest editors Dr. Priyanko Guchait, Dr. Juan Madera, and Dr. Taylor Peyton for putting together this very strong and timely special issue. The articles included in this special issue should be well received by scholars, students and practicing managers in our field.

Fevzi OkumusEditor-in-Chief

Introduction

Leadership is crucial for organizational success in the hospitality and tourism industry. Practitioners and researchers have noted how leadership can impact organizational profitability, innovation, team productivity and customer loyalty (Huang et al., 2016; Ruiz-Palomino et al., 2019; Patiar and Wang, 2016). They have also noted how, for employees, leadership affects performance, attitudes and behaviors that are critical for organizational success (Luo et al., 2019; Namasivayam et al., 2014). However, research on leadership in hospitality and tourism is still lacking and several research gaps need to be filled. First, researchers have noted the need to investigate the underlying mechanisms linking leadership and its outcomes; and the boundary conditions affecting such relationships (Buil et al., 2019). Second, several hospitality scholars have noted that although leadership has been linked with organizational and employee performance, and employee attitudes and behaviors in general, it needs to be linked with outcome variables specific to the hospitality industry such as employees’ service recovery performance and customer attitudes and behaviors (Luo et al., 2019).

Third, scholars have noted the importance of context when testing relationships related to leadership (Terglav et al., 2016). Even if certain relationships are tested in other contexts (e.g. manufacturing), it is meaningful and valuable to test those relationships in various other contexts such as services and hospitality because it increases the generalizability and validity of the findings. Fourth, most leadership research in hospitality has been conducted at one level (mostly at individual level). As such, researchers have noted the need for multilevel studies in leadership research in hospitality and that leadership constructs need to be measured at group/unit level (Jaiswal and Dhar, 2015). As such scholars have called for the use of advanced data analysis techniques such as multilevel structural equation modeling. Fifth, there is scarcity of meta-analysis studies in hospitality research (Xu and Cao, 2019). Meta-analysis is common in other disciplines such as management and psychology. Meta-analysis has been conducted on almost all major leadership concepts/theories such as servant leadership, ethical leadership authentic leadership and transformational leadership. Although hospitality researchers have extensively studied transformational leadership and LMX, meta-analysis was never attempted.

Sixth, most prior studies on leadership in hospitality research has used one source data, that is, data were collected either from employees or managers, which raises the concern of common method bias issues. Researchers have noted the importance of multi-source data (e.g. data collection on antecedents from employees and supervisors rating employees’ performance) and data collected over time (e.g. data collection on antecedents at Time 1 and outcome variables at Time 2) (Jaiswal and Dhar, 2015). Seventh, most prior studies on leadership in hospitality involved one sample. Researchers have noted that testing proposed relationships using multiple samples validates the findings and increases generalizability (Guchait et al., 2016). This also gives an opportunity to test whether contextual factors (e.g. culture) influence proposed relationships in a study (Luo et al., 2019). Eighth, there is scarcity of scale development and validation studies on leadership in hospitality. Finally, there is scarcity of qualitative studies in hospitality research especially in the area of leadership. The current special issue addresses all these research gaps. The purpose of this special issue is to bring together state-of-the-art research on leadership and to analyze its future directions for researchers and practitioners in the hospitality and tourism industry.

The papers in this special issue

This special issue contains 12 papers that cover a broad range of issues in leadership research including: various crucial leadership topics and theories; scale development and validation; diverse data collection methods and analysis techniques; a number of research designs; and meta-analysis. The papers in this special issue provide a comprehensive overview and insights about the role and importance of leadership in hospitality and tourism. Next, we present brief summaries of the papers in the special issue.

In the first paper titled “Servant leadership and organizational citizenship behavior: the mediating effect of empathy and service climate,” Elche et al. (2020) examined the underlying mechanisms linking supervisor servant leadership and employee organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) in hotels. Data were collected from 171 hotels located in historic cities of Spain. Using multilevel structural equation modelling, the study found an indirect effect of supervisor servant leadership (group level) on employee OCB (individual level) through the mediating role of employee empathy (individual level) and group service climate (group level). In the second paper titled “Leaders or Organisations? A comparison study of factors affecting organisational citizenship behaviour in independent hotels”, Nazarian et al. (2020) investigated the influence of servant leadership on organizational citizenship behavior, organizational justice and organizational commitment. Importantly, the study examined how the proposed relationships differed based on two contrasting national cultures: Spain and Iran. Data were collected from 451 managers in Spain and 429 managers in Iran belonging to independent hotels. In the third paper titled “Does servant leadership better explain work engagement, career satisfaction, and adaptive performance than authentic leadership?”, Karatepe and Kaya (2020) examined whether servant leadership better explains work engagement, career satisfaction and adaptive performance than authentic leadership. Using time-lagged data collected from hotel employees and their direct supervisors in Turkey, the study found that the indirect effect of servant leadership on career satisfaction and adaptive performance, through work engagement, was stronger than the indirect effect of authentic leadership.

In the fourth paper titled “Authentic leadership’s effect on customer orientation and turnover intention among Portuguese hospitality employees: the mediating role of affective commitment,” Ribeiro et al. (2020) collected data from 350 hospitality employees (from various hospitality organizations) in Portugal and found that affective commitment mediated the relationships between authentic leadership and both customer orientation and turnover intention. In the fifth paper titled “Authentic leadership and career satisfaction: The meditating role of thriving and conditional effect of psychological contract fulfilment,” Chang et al. (2020) examined the mediating effect of learning and vitality (two dimensions of thriving) between authentic leadership and career satisfaction. Moreover, the moderating effect of psychological contract fulfilment was examined. Data were collected from 300 hospitality employees in the USA through Qualtrics panel service. Partial least squares was used to test the proposed relationships. The study found that employees with low psychological contract fulfilment transferred the impact of authentic leaders on their career satisfaction through vitality (affective functioning). However, employees with high psychological contract fulfilment transferred the influence of authentic leaders on career satisfaction through learning (cognitive functioning).

The sixth paper by Zhang et al. (2020) titled “A meta-analysis of transformational leadership in hospitality research” conducted a meta-analysis on transformational leadership based on 62 primary studies including 66 independent samples. The purpose of this paper was twofold. First, the study provided a quantitative review for the relationship between transformational leadership and follower outcomes in hospitality research. Second, the study conducted a detailed analysis of the moderating variables (cultural differences, measurement instrument, rating sources and time lag). This is the first meta-analysis to clarify theoretical links between transformational leadership and its outcomes in the hospitality context. In the seventh paper titled “Meta-analysis of outcomes of Leader–Member Exchange in hospitality and tourism: What does the past say about the future?” Wang et al. (2020) conducted a meta-analysis using 36 studies to quantitatively summarize and examine the relationship between Leader-member exchange (LMX) and its outcomes in the hospitality and tourism literature. A Bayesian random effect model was introduced into the hospitality and tourism literature for the first time to implement the meta-analysis. Findings indicated significant differences in the influence of LMX on various groups of outcomes. Moreover, several moderators are identified such as LMX measure, culture, industry sector and statistical method.

In the eighth paper titled “Validating effective managerial behaviors for the hospitality industry,” Michel et al. (2020) examined the validity of the managerial practices survey (MPS). Data were collected from two different samples using surveys to assess the construct validity of the MPS in the hospitality industry. The proposed four meta-categories and 18-component behavior MPS framework fit the data well and both the meta-categories and component behaviors were predictive of leadership effectiveness. The ninth paper by Arici et al. (2020) titled “Seasonal employee leadership in the hospitality industry: a scale development”, developed and validated a multidimensional seasonal employee leadership (SEL) scale. Two separate data sets were used; the first set was used to perform an exploratory factor analysis, while the second set was used to confirm the initial factor results using a confirmatory factor analysis. SEL was also linked with various outcome variables such as work engagement, job embeddedness and career satisfaction.

In the tenth paper titled “How will service robots redefine leadership in hotel management? A Delphi Approach,” Xu et al. (2020) examined how human resource experts perceive service robots will impact leadership and human resource management in the hospitality industry. A three-stage Delphi study with hotel industry human resource experts was conducted to identify the key trends and major challenges that will emerge in the next 10 years and how leaders should deal with the challenges brought about by service robot technologies. Findings showed that while service robots are anticipated to increase efficiency and productivity of hotels, they may also pose challenges such as high costs, skill deficits and significant changes to the organizational structure and culture of hotels. The study also suggested how the anticipated applications and integration of robotic technology will require leaders of the future to carefully consider the balance between the roles of service robots and human employees in the guest experience, and to nurture a work environment that embraces open-mindedness and change.

In the eleventh paper titled “When do abusive leaders experience guilt?”, Shum et al. (2020) examined the conditions under which abusive leaders experience guilt and suggested that guilt motivates leaders to help followers. An experimental study with a sample of 285 hospitality supervisors was used to test the theoretical model. Path analyses were conducted to test the three-way moderated-mediated model. Results show a three-way interaction among enacted abuse, managerial abuse and agreeableness on guilt. Leaders are more likely to experience guilt over their enacted abusive supervision when they do not perceive their direct manager as abusive and when they are agreeable. Moreover, guilt mediated the relationship between enacted abuse and a leader’s intention to help their followers.

In the last paper titled “Gendered and diversified? Leadership in global hospitality and tourism academia,” Gewinner (2020) focused on diversity in academic leadership. The sample consisted of Full professors in the UK, the USA, German-speaking countries (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) and the Asia-Pacific region (Australia, New Zealand, China, Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea). The study used quantitative data to descriptively shed light on the dimensions of gender, diversity and industry-government relations in global hospitality and tourism academia to discover the meaning of academic leadership. The key factors under consideration were pertinent to diversity aspects and career-related activities at an individual level, for example: gender, academic career age, migration background, affiliations, PhD field, academic mobility, publication and conference activity, non-academic/service experience, networks in the form of industry experience and collaboration and social media coverage. This study is the first of its kind to consider various diversity dimensions of academic leadership from a global perspective.

Concluding remarks

This special issue attracted a large number of high-quality submissions from scholars within tourism and hospitality, as well as related disciplines, including: management, psychology, technology and education. The articles in this special issue covered various leadership theories and topics such as authentic leadership, transformational leadership, servant leadership, leader-member exchange, academic leadership and seasonal employee leadership. A variety of research designs were used including survey design, experimental design, Delphi study (qualitative), meta-analysis, content analysis and scale development and validation. Several data analysis techniques were used such as partial least squares, structural equation modelling, regression, path analysis, multi-level modelling and conditional analysis to test for mediation and moderation. The studies included data from all over the world including USA, UK, Spain, Portugal, Iran, Turkey, Australia, China and more. The diversity of these studies is notable; collectively, they advance knowledge relevant to contemporary issues in leadership in hospitality and tourism.

There are many people to thank for their efforts on this issue. The authors of this paper would like to thank all the authors who responded to the call for articles. They are particularly grateful to the authors of the papers in the special issue and to the many anonymous reviewers who provided constructive suggestions and feedback. The authors would like to apologize to those who could not be accommodated in this special issue. Finally, the studies presented in this special issue highlight the importance of continuing with leadership research in hospitality and tourism. The authors hope that the papers in this special issue have taken a step toward recognizing this potential and will encourage more researchers to join this exciting research area.