EMERGING LEADERSHIP STYLES

What are the New Leadership Styles we need for tomorrow in the Hospitality Business?



Emerging Leadership Trends in the Hospitality Industry

Introduction

Bass (1985) defined Transformational Leadership (TL) as the ability to motivate followers to perform beyond what he/she would normally expect. TL consists of four dimensions including idealized influence, inspirational motivation, individualized consideration, and intellectual stimulation. Idealized influence is exhibited when followers respect and trust their leaders and want to be like them; also the leader tends to put his/her followers' needs over their own. Inspirational motivation is when a leader acts in a way that causes people around him/her to be motivated to work better, mainly caused by the leader instilling a sense of meaning in the work for the follower. Individualized consideration is shown when a leader gives attention to each employee and is concerned with his/her individual needs; also, the leader is widely seen as a coach or a mentor. Intellectual stimulation is demonstrated when a leader asks questions to try and increase productivity and innovation (Avolio & Bass, 2004).

TL has since been a heavily studied topic in areas other than hospitality. Aragón-Correa et al. (2007) studied 408 companies in Spain; service companies were part of the sample. CEO's of each company (45% response) completed a questionnaire on company information and his/her own TL behaviours. The authors used five questions from a previously published tool to measure TL behaviours and a self-developed tool to measure organizational performance. The authors found TL behaviours to be correlated with organizational learning and organizational learning to be correlated with organizational performance. The authors also found an indirect relationship between TL behaviours and organizational performance, mediated through organizational learning. Based on their findings, the authors believe TL is important for improving financial performance. Gill et al. (2006) surveyed 137 customer-contact service employees (33% from hotels and 67% from restaurants). TL behaviours were measured using a published twelve-item tolerance-of-freedom questionnaire. The authors found if employees perceived their manager exhibited TL behaviours the employees had lower job stress, compared to employees without TL managers. The authors also found higher levels of job stress to be related to higher levels of burnout. The authors offered suggestions on how to implement TL in hospitality operations (Aragón-Correa, 2007, 349).

Employees and 76 managers in a large Israeli banking organization were studied by Kark et al. (2003). Complete data were available for 888 employees (89% response). TL was measured using items from the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) Form 5X. The authors found TL behaviours to be significantly related to personal identification, defined as identification with the leader, and social identification, defined as identification with the work group. The authors found personal identification to be significantly related to dependence, and social identification to be significantly related to self efficacy, organization- based self-esteem, and collective efficacy. Rafferty and Griffin (2006) studied 2,864 employees (63% response) at an Australian public organization. An employee attitude questionnaire was used and included scales for supportive and developmental ...