LEADERSHIP

Leadership

Leadership

Introduction

As increasing demands are made on all hospitality organizations to improve their performance, to anticipate change and develop new structures, effective leadership performance may be essential to ensure that change leads to increased effectiveness, efficiency and profitability. Although researchers cannot necessarily assume that “better” leadership leads to “better” business performance, some understanding of the relationship between leadership and business performance is required. Leadership as a subject has been somewhat neglected within hospitality research and as a result few studies exist which investigate leadership in the specific context of the industry (Pittaway et al., 1998; Mullins, 1992).

Leadership can be defined as a social influence process. It involves determining the group or organization's objectives, encouraging behavior in pursuit of these objectives, and influencing group maintenance and culture (Yukl, 1994). It is a group phenomenon; there are no leaders without followers.

Research on leader behaviors and effectiveness

Transformational leadership produces greater effects than transactional leadership. While transactional leadership results in expected outcomes, transformational leadership results in performance that goes well beyond what is expected (see Figure 1).

In a meta-analysis of 39 studies in the transformational leadership literature, Lowe et al. (1996) found that individuals who exhibited transformational leadership were perceived to be more effective leaders with better work outcomes than were individuals who exhibited only transactional leadership. These findings were true for higher and lower level leaders as well as for leaders in public and private settings. Transformational leadership moves followers to accomplish more than expected. They become motivated to transcend their own self-interests for the good of the group or organization (Bass and Avolio, 1990; Northouse, 2001; Shamir, 1995).

Satisfaction of subordinates with supervision and leadership behavior

The subordinates' satisfaction with their supervision in organizations has been found to be related to the leadership behavior used by managers. Lowe et al. (1996) performed 33 independent empirical studies using the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) to study the relationships between leadership styles and leadership effectiveness. They concluded that there was a strong positive correlation between all the components of transformational leadership and subordinate satisfaction with supervision.

It was expected to find that subordinate satisfaction with supervision is positively related to transformational leadership behaviors used by boutique hotel managers.

H1. There is a significant relationship between transformational leadership behaviors and subordinate satisfaction with supervision.

Subordinate's satisfaction with work and leadership behavior

Studies by Shim et al. (2002), Loke (2001) and McNeese-Smith (1995, 1997, 1999) indicated that leadership behaviors are positively related to job satisfaction. Bryman (1992) and Bass and Avolio (1994) found that all components of transformational leadership were related to subordinate work satisfaction.

It was expected to find that subordinate satisfaction at work is positively correlated with transformational leadership.

H2. There is a significant relationship between transformational leadership behaviors and subordinate satisfaction with work.

Subordinate's commitment and leadership behavior

Research on the effects of leadership behaviors and organizational commitment has shown that transformational leaders generate higher commitment from followers (Avolio, 1999; Bass, 1998; Howell and Avolio, 1993; Bycio et al., 1995; Simon, 1994; Testa, 2002).

It was therefore expected that all transformational leadership components would be ...