leadership and motivation in hospitality

Construct name Motivational Leadership (ML)

Definition The frequency with which an employee observes their supervisor demonstrating motivational behaviour

Understanding of
concept

Motivational leadership describes the ways in which leaders

inspire employees through: (i) establishing, articulating and

reinforcing a vision; (ii) valorising the goals set to realise the

vision; (iii) encouraging and reinforcing employees’ efforts

towards successfully realising the goals and vision; and (iv)

demonstrating positive role model behaviour.

Inclusion
rationale

Motivational Leadership is posited as a key intervention for

raising hospitality employees motivation levels

Scale source/s

Based on descriptions of the Inspirational Motivational (IM)

dimension of transformational leadership in Avolio and Bass

(2004a), Bass (1999) and Bass and Riggio (2006)

Scale semantic Agreement

Thinking about your current job, please indicate how
often your immediate supervisor/manager...

Level of agreement

Strongly

disagree

Strongly

agree

ML1 Talks how the company will improve over timeenthusiastically about their ‘vision’ of 1 2 3 4 5

ML2 Talks enthusiastically abthis ‘vision’ out how to achieve 1 2 3 4 5

ML3 Encourages me to work towards achieving the ‘vision’ 1 2 3 4 5

ML4 Gives me positive feedback when I perform well 1 2 3 4 5

ML5 Puts the good of the group before their own interests 1 2 3 4 5

Figure 5-3 The Motivational Leadership construct

Employee Empowerment

Empowerment has attracted some degree of attention in the hospitality
management research literature: conceptual papers include Lashley (1995, 1996)
and, more recently, Brownell (2010) has discussed the role of the emerging
Servant Leadership model in contributing to employee empowerment.