orientated management style would be the most effective in the North American
hospitality industry.
Although differing theoretical approaches mean that the White (1973) and Nebel
and Stearns (1977) studies are not directly comparable, the somewhat
contradictory findings (White’s consultative leadership can be broadly equated
with relations-orientated, contrasting with Nebel and Stearn’s task-orientated
conclusion) can be read as an early indication of the complexity which is inherent
in organisational leadership research.
A third leadership-related article from this period was Nebel’s (1978) literature
review of (generic) organisational theory linking leadership, motivation and
employee performance. Because this article does not provide a detailed analysis
linking these concepts with hospitality contexts, it is not included here as one of
the ‘core hospitality-leadership’ research articles. Nevertheless, this paper
deserves mention as an early and significant theoretical contribution to this area
of hospitality studies. Also worthy of note – and reflecting the general paucity of
motivation-focused hospitality-leadership research - is that following its
publication in 1978, none of the identified journal articles reporting primary
research on leadership-related hospitality issues have cited that paper.
3.3 Behavioural theory work
In total, nineteen (41 per cent) of the hospitality-leadership studies utilising
theory drawn from generic leadership studies used theories which can be
classified as behavioural.
Although grouped together under the banner of behaviour theory work, thirteen
of the nineteen behavioural-focused articles employ a variety of discrete theories
and address a diverse range of research themes and questions. Table 3 - 3
summarises the context, aims and findings for each of these thirteen articles.
Five of these thirteen articles broadly address the initiating structure /
consideration dichotomy (from the Michigan and Ohio State work described above
in Section 2.3.2) and these studies are examined below in Section 3.3.1.
Of the remaining six articles, four utilise leadership competencies approaches and
two utilise the implicit leadership theory approach – these articles are described in
Sections 3.3.2 and 3.3.3.