leadership functions as an antecedent of empowerment. Supportive leadership
(which contains the essence of consideration/relations-oriented leadership) was
found to be an antecedent of empowerment. Finally, Tsai (2008), also working in
Taiwan found that employees in international tourist hotels were more satisfied
under consideration-style leadership.
It is not possible to characterise the international hotel based on the findings of
these five studies – what we can say is that: (i) all of these studies found both
initiating structure and consideration styles in use; and (ii) three of the five
studies (White 1973; Chiang and Jang 2008; Tsai 2008) provide evidence to
support the use of initiating structure (relations-oriented) leadership style.
In contrast to the studies reported in Table 3 - 3 , it was possible to classify the
remaining 6 behavioural theory studies into two sub-sets: leadership-
competencies (4 studies) and implicit leadership theories (2 studies). These
studies are examined in detail in the following sections.
3.3.2 Leadership competencies approaches
Leadership competencies approaches were developed from organisational
behaviour and human resource work in the 1970s which focused on individuals’
knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) and were intended to help identify
individuals who could effectively perform specific leadership functions (Hollenbeck
et al. 2006: 401).
Based on a literature review and consultation with (globally-based) senior-level
hospitality managers, Chung-Herrera et al. (2003) developed a competencies-
based model for leadership in the hospitality industry. Their model contained
eight domains: communication, critical thinking, implementation, industry
knowledge, interpersonal skills, leadership, self-management, and strategic
positioning. Each domain contained up to six dimensions; leadership, for
example, consisted of: developing others, embracing change, fortitude, fostering
motivation, leadership versatility, and teamwork orientation. The empirical stage
of their study allowed these domains and dimensions to be rated by a second
sample of globally-based senior-level hospitality managers.
The competencies ratings indicated that leadership of employees is regarded as a
less-important skills domain while the most-important competencies for