- identify/generate measurement scales for the latent variables;
- refine the measurement scales; and
- test and evaluate the relationships between the latent variables using survey
data collected from hotel restaurant waiting staff.
To underpin the critical review of the field of hospitality leadership studies
(Objective 1), the research began by describing the major theoretical
developments in the generic leadership studies field, while also drawing out
relevant issues for consideration in this study. The issues identified were:
employees’ work orientations / work values (Section 2.3.2);
adequacy of information provision and training and degree of autonomy /
empowerment (Section 2.3.3);
motivational leadership and job performance (Section 2.4); and
work meaning emerges as a variable of interest from Sections 2.3.2, 2.3.3 and
2.4.
The review of generic leadership studies provided a framework within which to
categorise the theoretical approaches utilised in the published hospitality
leadership research. The research identified 46 published articles examining
leadership issues in hospitality contexts that utilised theory drawn from the field
of leadership studies. The review of these articles found that the hospitality
leadership field is fragmented with regard to the range of approaches taken and
the research questions pursued.
Because of this lack of theoretical or empirical consistency and integration, it is
difficult to specify knowledge gaps in the area. One important gap identified was
the significant lack of hospitality studies that have addressed the causal link
between leadership and job performance.
With regard to the theoretical foci of the hospitality leadership studies, the
analysis revealed that transformational leadership has been the most-utilised
theoretical approach (26 per cent of all papers), in particular, during the 1990s
(40 per cent of all published studies) and during 2000-2010 (26 per cent of all
published studies).
Because transformational leadership has been the most frequently utilised
theoretical approach, it provides the broadest theoretical and empirical knowledge
base upon which to build. Accordingly, future hospitality leadership research