Of the 26 studies which did not utilise a ‘core’ leadership theory, seven (Nebel
1978; Mullins 1992; Wood 1994; Go et al. 1996; Gillet and Morda 2003; Olsen
2004; Lim 2008) were literature reviews (i.e. not primary research) and among
the 20 other papers:
two papers (Ley 1980; Arnaldo 1981) used a Mintzbergian framework (where
leadership is recognised as one of a range of managerial tasks);
three papers (Hill and Vanhoof 1997; Scheule and Sneed 2001; Naipaul and
Wang 2009) were curriculum focused – i.e. discussing leadership in the context
of college/university hospitality education programmes;
six papers (Testa 2001; Tesone et al. 2003; Testa 2007; Maier 2009; Minett et
al. 2009; O'Gorman and Gillespie 2010) studied leadership in hospitality
without the use of a core leadership theory; and
a further eight papers (Berger et al. 1989; Cichy et al. 1992a; Cichy et al.
1992b; Cichy et al. 1993; Bond 1998; Greger and Peterson 2000; Saunders
2004; Calloway and Awadzi 2008) were classified as ‘industry narratives’ – that
is, papers communicating leadership-relevant findings to industry audiences
rather than reporting primary research or examining conceptual issues in
leadership.
The remainder of this section focuses on the studies that utilised core leadership
theories. This is not to say that the non-core leadership theory studies have no
value; however, to generate (leadership) theory-relevant findings, it was deemed
appropriate to restrict the analysis accordingly. A categorised listing of the 26
non-core leadership theory literature is provided in Appendix V(b), and the
literature review contributions in Appendix V(c).
Table 3 - 1 describes the chronological appearance of the 46 identified studies
which utilised a core leadership theory. It shows that (i) the frequency of
leadership-focused hospitality studies has increased significantly since the first
one identified (White 1973). In percentile terms, transformational leadership has
been the most-utilised theoretical approach (26 per cent of all papers),
particularly in recent years where transformational leadership theory has
accounted for: (i) 40 per cent of all hospitality-leadership studies during the
1990s; and (ii) 26 per cent during 2000-2010 (amalgamating the 2000s and
2010 - columns) period. Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) theory is the second
most utilised theoretical approach accounting for 17 per cent of all studies. The
behavioural approaches category accounts for 41 per cent of all hospitality–
leadership studies, however, unlike transformational leadership and LMX, this