provide consistent support for the existence of relationships between leadership
styles and employee empowerment.
A further example can be found considering three of the earlier hospitality
leadership studies:
(i) White (1973) utilised a categorisation of leadership styles similar to
that of Likert (1961) and recommended a shift from the observed
autocratic style to a more consultative leadership style (UK-based);
(ii) Nebel and Stearns (1977) utilised Fiedler's LPC (Least Preferred
Co-worker) Contingency Theory and found that a task-orientated
management style would be the most effective (US-based); while
(iii) Worsfold (1989) employed the measuring instruments developed
from the Ohio State University leadership studies and – acknowledging
the findings of both White and Nebel and Stearns - recommended that
effective hospitality leadership should employ an ‘autocratic style with
consultative overtones’ (p. 153) (UK-based).While all three of these studies seek to answer a similar question (what is the
most effective leadership style for the hospitality sector?) and conceptualise
leadership styles using measures broadly analogous to the ‘consideration –
initiating structure’ continuum, their respective findings are difficult to consolidate
into a meaningful and overarching understanding of the issue since they all have
used different conceptual frameworks and methods.
Taking a broader view, the diversity of the foci, aims and rationales employed
across the leadership in hospitality field provides an explanation for the difficulty
in synthesising or consolidating the knowledge generated by hospitality leadership
studies.
To put this fragmented view of hospitality leadership studies into a wider
perspective, we can consider the following from Yukl (1989) with reference to the
development of generic leadership studies:
In 1974, after making an extensive review of more than 3000
leadership studies, Stogdill (p. vii) concluded: "Four decades of
research on leadership have produced a bewildering mass of
findings.... the endless accumulation of empirical data has not
produced an integrated understanding of leadership." The confused
state of the field can be attributed in large part to the disparity of