Content area
Purpose
The purpose of this study is two-fold. First, it systematically reviews and synthesizes research on servant leadership in management and hospitality management literature. Second, by reviewing and comparing the characteristics of the hospitality industry and servant leadership attributes, this study provides insights concerning the conceptualizations and theorization of servant leadership in hospitality management and discusses future research directions.
Design/methodology/approachThe current study reviewed 106 articles published during the period of 1970 to 2018 in hospitality management and broader management literature.
FindingsThe characteristics of the hospitality industry and servant leadership attributes were found to be mutually inclusive, both consisting qualities such as trust, integrity, honesty, care, servant behavior, listening and community focus.
Practical implicationsScholars should concentrate on exploring what makes servant leaders unique in the hospitality industry.
Originality/valueThe study reviews the hospitality characteristics, and servant leadership attributes offer new research avenues.
Introduction
Servant leadership is a puzzling leadership style and a dynamic research topic (van Dierendonck, 2011). It is also commonly viewed as being a strong employee-oriented type of leadership practice that has the potential to cultivate positive organizational outcomes. Indeed, the empirical literature suggests that servant leaders favorably influence outcomes across multiple organizational levels (i.e. the individual level, team level, unit level and firm level) (Bavik et al., 2017; Williams et al., 2017). Research also suggests that the positive effects of servant leadership flow to the bottom line. For example, Ling et al. (2016) found that middle-level servant leadership had a positive spillover effect on service-oriented behavior.
Compared with other forms of leadership (e.g. transactional, transformational and charismatic), servant leadership is regarded as a more harmonious and effective leadership style in the hospitality industry (Brownell, 2010). Servant leaders are also vital resources within the hospitality industry because servant leadership is predominantly people-centered toward maintaining the well-being of employees and serving employees, the organization and the community. Moreover, the hospitality industry is heavily dependent on human resources and the close relationships formed between leaders and their peers (Hemmington, 2007), and the quality of these leader-peer relationships is a critical element of guest satisfaction.
The hospitality industry is predicated on human interaction and “serving” in nature. Specifically, the central aim of the hospitality industry is to create positive memories for the guests (Bavik, 2016). Furthermore, because hospitality businesses seek to provide genuine care for their guests, their employees value people (Dawson et al., 2011; Woods, 2016), the customers (Tepeci and Bartlett, 2002) and their peers (Dawson et al., 2011). In addition to receiving empirical support as a critical factor in hospitality, some hospitality organizations have explicitly and proudly identified service as their primary purpose. For instance, Horst Schulze, the President of the Ritz-Carlton, described the company’s organizational culture using the motto “we are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen, and in doing so we create exceptional memories for our guests and for each other” (Ritz-Carlton, 2009).
Given the practical importance of servant leadership, numerous studies have attempted to develop scales and have accumulated substantial empirical evidence on the role that it plays in hospitality. A number of review studies have also examined the research on servant leadership in hospitality management and management literature. Some reviews have sought to conceptualize servant leadership and explored whether servant leadership has unique characteristics that contribute to organizational success (Brownell, 2010; Parris and Peachey, 2013; van Dierendonck, 2011). Although early studies pioneered the theoretical mapping of servant leadership, in the last decade, servant leadership has become a significant research topic and has generated a large body of literature. Notably, in the literature on hospitality management and management, five times more articles have been published in the past decade than in the previous 10 years, with over 100 studies being published in the past four years alone (Eva et al., 2018). Moreover, Eva et al. (2018) provided an integrative evaluation and extensive assessment of the concept of servant leadership and its measurement.
In summary, relevant reviews have generated an emerging nomological network of concepts of servant leadership (Brownell, 2010; Parris and Peachey, 2013; van Dierendonck, 2011). However, these reviews only reflect part of the picture. First, the reviews mainly focus on the nomological network of concepts of servant leadership, with limited attention being directed to the theories used in the servant leadership literature and their implications across different contexts. According to Corley and Gioia (2011), “theory is the currency of our scholarly realm” (p. 12). Thus, researchers and practitioners require theories with sufficient explanatory and predictive power. Therefore, to further enrich this body of literature, it is necessary to understand the perspectives that different studies have used to yield their empirical findings. For example, servant leadership has been found to manifest unique values, such as trust, integrity, and honesty that help to foster better performance (Peterson et al., 2012) and improve the interaction among subordinates and internal and external stakeholders (Bavik et al., 2017). However, although servant leadership has been generally found to be beneficial, the consequences of exercising servant leadership may vary according to the industrial context (Gordon, 1991). For example, Brownell (2010) highlighted how servant leadership should be incorporated into the curricula and training agendas for leaders in the hospitality industry. However, to date, few review studies have examined the crucial and unique role of servant leadership in this context in comparison with other environments.
To address these limitations, this study seeks to answer several important research questions. First, what theoretical perspectives do researchers adopt in hospitality management literature? Second, is servant leadership more valuable in certain industrial contexts (e.g. hospitality)? Another related question is, do the (dis)similarities between the characteristics of servant leadership indifferent industries influence the outcomes of certain styles of servant leadership? Third and perhaps most importantly, are any characteristics of servant leadership unique to the hospitality industry? That is, what are the characteristics of servant leadership that are particularly salient and important to the hospitality industry in relation to the broader management context?
To answer these research questions, this study conducts a systematic review of the research on servant leadership and makes the following important contributions to the literature. First, although several review papers have examined this topic, the reviews primarily focus on the conceptualization of servant leadership, the measurement instruments, and empirical findings. By reviewing the theories applied in the hospitality literature in contrast to those in the general management field, this study compares the assumptions and perspectives of the researchers and the empirical findings across disciplines. Second, by reviewing and comparing the similarities between the characteristics of the hospitality industry and those of servant leadership, this study aims to illuminate the implications of servant leadership for employee and organizational outcomes. It is hoped that this integrative perspective on the role of servant leadership in the hospitality context will facilitate researchers’ evaluations and decisions in adopting the appropriate conceptualizations, theories, and assessment tools for advancing this body of knowledge. Finally, this study provides practical suggestions that may help improve the hospitality industry.
Literature review
What is servant leadership?
Greenleaf (1970) first coined the term “servant leadership” in his seminal work. In a broad sense, servant leadership prioritizes others. “It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. The conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead” (p. 13). In prioritizing others, servant leaders have been associated with religious figures (e.g. Jesus Christ, Mother Theresa, Gandhi) (Brownell, 2010) and a philosophy of leadership (Mittal and Dorfman, 2012). Although the idea of servant leadership does not constitute a general theory of leadership, the research on servant leadership behavior reflects genuine employee centered practices. For example, instead of stressing a position of power (Stone et al., 2004), servant leadership suggests that leaders must disregard their interests and first serve their subordinates, customers, and the community (Greenleaf, 1970, 1997).
Compared to other leadership styles, servant leadership has received little attention in the mainstream leadership literature. The theorization of servant leadership stemmed from the management research conducted by Greenleaf (1997) and Spears (1996, 1998). These early studies identified 10 dimensions of servant leadership: listening, empathy, healing, conceptualization, awareness, persuasion, stewardship, building community, foresight, and commitment to the growth of people. In general, the subsequent conceptualizations and empirical work on servant leadership revealed that it comprised positive, philanthropic associated attributes and behaviors (Barbuto and Gottfredson, 2016; Ehrhart, 2004; Hale and Fields, 2016; Liden et al., 2008). Relatedly, Bass (2000) identified a number of conceptually overlapping features of servant leadership and transformational leadership, such as vision, influence, and trust. In response, some researchers have sought to distinguish servant leadership from transformational (Barbuto and Gottfredson, 2016; Liden et al., 2008; Schaubroeck et al., 2011; van Dierendonck et al., 2014) and ethical leadership (Brown and Treviño, 2006).
Brownell (2010) pointed out that servant leadership is compatible with the hospitality industry. Subsequent empirical studies have identified the positive outcomes of servant leadership in the hospitality industry. In general, these studies show that the quality of the relationship between servant leaders and their subordinates can influence employee outcomes in areas such as work engagement, work performance, and work commitment (Ling et al., 2017), and the extra-role behavior of coworkers, leaders and guests (Bavik et al., 2017; Wu et al., 2013). Studies have further shown that servant leadership boosts the helping behavior among employees (Bouzari and Karatepe, 2017), reduce negative behaviors such as lateness, and consequently has a positive influence on firm performance (Huang et al., 2016).
Differentiating servant leadership from other leadership styles
Unlike other leadership styles (i.e. transformational, transactional and charismatic), the primary focus of servant leadership is on the growth and well-being of others (Stone et al., 2004). According to Greenleaf (1997) servant leaders “put their subordinates’ highest priority needs before their own” (p. 14). In essence, servant leaders behave altruistically by emphasizing serving the group and fulfilling their followers’ need to grow.
Similarly, studies have highlighted that servant leaders have the wisdom to foresee the needs of others (Nuijten, 2009). Other than their wisdom and morality, servant leaders are regarded as selfless. Hale and Fields (2016) point out that servant leadership involves “an understanding and practice of leadership that places the good of those led over the self-interest of the leader, emphasizing leader behaviors that focus on follower development, and de-emphasizing glorification of the leader” (p. 397). Recent empirical research has provided further evidence of the incremental validity of servant leadership over other forms of leadership, including authentic and ethical leadership (Hoch et al., 2016).
Methodology
Review approach
A systematic review requires researchers to determine a basic approach with specific steps (Weed, 2006; Wright et al., 2007). The primary objective of this paper is to systematically review works on servant leadership in the fields of management and hospitality management and to illuminate the integrative link in the findings across the two disciplines. Although some researchers provide different review guidelines (e.g. PRISMA; Wright et al., 2007), the guidelines being followed in this was drawn from Weed's (2006) suggestions, Torraco's (2005) a checklist for writing an integrative literature review, and Okoli and Schabram (2010) framework. The guideline was used in the current study has four primary phrases and eight steps:
planning (i.e. purpose of the literature, protocol and training);
selection (i.e. searching the literature and practical screen);
extraction (i.e. quality appraisal and data extraction); and
execution (i.e. analysis of findings and writing the literature).
This four-step guideline has been commonly used in other studies (Kim et al., 2018; Paré et al., 2015).
Planning-research scope and search strategy
A search of the relevant electronic databases, in particular the Web of Science identified the relevant articles published between January 1970 and April 2018 (Table I). The specific keywords used were “servant leader” and “servant leadership” in the title and topic sections. The review is limited to articles published in English in peer-reviewed journals. This process identified 912 articles in all disciplines.
Selection-inclusion/exclusion criteria
Articles were included in this review if it met certain criteria. Consistent with the aims of this study, the selection process focused on the management and hospitality management disciplines. This process resulted in 305 articles. Research that was unpublished at the time of the review (May 2018) was excluded because full access to the papers could not be obtained. Another inclusion criterion was that articles should be included in the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) in the fields of hospitality management and management. This process resulted in 222 articles eligible for further screening. Finally, only empirical and conceptual publications were retained in the research process, and all other types of research, such as conference papers, editorial notes, and book chapters, were excluded. After removing the duplicates, a sample of 169 articles was generated for the screening process.
Data extraction
The articles included in the sample were further screened manually to identify their relevance. To prevent researcher bias, a researcher from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University who is familiar with the research area was invited to review the titles and abstracts retrieved based on predetermined criteria for determining eligibility and exclusion. The potential full-text articles were then assessed for eligibility against the abovementioned selection criteria. During this process, any disagreements or uncertainties regarding the eligibility of an article were discussed until a consensus was reached between the researchers. After removing the irrelevant studies, 101 articles were identified. Subsequently, five seminal articles were added to the review process, thus resulting in a final sample of 106 articles for the review.
Data execution
After this stage, the articles were then analyzed independently. Broadly, the articles were extracted and entered into a standardized spreadsheet under the following categories: year of publication, authors, journals, disciplines (i.e. management, hospitality management), country, sample, level of analysis, measurement, theories, independent variables, dependent variables, boundary conditions, mediators, dependent variables, and team level variables. The articles were then analyzed in detail based on the adopted theories, research methodology, level of analysis, and context for the investigation.
To seek further insights in relation to the second research question, which concerns the (dis)similarities between the characteristics of servant leadership and those of hospitality, the distinct qualities and/or components of the hospitality industry needed to be examined more closely. Thus, the same search procedure as outlined above was used to identify the cultural characteristics of hospitality organizations. The study specifically aimed to review and synthesize hospitality industry-specific conceptualizations, scales, frameworks, and servant leadership scales (see also Table III). Accordingly, “hospitality organization culture scale” and “what is hospitality” were included as key terms in the title and topic sections. The initial research yielded seven articles. However, because the content and title of a study may not always be representative, to further increase the coverage of the research and chances of not missing an important study, an additional search was conducted to identify the characteristics of the hospitality industry. In particular, the reference lists of the representative studies were scanned to see if the references included reports of additional studies that may have been fit for review (Horsley et al., 2011). The relevant studies were identified and added to the article pool. After removing the unrelated studies, four hospitality organization scales and four relevant theoretical papers were identified for the final assessment.
Results
Overview of the servant leadership studies in the management and hospitality management literature
Publications by journal.
The results of the literature search for journal articles are summarized in Table I. First, the 106 articles were published in a variety of peer-reviewed (n = 41) SSCI journals, particularly in hospitality (n = 5) and management (n = 36) journals. Second, the majority of the articles were published in the Leadership and Organizational Developmental Journal (17.8 per cent) and Journal of Business Ethics (15.0 per cent) in the management discipline, and the Cornell Hospitality Quarterly and International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management (5.6 per cent) in the hospitality management field. Third, the articles included more empirical (78.3 per cent) than conceptual (21.7 per cent) studies. Fourth, the overwhelming majority of the empirical studies were published in management (89.6 per cent) that in hospitality management (10.4 per cent) journals. Overall, there was a clear imbalance in terms of the numbers of publications in the management and hospitality management literature.
Publications by year.
Figure 1 shows the numbers of publications published in the management and hospitality management literature between 1998 and 2018. Overall, only 10.3 per cent of the articles were published between 1998 and 2008, with the majority (89.7 per cent) being published between 2010 and 2018. In the management literature, after Greenleaf (1970) first introduced the term servant leadership, the concept remained relatively undeveloped for approximately three decades. The first research on servant leadership was published in the early millennium (Meyer et al., 1998; Spears, 1996). The number of publications doubled in 2008, and research on servant leadership in management then accelerated after 2010 (68.8 per cent).
Studies on servant leadership in the hospitality industry have only emerged in the past decade (Brownell, 2010). Although the research on servant leadership in the hospitality industry is likely to continue to increase, to date, we still know little about servant leadership in hospitality (10.3 per cent).
Publications by country.
Figure 2 presents the distribution of servant leadership publications by country in the management and hospitality management literature. Overall, studies on servant leadership using various variables have been conducted in 21 countries (see Figure 2 for a full breakdown of the countries). The majority of servant leadership research has been conducted in the USA (32.3 per cent) and China (24.6 per cent). Management research has been conducted in a broad range of 18 countries whereas the hospitality management research only covers five different geographical areas, with the majority of the studies being conducted in Asia, followed by Turkey and Iran.
The management and hospitality management research includes four-wave (Peterson et al., 2012), three-wave (Bouzari and Karatepe, 2017; Tang et al., 2015; Williams et al., 2017; Yang et al., 2017) and two-wave (Donia et al., 2016; Newman et al., 2017; Walumbwa et al., 2010) studies and the majority of the studies (83.0 per cent) are cross-sectional in nature.
Studies on servant leadership have been conducted in various countries. Therefore, one of the primary research questions in this study is to understand whether employees’ perception of servant leaders is universal or if it varies depending on contextual factors. Cross-cultural servant leadership literature supports the influence of situational factors. Although no cross-cultural studies have been conducted in the hospitality management field, a number of management studies have found evidence of cross-cultural relationships between servant leadership and employee attitudes. van Dierendonck et al. (2017) provide evidence of the cross-cultural equivalence of servant leadership in eight countries (except Iceland), whereas other studies show that some servant leadership dimensions are not equivalently perceived as important across cultures (Hale and Fields, 2016; Pekerti and Sendjaya, 2010). For example, Pekerti and Sendjaya (2010) find that their Australian and Indonesian sub-samples are similar in terms of voluntary subordination, covenantal relationships, and transcendental spirituality. However, authentic-self behavior is found to be significantly stronger in Australian leaders while Indonesian leaders show stronger moral responsibility and transforming influence.
Theories of servant leadership.
Table II provides an overview of the theoretical perspectives on servant leadership and their common assumptions in the sample of hospitality management and management studies. Overall, 19 theories were identified. Three theories are commonly used in the management and hospitality management literature, whereas 15 theories are used in the management literature alone and 2 in hospitality management.
In examining the antecedents of servant leadership, the management and hospitality literature mostly draws on three major theoretical perspectives. First, social exchange theory postulates that leader-employee relationship involves an ongoing resource exchange process. In a business environment, the positive attitude and behavior of servant leaders toward their employees are reciprocated through the cultivation of positive work outcomes (Blau, 1964; Gouldner, 1960; Homans, 1958), such as organizational citizenship behavior (Bavik et al., 2017; Newman et al., 2017; Walumbwa et al., 2010; Wu et al., 2013), organizational commitment (Ling et al., 2017), employee creativity (Jaiswal and Dhar, 2017), team performance (Hu and Liden, 2011) and customer value co-creation (Hsiao et al., 2015).
As another theoretical perspective, social learning theory posits that individuals learn appropriate behaviors through observation, imitation, and modeling the behavior of credible role models (Bandura, 1971). In an organization, leaders mainly act as role models by presenting attractive qualities, and the employees mimic the behavior of those they admire and/or respect (Liden et al., 2014; Wood and Bandura, 1989). Based on this rationale, a number of studies show that by emulating their leaders’ behavior, employees can generate monetary benefits through improving the organization’s financial performance (Overstreet et al., 2014) and sales performance (Grisaffe et al., 2016; Jaramillo et al., 2015), and minimizing negative behavioral consequences such as deviant behavior (Peng et al., 2016) and (Lacroix and Pircher Verdorfer, 2017) leadership avoidance.
The third theory commonly appears in the servant leadership literature is self-determination theory which posits that individuals desire to meet their essential needs in regard to factors such as competence (sense of being useful), autonomy (self-determined actions) and relatedness (care about and be cared about by others) (Ryan and Deci, 2000; Vansteenkiste et al., 2004). The studies in this area show that leaders’ concentration on serving the needs of employees is positively related to higher employee performance, job satisfaction, firm performance (Mayer et al., 2008), and psychological capital (personal growth) (Luthans et al., 2006), which in turn boost employees’ retention to stay and service-oriented behavior (Bouzari and Karatepe, 2017).
Several streams of theoretical research emerge in the management literature. For example, some studies focus on self-driven and social environment related theories, such as self-efficacy, self-identity, social cognitive theory, social identification theory, and the theory of moral education. Other studies concentrate on how the perceived servant leadership of employees, group member interactions, and individuals’ observations lead to various employee outcomes (Chen et al., 2015; Chiniara and Bentein, 2016; Duan et al., 2014; Liden et al., 2014; Neubert et al., 2008; Verdorfer et al., 2015; Wang et al., 2017; Yang et al., 2017; Zhao et al., 2016). Another major theoretical stream that is widely applied in the management literature is relation-oriented theories such as relational identification theory, relational leadership theory, spiritual leadership theory, the domain of upper echelons theory, implicit leadership theory, and the theory of coaching. Along with these theories, a number of studies illustrate how employees perceive their leaders’ attitudes, behavior, and the quality of their relationships with their servant leaders, which results in them benchmarking the leaders’ behavior and demonstrating the desired outcomes (Abu Bakar and McCann, 2015; Duff, 2013; Oner, 2012; Mallén et al., 2015; Peterson et al., 2012) see also (Yoshida et al., 2014). The last theoretical stream, which emphasizes the work-family relationship and draws on work-family enrichment theory (Yang et al., 2015; Zhang et al., 2012) and conservation of resources theory (Tang et al., 2015) shows that servant leadership has positive spillover effects on employees’ well-being outside of the organization.
In the hospitality literature, two theories are predominantly applied by researchers. First, based on profit chain theory which posits that loyal customers are created through satisfied and loyal employees (Heskett et al., 1994), Ling et al. (2016) find that top-level servant leadership has positive spillover effects on employees. Second, using social information theory which suggests that individuals perceive and process social cues based on the social context, Salancik and Pfeffer (1978) and Huang et al. (2016) find that servant leadership creates a positive service climate, which improves firm performance.
Outcomes of servant leadership
This section presents the underlying mechanisms (i.e. affective and cognitive) of servant leadership, the outcomes of servant leadership and the contextual factors (e.g. company culture and climate, values, competition) that illuminate the conditions under which the effect of servant leadership has more or less influence on the outcome variable.
Affective and attitudinal outcomes
In the hospitability literature, servant leadership predicts several affective outcomes, including trust (Ling et al., 2017). The management literature provides a wide range of empirical evidence for the positive attitudinal influence of servant leadership on employee outcomes such as job satisfaction (Chiniara and Bentein, 2016; Mayer et al., 2008; Neubert et al., 2016; Schneider and George, 2011; van Dierendonck et al., 2014) and commitment (Bobbio et al., 2012; Irving and Berndt, 2017; Krog and Govender, 2015).
Cognitive outcomes
Numerous management and hospitality management studies have found empirical support for the mediating role of factors such as trust in the leader (Burton et al., 2017; Jaiswal and Dhar, 2017; Jaramillo et al., 2015) and trust in the organization (Wu et al., 2013). Some studies have further examined the relationship between leaders and followers and found support for leader-member exchange as a potential mediator of the effects of servant leadership on employees (Abu Bakar and McCann, 2015; Newman et al., 2017). For example, using a sample of 446 supervisor-subordinate pairs in 30 teams, Newman et al. (2017) show that the quality of the personal relationships between leaders and followers influences organizational citizenship behavior. Other mediators of the servant leadership outcomes examined in the management literature focus on personal promotion (Neubert et al., 2008).
More employment-related and psychological factors, such as psychological contract breach (Peng et al., 2016), self-efficacy (Chen et al., 2015; Liden et al., 2014; Walumbwa et al., 2010), organizational and group identity (Peterson et al., 2012; Zhang et al., 2016), are examined in the management literature. Furthermore, overall organizational justice (Burton et al., 2017) and elements of organizational justice such as procedural justice (Mayer et al., 2008; Walumbwa et al., 2010) found to be related to interactional servant leadership.
Physiological outcomes
Finally, Tang et al. (2015) find that servant leadership is negatively related to physiological variables such as employee exhaustion. Using a sample of 403 bank employees in Northern China, the authors investigate how servant leadership influences the work–family relationship, and find that servant leadership weakens employee emotional exhaustion and boosts the relationship between personal learning and work-to-family positive spillover.
Behavioral and performance outcomes
The empirical management and hospitality management literature suggest that servant leadership is positively related to performance and behavioral outcomes. Two major behavioral outcomes that are widely examined are employees’ discretionary behavior and work engagement. In particular, studies show that a close dyadic relationship between servant leaders and their followers is likely to enhance the employees’ helping behavior (Neubert et al., 2008; Zou et al., 2015) and customer-oriented citizenship behavior (Abu Bakar and McCann, 2015; Hsiao et al., 2015; Newman et al., 2017; Wu et al., 2013; Zhao et al., 2016). For instance, Bavik et al. (2017) find that servant leadership stimulates job crafting (i.e. seeking resources, seeking challenges, and reducing demands), which boosts employees’ customer and service-oriented organizational citizenship behavior.
Studies also show that employees display more discretionary behavior under the influence of servant leadership and are more engaged at work (De Clercq et al., 2014; Sousa and van Dierendonck, 2017; van Dierendonck et al., 2014), and that the support of servant leaders helps improve employees’ use of imagination, decision-making, innovation (Krog and Govender, 2015) and creative behavior (Jaiswal and Dhar, 2017; Liden et al., 2014; Neubert et al., 2008; Williams et al., 2017; Yang et al., 2017). Although some studies have investigated the relationship between servant leadership and employee negative deviance behavior (Neubert et al., 2008; Peng et al., 2016; Verdorfer et al., 2015), the results of these studies consistently suggest that servant leadership is a strong and negative predictor of employee deviance behavior.
Level of analysis
Studies explore the effects of servant leadership across different levels, including at the individual, team and firm levels. Although limited firm-level analysis has been conducted on servant leadership in the management and hospitality management literature, the available studies show evidence of firm-level outcomes in terms of factors such as firm performance (Huang et al., 2016), customer value co-creation (Hsiao et al., 2015), organizational performance (de Waal and Sivro, 2012; Mallén et al., 2015; Peterson et al., 2012) and financial performance (Overstreet et al., 2014).
Team-level management and hospitality management studies have found similar outcomes of servant leadership, such as improved employee commitment (Krog and Govender, 2015; Ling et al., 2016) and organizational citizenship behavior, (Abu Bakar and McCann, 2015; Bavik et al., 2017; Newman et al., 2017). In addition, team level outcomes are identified in terms of employee team creativity (Yang et al., 2017), voice behavior (Duan et al., 2014), organizational performance (Otero-Neira et al., 2016) and team performance (Hu and Liden, 2011; Schaubroeck et al., 2011). Some studies concentrate on deviant behaviors such as supervisor specific avoidance (Zhao et al., 2016) and unethical employee behavior (Jaramillo et al., 2015). In particular, Jaramillo et al. (2015) show that when their servant leaders are perceived to be ethical and fair role models, their employees tend to engage in less deviant and more cooperative behavior.
In the hospitality literature, Ling et al. (2016) further propose a trickle-down model in which the effects of servant leadership flow from the top to the middle-level (i.e. supervisors) and then to employees, and show that the effects of top-level servant leadership are mediated by middle-level servant leadership. Thus, the top managers serve as role models for the lower-level managers, who in turn serve as role models for the employees, and the consequent spillover effect leads the employees to demonstrate service-oriented behaviors. Similarly, by using cross-level data on 238 hotel employees in 38 teams, Bavik et al. (2017) find that team level servant leadership has a significantly positive effect on the citizenship behavior that individual employees direct toward their leaders, co-workers, and customers.
In the hospitality management literature, the majority of the studies are conducted at the individual level. Positive relationships are observed between servant leadership and several individual-level outcomes, such as the intention to remain with the organization (Bouzari and Karatepe, 2017), helping behavior (Zou et al., 2015), customer-oriented citizenship behavior (Wu et al., 2013) and service quality (Koyuncu et al., 2014).
The management research supports a wide range of individual-level outcomes, including knowledge sharing (Tseng, 2017), job satisfaction (Irving and Berndt, 2017), employee creativity (Williams et al., 2017), perceived justice and intention to stay (Schneider and George, 2011). Other studies provide evidence for the attenuate influence of servant leadership on negative organizational variables including job burnout (Burton et al., 2017), turnover intention (Zhao et al., 2016), organizational cynicism (Verdorfer et al., 2015) and work–family conflict (Tang et al., 2015). In related qualitative research, Jit et al. (2016) examine the conflict management approaches that are available to servant leaders and conclude that servant leaders are more effective, humane, persuasive, and participative in conflict resolution.
Contextual factors associated with the implications of servant leadership
This section reviews research on the role of contextual factors that influence the effects of servant leadership based on the important dimensions of the context framework developed by Johns (2006). The first dimension is the omnibus context, which covers broader concepts and seeks to answer the who (e.g. occupational and demographic context), where (e.g. region), when (e.g. industry) and why (e.g. rationale) questions. The second dimension is the discrete context, which represents more specific factors that can influence attitudes and behavior, including the task (e.g. autonomy, resources), social (e.g. identity, structure) and physical (e.g. décor) dimensions (Johns, 2006). This framework enables more in-depth comparisons of the boundary and moderator variables, and the identification of the roles of specific and/or overlooked contextual variables.
Boundary conditions.
In general, contextual factors refer to particular situations that moderate the relationships between certain variables. The existing research on contextual variables is indicated with different labels, such as interaction effect, boundary conditions, and moderators (Aguinis, 1995; Aguinis et al., 2013). As I use these terms interchangeably, the underlying assumptions of these terms are the same. The boundary conditions are generally linked with independent variable whereas moderators linked with the outcome variable. In this case, the boundary conditions are essential for understanding servant leadership, for they can highlight why the perception of servant leadership increases or decreases and under what conditions servant leadership is more or less beneficial.
The review of the empirical research on contextual factors reveals that the management literature mostly concentrates on omnibus contextual variables, which refer to situational settings that indicate “when” (i.e. specific occasion and/or time) servant leadership is more influential on employees’ attitudes and behaviors. For example, using a sample of 184 respondents and uncertainty as a boundary condition, van Dierendonck et al. (2014) examine the role of the external environment in shaping servant leadership practices by investigating the effects of psychological needs satisfaction and leadership effectiveness mechanisms relating to servant leadership and transformational leadership on employees work engagement and organizational commitment. Although they find that servant leadership is better at fulfilling the needs of employees while transformational leadership is more efficient, uncertainty did not yield any significant results.
Other studies focus on the relationship between organizational factors and the “who” variable, which is related to the research participants and those who share the environment with them (Johns, 2006). These studies find that the effectiveness of servant leadership largely hinges on the perceptions and behaviors of the leaders and employees. For example, using a sample of 145 employee–supervisor (i.e. salespeople) dyads from various industries in Spain, Jaramillo et al. (2015) measure supervisor behavior and salesperson perceptions using the behavioral control of servant leaders as the boundary condition. They find a positive relationship between servant leadership behavior and employee perceptions, and that the perceptions of servant leadership become weaker when employees perceive a high level of behavioral control from their leaders. Elucidating these results from an employee perspective, they argue that the “supervisor is talking-the-talk, but not walking-the-walk” (Jaramillo et al., 2015, p. 119).
Similarly, Newman (2017) and Peng et al. (2016) show that the effectiveness of servant leadership depends on the leaders and the personality types of followers. Notably, Newman (2017) finds that employees with a proactive personality are more effective in stimulating psychological empowerment and higher-quality leader-member exchange relationships. Taking the locus of causality as a personality-related boundary condition, Peng et al. (2016) show that the indirect influence of servant leadership on deviant employee behavior through psychological contract breaches is stronger for employees with a high external locus. Interestingly, employees who experience the least benefits in terms of job satisfaction from working under a servant leader are those who engage in highly self-serving behavior, such as impression management (Donia et al., 2016).
Yang et al. (2017) focus on social context variables that show that servant leadership is also dependent on the cultural values of the employees. They investigate the moderating effects of team power distance on the interactions between servant leadership, creative self-efficacy, and team efficacy at the individual and team levels and confirm that a larger team power distance lowers positive creative self-efficacy at the individual level but not team self-efficacy.
Although no studies concentrate on the omnibus context in the hospitality discipline, the studies that measure the boundary conditions using discrete variables are limited to the social context. These studies show that the influence of servant leadership is not solely dependent on the specific characteristics of the leadership style but also on the employees’ beliefs and perception of how they are treated. Wu et al. (2013) find that employees’ sensitivity to favorable treatment by others functions as a boundary condition for the high-quality relationship between servant leadership and leader-member exchange. Similarly, Zou et al. (2015) test the belief in positive reciprocity as a boundary condition for explaining the relationship between servant leadership and leader-member exchange besides team-member exchange. Unlike similar studies (Chen et al., 2015; Yang et al., 2017; Yoshida et al., 2014), they find that positive reciprocity is a positive and significant team-level moderator, particularly on team member exchange. Taken together, these studies suggest that favorable treatment and positive reciprocity encourage employees to engage in discretionary behavior, such as helping and organizational citizenship.
Moderators.
As aforementioned, the work environment of servant leaders plays a significant role either as an antecedent in determining how servant leadership is perceived (De Clercq et al., 2014; Peng et al., 2016; van Dierendonck et al., 2014; Yang et al., 2017) or as a moderator of its outcomes (Duan et al., 2014).
Similar to the boundary conditions in the relationship between servant leadership and its outcomes, the management research offers omnibus (i.e. “when”) moderators and primarily targets as the external and internal climate dynamics (Zhang et al., 2012). Although the external environment does not serve as a precondition (van Dierendonck et al., 2014), other environmental factors such as the competitive intensity and competitive climate alter the direction and/or strength of the relationships between servant leadership and the outcome variables. For instance, Huang et al. (2016) find that competitive intensity moderates the relationship between the service climate and firm performance. In terms of the influence of CEO servant leadership, the service climate is more strongly related to firm performance when competitive intensity is high than when it is low. Similar to Yang et al. (2017), Chen et al. (2015) show that the group competition climate strengthens the positive relationship between self-efficacy and service performance in areas such as service quality, customer-focused citizenship behavior, and customer oriented prosocial behavior.
Although the management research mostly focuses on the moderating effects of discrete social factors, the results of these studies are similar to the results with the boundary conditions. Specifically, Yoshida et al. (2014) find that the “team climate support for innovation” strengthens the link between leader identification and employee creativity at the individual level but does not have a significant effect on team level innovation. The other studies show that the effects on employee creativity depend on the support for innovation, employee thriving (i.e. to grow or develop; Jaiswal and Dhar, 2017) and leaders’ political skill (De Clercq et al., 2014), and that these factors strengthen and moderate the effects of servant leadership on individual creative behavior.
The available evidence in hospitality management literature is also based on social context variables. The only study on this topic is Ling et al. (2016), which find that a favorable service climate strengthens the positive effect of middle servant leadership, which further leads the employees to engage in service-oriented activities.
In summary, the main findings concerning the effects of contextual factors and the principal issues that have been identified in this section are as follows. In the hospitality management literature, the research on servant leadership moderators seems to be in its infancy, and the variables are limited to social expectations and relationships. More broadly, hospitality researchers need to develop a better understanding of the omnibus context variables. Although each hospitality establishment has a set of expectations on how employees should dress, behave, and present themselves, all cultures, ethnic groups, and societies have gender role expectations, which may affect the perception of servant leadership and the organizational atmosphere. Therefore, further research is needed to explore how the role of gender may affect employees’ emotions and behavioral outcomes.
There is also a lack of research on the omnibus context particularly in relation to the “where” and “why” questions. Hence, thus far, the literature has mainly focused on the social context, and no studies have measured the physical and direct task-related factors. This suggests that further research is needed to understand employees’ perceptions of their task processes and interactions with other members. Moreover, future studies are encouraged to take physical and environmental variables into consideration when investigating the moderating factors, such as the characteristics of the built environment (e.g. light, temperature and décor), which are in the scope of environmental psychology (Bitner, 1992; Mehrabian and Russell, 1974).
The review of the research on the effects of contextual factors suggests that numerous studies have investigated self-efficacy and leader-member exchange, which have been found to be effective mediators of servant leadership at the individuallevel however not at the team level. The non-significant moderating effects of the contextual variables at the team level raise the question of whether teams perceive servant leaders differently than individuals. If the answer is yes, then what other mechanisms can successfully stimulate team level outcomes? Thus, there is abundant room for further research to explore the mediating and moderating roles of alternative factors that may explain the effects of team servant leadership on the team level outcome variables.
Characteristics of the hospitality industry and servant leadership
This section examines the major conceptualizations, definitions, and unique features of the hospitality industry and discusses how the findings of this review study illuminate the unique values of servant leadership in the hospitality context.
Mok et al. (1998) state that “like nations and corporations, industries have cultures” (p. 131). Accordingly, industries can be seen to differ in terms of their customer requirements, competitive environment, and societal expectations, which influence the assumptions and values of their employees, and consequently how they work and perform (Gordon, 1991; Woods, 2016). According to Ott (1989), the “nature of the organization’s business determines with whom and how it must interact in the course of doing business” (p. 80). Thus, the characteristics of industries can affect the organization, leaders, and employees, and the strategies they choose to cope with those effects (Reynolds, 1986).
The hospitality industry is generally recognized as having a number of standard features, such as low pay, low job security, and long working hours (Dawson et al., 2011; Walker and Miller, 2009). Furthermore, hospitality work is considered to be highly labor intensive, and it mostly differs on a seasonal basis (i.e. higher volumes of business). Although the hospitality industry postulates having a broad and diverse range of job opportunities, it is commonly identified as having a high employee turnover rate (Deery and Shaw, 2016; Iverson and Deery, 1997). Another distinct feature of the hospitality sector is its multicultural workplace atmosphere due to the increasingly diverse workforce resulting from the globalization of the industry (Manoharan et al., 2013). According to Brotherton (1999), the hospitality industry is based on “contemporaneous human exchange, which is voluntarily entered into, and designed to enhance the mutual well-being of the parties concerned through the provision of accommodation and food or drink” (p. 168).Similarly, King (1995) uses several components to characterize the industry, including organizational support, employees, customers, hospitality procedures, and face-to-face interactions.
Although the hospitality industry shares some similar features with other industries (e.g. the service industry), several studies have pointed out that the hospitality industry has some unique characteristics (Brotherton, 1999; Grönroos, 1984; Hansen et al., 2004; Hemmington, 2007; Jayawardena, 2000; King, 1995; O'Connor, 2005; Rutherford and McConnell, 1991). A distinctive characteristic of the hospitality industry is the affiliation with guests, whereas in the service industry, the relationship between the service providers and customers is economical (King, 1995). Specifically, the service providers pursue a strict pricing strategy and added items or services are directly invoiced to the customer. In contrast, the hospitality industry is known for being more generous and providing various offerings and minor products or services that are not invoiced to a guest’s account, such as welcome drinks, a birthday cake, or a honeymoon package (O'Connor, 2005). Based on the requirements and demands of the customers, the service industry offers final products or services at one moment in time (Walker and Mutti, 2002). However, in the hospitality industry, numerous encounters occur between hosts and guests throughout the service, with the service being delivered over time (Wood, 1994).
Another unique characteristic of the hospitality industry is the provision of security. After an individual’s physiological needs are fulfilled and they no longer need to control their thoughts and behaviors, the need for security becomes active (Maslow, 1943). In the service industry, companies use products or services to provide security and safety for customers (Mullins, 2001). However, in the hospitality industry, the sense of security depends on the accommodation itself. Thus, the guests not only seek greater comfort and cleanliness but also expect to be protected, which is more likely to be guaranteed in an accommodation establishment (Hemmington, 2007; Huang and Xiao, 2000). When guests travel to unknown destinations that they may perceive as unpleasant or uncomfortable, a hotel can be seen as a sanctuary (Choi and Chu, 2000). Finally, unlike other industries, in the hospitality industry, the interaction and the service are not limited to a transaction (e.g. checkout), but rather end after the guest departs the establishment. Moreover, the hospitality industry is not only generous but also provides extended “post-purchase privileges” to guests such as luggage services and the use of common areas (lobby) and facilities (pool).
The leaders are vital resources in the hospitality sector because the industry is profoundly reliant on human engagement and there is a strong reciprocal interaction between the leaders and employees who are regarded as the sources of customer satisfaction (Brownell, 2010; King, 1995). Thus, in the hospitality industry, the attitudes and behaviors of the leaders and the way they treat their employees are critical factors in achieving employee satisfaction, high productivity, and guest satisfaction (King, 1995; Slåtten and Mehmetoglu, 2011). Accordingly, Brownell (2010) points out that “servant leadership holds particular promise for restoring public trust and employee engagement” (p. 364). Indeed, the hospitality industry-specific conceptualizations, scales, and research on servant leadership suggest that many of the cultural features of the hospitality industry and the attributes of servant leadership are mutually inclusive. Table III presents the hospitality industry characteristics and corresponding servant leadership attributes.
Trust, integrity and honesty.
As illustrated in Table III, trust, integrity, and honesty have been found to intersect with several attributes of the hospitality industry and servant leadership. Trust can be regarded as the backbone of the relationship between a leader and an employee in any business. Moreover, the hospitality industry requires high levels of cohesion and collaboration between organizational elements, and the harmonization and good relations between leaders and peers depend on the underlying interpersonal trust and communication (Bavik, 2016). Woods (2016) suggests that trust is one of the norms of the hospitality industry because it serves to stabilize the behavior within the organization. Other related studies also indicate that the cultural attributes of the hospitality industry revolve around keeping promises (Tepeci and Bartlett, 2002), integrity (Dawson et al., 2011),and equal treatment (Bavik, 2016).
According to Baker (1980), good “organizational cultures’ are characterized by norms and values supportive of excellence, teamwork, profitability, honesty, a customer service orientation, pride in one’s work, and commitment to the organization” (p. 10). Although it is generally agreed that the hospitality industry is guest-oriented, hospitality services involve doing things from an ethical and procedural perspective (Coughlan, 2001; Malloy and Fennell, 1998; Payne and Dimanche, 1996; Raiborn and Payne, 1990). The general assumption is that in hospitality, honesty (Dawson et al., 2011; Tepeci and Bartlett, 2002; Woods, 2016), integrity (Coughlan, 2001), direct and honest relationships, and equal treatment (Bavik, 2016) inspire open communication between leaders and their peers, which in turn leads employees to have a strong attachment to the organization and enhance their job performance (Ling et al., 2016).
Similarly, in the servant leadership literature, Greenleaf (1997) in particular suggests that servant leaders create an atmosphere of trust in which the leader works as a role model and selflessly serves others. In contrast to the conventional leadership styles, servant leadership emphasizes strong long-term relationships with employees (Liden et al., 2008). Servant leaders trust their peers on whether and how things get done and focus on the well-being of their followers (Russell and Stone, 2002; Stone et al., 2004). Thus, the literature suggests that honesty and integrity are fundamental features of servant leadership (Greenleaf, 1970). Servant leaders are considered to behave ethically, such as by being fair and interacting openly and honestly with others (Liden et al., 2008). These two variables are generally associated with moral codes (Russell and Stone, 2002). However, different from other leadership styles (i.e. ethical leadership), servant leadership emphasizes caring for others, integrity, and trustworthiness rather than normative behavior that suits the company philosophy (van Dierendonck and Nuijten, 2011). In sum, servant leadership requires moral integrity to naturally boost employee trust while promoting open communication and honesty within the organization (Reed et al., 2011; Wong and Page, 2003).
Care and being a servant to others.
The hospitality industry is characterized as being a primarily guest-oriented industry and as involving more exclusive and advanced social interaction than that required in many other types of service (King, 1995; Stringer, 1981; Walker and Miller, 2009). The interaction between hosts and guests is necessary because the guests wish to acquire experiences rather than service delivery (Jayawardena, 2000). In hospitality, employees perceive their customers as guests who are away from home, and as hosts, the employees are devoted to creating memories (Bavik, 2016). Accordingly, this requires more than just service quality, as for example when purchasing a meal, guests will expect to receive more than just the food and drink that they consume (Hemmington, 2007). During the service encounter, “the host also has social skills and ‘polish’ and interacts with guests with courtesy, warmth, and tact, but maintains a social distance and defers to the guest unless the guest has signaled that a less formal relationship is desired” (King, 1995, p. 230). Similarly, most of the characteristics that have been identified in the hospitality industry postulate altruistic and guest concentrated norms and values such as placing guests first (Woods, 2016), creating memories, helping each other, serving guests, (Bavik, 2016), valuing customers, maintaining relationships with customers (Tepeci and Bartlett, 2002), conducting host-led practices (Dawson et al., 2011; Hemmington, 2007; King, 1995) and providing care (Dawson et al., 2011; Tepeci and Bartlett, 2002; Woods, 2016).
In the servant leadership literature, although the names of the conceptualizations are different, all of the identified dimensions/attributes are philanthropic in nature and emphasize and correspond to serving others, such as service (Russell and Stone, 2002), humility (van Dierendonck and Nuijten, 2011), servanthood (Liden et al., 2008) and altruism (Reed et al., 2011). Farling et al. (1999) conceptually identify vision, influence, credibility, trust and service as attributes of servant leadership, which emphasize helping others first. Similarly, servant leaders are devoted to serving (Spears, 2010), which is considered to be “a way of being marked by one’s self-categorization and desire to be characterized by others as someone who serves others first, even when self-sacrifice is required” (Liden et al., 2008, p. 162).
Empowerment.
Similar to trust, honesty, and integrity, the empowerment variable is both conceptually identified and identically labeled in the hospitality industry and servant leadership literature (Table III). Empowerment refers to “choosing partnership over patriarchy” and “distributing ownership and responsibility” (Block, 1993, p. 23). In contrast to the public sector, which has clear rules for employees (Rainey et al., 1976), the hospitality industry has more flexibility, and employees are empowered to make decisions. The hospitality industry is characterized as labor intensive, with many of the jobs requiring certain levels of skill and knowledge (King, 1995). The hospitality industry, in particular hotel establishments, operates 24/7 (i.e. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week) (Cassee and Reuland, 1983). Therefore, no employees, including leaders, can work alone and be present all of the time because they have to empower others to accomplish the given tasks efficiently. The hospitality industry is cohesive (Bavik, 2016) in that “each member of the team is interconnected and represents a piece of this puzzle. To put the puzzles together, you must have cohesion”(Walker and Miller, 2009, p. 210). In the hospitality industry, empowerment is considered to be an absolute standard because empowering employees can increase their job skills, self-esteem, psychological engagement, employee satisfaction, employee commitment, employee involvement, employee retention, and positive word of mouth (Banker et al., 2000; MacDuffie, 1995; Youndt et al., 1996).
Servant leaders concentrate on the development of others (Greenleaf, 1997). Different from other leadership styles, servant leaders “serve followers as an end in themselves—their needs and development take priority over those of the organizations” (Sendjaya and Cooper, 2011, p. 417). Moreover, servant leaders are inherently altruistic and are recognized as “serving others willingly with no expectation of reward, sacrificing personal benefit to meet employee needs, placing the interests of others before self-interest, and preferring to serve others over being served”(Reed et al., 2011, p. 425). A general view in the servant leadership literature is that the primary aim of empowering followers is not to enhance their self-interest but to contribute to their personal growth (Ehrhart, 2004; Greenleaf, 1970; Liden et al., 2008; Spears and Lawrence, 2002). In particular, servant leaders “want their subordinates to improve for their own good, and view the development of followers as an end, in and of itself, not merely a means to reach the leader’s or organization’s goals” (Ehrhart, 2004, p. 69). Finally, Sendjaya and Cooper (2011) argue that rather simply making followers feel useful within the organization, servant leaders aim to develop and empower subordinates to reach their maximum potential.
Community focus.
Hospitality is regarded as a generous (O'Connor, 2005) and propitious industry (Tepeci and Bartlett, 2002) that emphasizes empathy toward others (Dawson et al., 2011). In the hospitality industry, employees are expected to not only serve but also to develop good working relationships, enthusiasm (Bavik, 2016), love of people, a desire to serve others, cultural awareness, and a community focus (Dawson et al., 2011).
The servant leader recognizes that the community is only possible through strong relationships (Greenleaf, 1977). This is not only limited to dyadic relationships but it also extends to building sense of community within and outside the organization (Liden et al., 2008). Servant leaders are self-motivated and intentionally seek to serve the community (Reed et al., 2011). Finally, servant leaders are committed to providing help, which extends beyond their self-interest and building a working climate that enhances employee growth and has a constructive influence on the community (Barbuto and Wheeler, 2006).
Listening.
Schein (2006) confirms the importance of listening and states that “much has been said of the need for vision in leaders, but too little has been said of their need to listen, to absorb, to search the environment for trends, and to build the organization’s capacity to learn”(pp. 376-377). Within the hospitality industry, where guest satisfaction is heavily reliant on social interaction, listening is vitally important. Darke and Gurney (2000) identify “not complaining” as a social rule and one of the taboos of the hospitality industry. Hence, the hospitality industry demands continuous internal and external communication (Pizam and Ellis, 1999). Thus, in the hospitality industry, listening and in particular clear communication are crucial factors because the satisfaction of the guest depends on the intense interaction between the guest, bottom-line employees and managers (Baum, 2006; Walker and Miller, 2009).
As Dean Jackson states, “listening is an art that requires attention to talent, spirit over ego, others over self”. Consistent with this notion, servant leaders are regarded as active listeners who pay attention to their employees’ opinions, ideas, and suggestions (Barbuto and Wheeler, 2006). Because employees seek attention, leader support enhances their knowledge and skills and helps them avoid undesirable consequences. As Baggett (1998) states, “great communicators are great listeners” (p. 111). Servant leaders are selfless and their primary interest is in their followers because they genuinely listen to them (Laub, 2003). Finally, servant leaders are also characterized as empathic listeners who create transparent and trustworthy relationships and aim to build long-term commitment and increase the well-being of their followers (Spears, 2010).
Discussion
Theoretical contributions
Although the concept of servant leadership as a leadership style has a long history, it has only recently been the subject of empirical research. Nonetheless, servant leadership is a rapidly growing area of social scientific research covering multiple disciplines and theories. However, because the existing review studies mostly focus on the nomological network and measurement issues, the theoretical perspectives on servant leadership remain less visible. We also know little about whether and how servant leadership creates distinct values and functions in the hospitality industry. It is important to understand the unique value of servant leadership and how its characteristics are similar to those in the hospitality context because hospitality emphasizes the exhibition of a prosocial spirit in serving others. To contribute to the literature and advance the research on servant leadership in the hospitality industry, this study reviewed the servant leadership research in hospitality management and management literature from 1970 to 2018. The following sections discuss the theories that have been used to examine the emergence, processes, and consequences of servant leadership in the hospitality industry and the shared characteristics of servant leadership and hospitality services.
A summary of the theories applied in servant leadership research in the hospitality discipline
To enhance and balance the servant leadership research, this study reviewed the hospitality management literature to highlight the theoretical viewpoints that have been embraced by researchers. The theories that have gained recognition in the servant leadership literature show that no single theory dominates the research in this area (Figure 3).
Theories that explain the emergence of servant leadership.
As Hogan and Kaiser (2005) noted, “who we are determines how we lead” (p. 175). The theoretical links to upper echelon theory suggest that some attributes of servant leadership are likely to vary based on the managerial characteristics that influence organizational outcomes. Our limited knowledge in this area shows that company founders (i.e. CEOs) with low narcissism are more likely to exercise servant leadership, which in the long run pays off in terms of a high return on assets (Peterson et al., 2012). Given our limited understanding of the influences of servant leadership at the firm level, future research may seek to examine the influence that CEO servant leadership has on both internal and external stakeholders. Moreover, for practitioners, because high-level managers are primarily focused on making major corporate decisions, they engage relatively less with bottom-line employees. One way for internal and external stakeholders to follow the corporate philosophy is to create and/or increase their corporate social responsibility activities. This explicit type of assistance would increase the organizational identity of the internal stakeholders (Otero-Neira et al., 2016). This is because customers largely recognize corporate social responsibility to be a genuine and a solid way of serving the community, which in turn result in a positive attitude and trust toward the organization (Yang et al., 2017).
Theories that explain the social influence of servant leadership.
A notable portion of the servant leadership research uses social learning and social cognitive theories to explain how servant leadership influences employees’ emotional and cognitive responses at both the individual and firm level (Figure 3). Social learning theory posits that leaders are considered to be the role models within the organization and employees learn by observing their actions. Hence, the social cognitive theory posits that employees learning is not limited to their social interactions but also extends to the behavioral engagement of employees in observing others’ outcomes. These theories indicate that servant leaders have a significant social and relational influence on employees in regard to factors such as employee attitudes and behavior toward their peers and customers, which is primarily driven by the employees’ mimicking the servant leadership attributes via direct, dyadic, and individual level learning routes (e.g. the theory of coaching, implicit leadership theory). Taking the social influence theories as a baseline, other theories such as the theories of service chain profit and social information processing have been applied to uncover the indirect learning pathways (i.e. firm-level variables) of employees.
As change begins with the top management, social information processing theory suggests that CEO servant leaders influence the way management to communicate and reinforce certain values by using policies and practices that reinforce the normative organizational rules from the top to the bottom level. The service profit chain theory posits that internal delivery (e.g. the service climate) provides guidelines that employees absorb in addition to their personal experiences. Taken together, the theoretical relationship between these assumptions does not show binary results (i.e. positive vs. negative). Overall, in terms of the level of relationships, the existing theories show that at both the dyadic and firm levels, servant leaders positively influence their followers because the employees perceive their interactions with servant leaders as a form of social exchange.
Theories that explain the influence of servant leadership on employees’ self-concept.
In explaining how employees subjectively appraise and react to servant leadership through intrapsychic processes, studies have applied various theories based on the underlying framework of individuals’ self-concept (e.g. self-identity theory, self-efficacy, self-determination theory). Here, the self refers to a “psychological apparatus that allows organisms to think consciously about themselves” (Leary et al., 2003, p. 8). As the concept of the self evolves in a social environment, such as a hotel, employees develop assumed roles and self-labels that drive them to embrace the values, attitudes, and beliefs of others. Similarly, based on the assumptions of self-identity theory, employees regulate their behavior consistent with their purpose(s) (Bandura and Wessels, 1997). The concept of the self emphasizes the internal dynamics of the employees. According to Bandura (1995), self-efficacy refers to “people’s beliefs of their capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to manage prospective situations” (p. 2). From this perspective, high self-efficacy leads employees to demonstrate extra effort when learning difficult tasks (Bandura and Wessels, 1997). Given that the self-related concepts reflect the personal behavior of employees, these behaviors are also influenced by the expectations of others (i.e. peers, groups, leaders, and customers). Research has shown that servant leadership is a powerful predictor of self-efficacy beliefs and self-identity belief perception because servant leaders prioritize, help, support, and encourage their employees (Walumbwa et al., 2010), which serve to increase the employees’ self-efficacy, hope, and optimism (Bouzari and Karatepe, 2017). Overall, servant leaders appear to be “employee sculptors” who shape and lead their employees ‘self-enhancement, fulfill the motivational needs of their employees, and consequently provide a sense of self-capability and stimulate their creativity.
Theories in relation to the boundary conditions for the influence of servant leadership on the firm and employees.
The literature illuminates not only the direct but also the boundary roles that social exchange and social identity theories play in the indirect relationship between servant leadership and its outcomes, and thus increases our understanding of how and when servant leadership may distinctively stimulate employees’ perceptions. The available evidence shows that servant leadership not only influences employees’ psychological development but also fulfills a regulating function. Thus, the effects of servant leadership on employees are further enhanced by the fulfillment of the mutual exchanges between leaders and followers and the ways the employees identify themselves.
Therefore, more research is needed to understand the effects of servant leadership in conjunction with different theories that serve as boundary conditions. Although the research on servant leadership has demonstrated its positive effects on organizations and followers, future research should investigate the different factors that determine when servant leadership is more or less effective.
An integrative view of the shared characteristics between servant leadership and the hospitality context
Another major objective of this review study is to identify and compare the commonalities between the characteristics of servant leadership and those of the hospitality industry (i.e. the norms and values that are emphasized in the context of hospitality management). As shown in Table IV, three major classifications are proposed, namely relationship orientation, prosocial behavior, and normative rules, based on the review of the literature on the organizational norms and culture of the hospitality sector (Bavik, 2016; Dawson et al., 2011; Dawson et al., 2018; Tepeci and Bartlett, 2002). Among the attributes of servant leadership, 18 overlap with at least one characteristic of the hospitality industry, namely altruism, behaving ethically, building community, growth of people, creating value, empathy, empowerment, honesty, humility, integrity, interpersonal support, listening, putting subordinates first, relationships, servanthood, service, stewardship, and trust. The similarities between these characteristics of servant leadership and the hospitality context are discussed in the following section.
Characteristics of servant leadership and the relationship orientation in the hospitality context
As a major characteristic of the hospitality industry, being guest focused is strongly emphasized as a means of promoting employee and guest satisfaction (Slåtten and Mehmetoglu, 2011). As a guest-focused profession, the hospitality industry is concerned with providing customized services based on guests’ expectations (Tepeci and Bartlett, 2002) and personalized services to make guests feel at home and help them experience unique memories (Bavik, 2016). The literature also shows that servant leadership similarity emphasizes “creating value,” “listening,” “servanthood,” and “service.” Specifically, servant leaders often prioritize the needs of other stakeholders, listen to others’ requests, and dedicate themselves to serving others. Research suggests that these behaviors and qualities are critical to the success of hospitality establishments. For example, Brownell and Rodin (1994) points out that creating a listening environment within a hospitality establishment is considered a prerequisite for ensuring guest satisfaction and firm performance.
The relationships within the hospitality industry are not limited to employees but may extend to other stakeholders, such as customers and the community. Another relational attribute associated with the hospitality industry is being people-oriented. To serve the guests well and establish a brand, hotels are expected to demonstrate social and cultural sensitivity and a willingness to help others. The recipients of this help are not limited to active customers but extend to non-customers (e.g. locals, tourists). For example, Macau is one of the most visited tourist destinations for travel and events in Asia. To show their hospitality, hotel employees in Macau may encounter different stakeholders on a daily basis, including but not limited to hotel guests and non-guests, such as customers who patronize the shopping and dining areas in the hotel, attendees of concerts and exhibitions, and tourists looking for information, assistance, and directions. The people-oriented hotel employees and managers strive to consider the needs of others and the general community because being attentive to different stakeholders’ interests facilitates understanding the needs of existing and prospective guests and thus improving service quality. Therefore, servant leadership is particularly important and relevant in the hospitality context.
Characteristics of servant leadership and prosocial behavior in the hospitality context
Hospitality is generally seen as a form of prosocial behavior that is characterized by showing concern for others and helping those in need. As abovementioned, the hospitality industry is recognized as generous (i.e. giving away money, time, and effort) in that hotels often provide surprises, additional free services, and post-purchase privileges. The literature shows that the qualities of servant leadership are parallel with those of philanthropic behavior in that servant leaders are perceived to provide help without expecting reciprocity, and to act fairly, altruistically, and generously. These behaviors and qualities have been proposed as important elements of the image and success of hospitality establishments (King, 1995). For example, Macau hotels provide free shuttle buses to destinations such as the border gate, airport, and ferry terminal for their customers, employees, local people, non-customers, and tourists, which influences the customers ‘impressions of the company and the destination (Hsu and Song, 2013).
Given that customer satisfaction hinges on the happiness of the employees in the hospitality industry, employee development is considered to be vital because front-line employees need the autonomy and flexibility to make decisions to satisfy the customers’ requirements (Lashley, 1999). The studies reviewed in this study shows that servant leaders are dedicated to personal growth, empowerment, interpersonal support, putting subordinates first, and stewardship. In general, because servant leaders are devoted others’ development, hospitality providers should pay attention to employee empowerment and service training, and encourage employees to be more guest oriented and responsible for developing a positive self-image, self-confidence, good morale, and strong motivation (Ro and Chen, 2011). Although employees may have a positive attitude toward their peers and guests, it may not be sufficient to provide positive guest experiences if the employees do not have enough autonomy and experience. Therefore, empowering employees contributes to enhancing customer satisfaction and firm effectiveness.
Characteristics of servant leadership and normative behavior in the hospitality context
As the goal of hospitality establishments is to serve guests, the perception of the service quality and related outcomes are significantly dependent on the quality of the interaction between the service provider and the guests during service encounters. The literature shows that servant leaders are highly ethical, honest, and listen to and trust their subordinates. Similarly, to provide delightful guest services, hospitality providers need to genuinely listen to and understand their guests’ requirements, which in turn requires the development of certain types of ethical conduct and trust between the host and the guests through long and frequent interactions (Tepeci and Bartlett, 2002).
Directions for future research
The management literature has extensively explored the possible outcomes of servant leadership. Thus, hospitality researchers should primarily focus on investigating the unique behaviors or attributes of servant leaders and their role in the hospitality industry. The hospitality industry and servant leadership present similar characteristics (e.g. trust, care, empowerment, listening, and building community). Although these attributes strongly emphasize interpersonal and normative elements, there is still confusion as to whether servant leadership plays a complementary or supplementary role in the hospitality industry. Similarly, given that servant leaders hold some of the inherent values of the hospitality industry, the act of serving others may be perceived as an in-role duty rather than as a form of servant leader behavior. Therefore, we still do not know whether employees perceive servant leadership as a distinguished leadership style or as “standard behavior” within the hospitality industry.
There area number of avenues that future studies can explore to enhance our understanding of the link between servant leadership and the hospitality industry. First, although this study showed that some of the characteristics of servant leadership are mutually inclusive, more empirical research is needed to confirm and validate the identified characteristics. Furthermore, future studies may use different measurement tools to capture different overlapping characteristics. For instance, Barbuto and Wheeler (2006) highlight prosocial behavior (e.g. altruism and stewardship), whereas Liden et al. (2008) and Reed et al. (2011) cover relationship orientation and normative behaviors(community and behaving ethically).
Second, future studies should focus on attributes that are not mutually identified, such as interpersonal support (e.g. nurturing employees’ leadership potential), egalitarianism (e.g. rejecting superiority) (Reed et al., 2011), covenantal relationships (e.g. treat people as equal partners), transcendental spirituality (e.g. help others to find clarity of purpose), transforming influence (e.g. inspire others to lead by serving; lead by personal example) (Sendjaya and Cooper, 2011), and interpersonal acceptance (acknowledge the feelings of others and where people are coming from) (van Dierendonck, 2011). Future research should also concentrate on exploring and understanding what makes servant leaders distinguishable in the hospitality industry. This avenue would improve our understanding of the unique role of servant leadership and maximize the utilization of the positive effects of servant leadership in hospitality establishments.
Furthermore, given that servant leadership and the hospitality industry are generally based on altruistic and philanthropic behavior, variables such as corporate social responsibility in the within-firm context can also affect servant leadership. Thus, future research should consider the role that corporate social responsibility plays in servant leadership and its potential influence on employees, customers and the community.
Moreover, in the literature, servant leadership is predominantly operationalized to measure the positive outcomes on middle managers and employees. Future studies should extend the scope of the servant leadership research to other stakeholders and beneficiaries across different levels, such as guests and/or the community (e.g. the perception of guests, local people). More empirical attention should also be paid to how servant leadership can influence higher-level outcomes (e.g. firm profit, revenue, and outsiders’ evaluations of the firm).
This review study also identified a number of methodological challenges and future research should address the following issues to improve the quality of the research. Although most of the articles reviewed in this study suggest that some of the characteristics of servant leadership are universally endorsed in the management literature, cross-cultural research is needed to disentangle and understand the roles of different servant leadership styles across cultures and in the hospitality industry in particular.
Although the literature suggests that there is a causal relationship between servant leadership and other variables, one of the weaknesses of servant leadership studies is their cross-sectional design. Thus, longitudinal studies are needed to validate the causal relations identified among the proposed mechanisms. In addition, although servant leadership is clearly linked with different firm levels (i.e. managerial, middle, and bottom line), we still know little about the roles of servant leadership plays at these levels. Thus, future studies should examine the top-down and bottom-up mechanisms in the hospitality industry to understand the internal interactional dynamics of servant leadership at different levels.
Finally, more qualitative and empirical studies are needed to untangle the roles, relationships, and interactions of CSR activities, servant leadership behavior, and the hospitality industry and their potential influences on employee satisfaction, guest satisfaction, and firm performance. By addressing these issues, researchers can enrich our understanding of how servant leadership can stimulate serving behavior and produce positive organizational outcomes within the hospitality industry.
Practical implications
The results of this review study have several implications for practitioners. Significantly, the available evidence suggests that the characteristics of the hospitality industry and servant leadership behavior are closely related, and that servant leadership matters for hospitality establishments. For example, research shows that servant leadership has a positive influence on employees’ well-being, satisfaction, commitment, and helping and discretionary behavior, service quality, and firm performance, and a negative influence on deviant behavior (Bavik et al., 2017; Bouzari and Karatepe, 2017; Chiniara and Bentein, 2016; Peng et al., 2016; Zou et al., 2015). Thus, it is essential for practitioners in the hospitality industry to think through and clearly define the boundary conditions of servant leadership. That is, how can the servant leadership behavior of a team leader of frontline employees be differentiated from their customer-service behavior at work? Moreover, how does a team leader’s relationship with his/her subordinates differ from serving a customer? Similarly, there are several organizational factors that could be considered as contextual factors that affect servant leadership under certain circumstances. Thus, understanding the presence and the strength of the boundary conditions of servant leadership would provide more precise supervision opportunities for hospitality managers. Finally, industry practitioners should focus on training employees who demonstrate the spirit of servant leadership.
Concluding remarks
The attributes of the hospitality industry reflect the qualities that define a servant leader. These similarities between servant leadership and the features of the hospitality industry provide synergies that make it easier for servant leaders and employees to serve their subordinates and co-workers and reflect the helping culture endorsed within this industrial context. To realize the benefits of servant leadership in the hospitality industry, servant leaders should not only promote serving guests but also aim to create a “serving culture “in which employees treat their co-workers as their guests.
The author would like to express his appreciation to Yuen Lam Bavik for her assistance in data analyses and extend deepest gratitude to the anonymous reviewers for their insightful suggestions.
Distribution of empirical studies on servant leadership by year
Distribution of servant leadership publications by countries
The nomological network of theories in servant leadership research
Summary of literature search results including journals specializing in servant leadership and related topics
| Journal name | Conceptual | Empirical | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hospitality Management | |||
| Cornell Hospitality Quarterly | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management | 3 | 3 | |
| International Journal of Hospitality Management | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management | 1 | 1 | |
| Tourism Management | 2 | 2 | |
| 2 | 9 | 11 | |
| Management | |||
| Academy of Management Journal | 1 | 1 | |
| Administrative Sciences | 1 | 3 | 4 |
| Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources | 1 | 1 | |
| Chinese Management Studies | 1 | 1 | |
| European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology | 3 | 3 | |
| Group and Organization Management | 1 | 1 | |
| Human Resource Development Quarterly | 1 | 1 | |
| Human Resource Management | 1 | 1 | |
| International Journal of Conflict Management | 1 | 1 | |
| International Journal of Management Reviews | 1 | 1 | |
| International Journal of Manpower | 1 | 1 | |
| International Journal of Organizational Leadership | 1 | 1 | |
| Journal of Applied Psychology | 5 | 5 | |
| Journal of Business Ethics | 5 | 9 | 14 |
| Journal of Business Logistics | 1 | 1 | |
| Journal of Business Research | 1 | 1 | |
| Journal of Enterprise Information Management | 1 | 1 | |
| Journal of Human Resource Management | 2 | 2 | |
| Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies | 1 | 3 | 4 |
| Journal of Leadership Studies | 1 | 1 | |
| Journal of Management | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Journal of Management and Organization | 1 | 1 | |
| Journal of Management Development | 1 | 1 | |
| Journal of Management Studies | 1 | 1 | |
| Journal of Managerial Psychology | 2 | 2 | |
| Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management | 2 | 2 | |
| Journal of Sport Management | 2 | 2 | |
| Journal of Business Psychology | 1 | 1 | |
| Leadership | 2 | 5 | 7 |
| Leadership and Organizational Development Journal | 6 | 10 | 16 |
| Management Communication Quarterly | 1 | 1 | |
| NMIMS Management Review | 1 | 1 | |
| Personnel Psychology | 2 | 2 | |
| The Academy of Management Perspectives | 1 | 1 | |
| The International Journal of Human Resource Management | 1 | 1 | |
| The Leadership Quarterly | 2 | 6 | 8 |
| 21 | 74 | 95 |
The composition of theoretical perspectives on servant leadership
| Theories | Central Assumption | Examples | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Management and hospitality management | |||
| Self-determination theory (Ryan and Deci, 2000) | Individuals have natural tendencies to behave in useful and beneficial ways | (Mayer et al., 2008),(Neubert et al., 2016) |
|
| Social exchange theory | Individuals’ behavior is the outcome of an exchange process | (Walumbwa et al., 2010),(Hu and Liden, 2011), |
|
| Social learning theory (Bandura, 1971) | Individuals learn correct behaviors by observing the behaviors of credible role models | (Bavik et al., 2017), (Overstreet et al., 2014), |
|
| Hospitality management | |||
| Service profit chain theory (Heskett et al., 1994) | The provision of good internal services to employees spills over to the good, external services to customers | (Ling et al., 2016) | |
| Social information processing theory(Salancik and Pfeffer, 1978) | The social context shapes an individual’s perceptions and interpretations | (Huang et al., 2016) | |
| Management | |||
| Conservation of resource theory (Hobfoll, 1989) | A shortage of resources leads individuals to conflict | (Tang et al., 2015) | |
| Implicit leadership theory (Lord et al., 1984) | Individuals facilitate a sense-making process in which social perception is as the guide to understand and evaluate leaders | (Pekerti and Sendjaya, 2010),(Oner, 2012) |
|
| Relational identification theory (Cooper and Thatcher, 2010) | Individuals define oneself regarding a given role-relationship | (Yoshida et al., 2014) | |
| Relational leadership theory Graen and Uhl-Bien (1995) | The dyadic relationship influences performance-related outcome of both the subordinate and the leader | (Abu Bakar and McCann, 2015) | |
| Self-efficacy theory (Cherian and Jacob, 2013) | Individuals beliefs regarding one’s abilities are linked to the amount of motivation and the resulting outcome | (Yang et al., 2017) | |
| Self-identity theory (Tajfel and Turner, 1979) | Individual’s perception of a group key determinants of their emotions, thoughts, and behaviors | (Chen et al., 2015), (Chiniara and Bentein, 2016), |
|
| Social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1989) | Individuals learn by interacting with and observing the behavior of role models | (Duan et al., 2014), (Liden et al., 2014) | |
| Social identification theory (Pratt, 1998) | Individuals identified as members of a group, and to quantify the impact of that identification on their behavior | (Wang et al., 2017) | |
| Social identity theory (Tajfel and Turner, 1979) | Individual’s sense of who I am is based on their group membership(s) | (Zhao et al., 2016) | |
| Spiritual leadership theory (Avolio and Gardner, 2005) | Leaders ‘attitudes and behaviors intrinsically motivate individuals and others and provide a sense of spiritual survival through calling and membership | (Mallén et al., 2015) | |
| The domain of upper echelons theory (Hambrick and Mason, 1984) | Behaviors of executives are influenced both by the demographic and psychological characteristics | (Peterson et al., 2012) | |
| Theory of coaching (Hackman and Wageman, 2005) | Followers can achieve a specific goal by providing training and guidance | (Duff, 2013)* | |
| Theory of moral education (Kohlberg, 1985) | Followers develop moral selves based on organizational climate | (Verdorfer et al., 2015) | |
| Work-family enrichment theory (Greenhaus and Powell, 2006) | The resources derived from the work domain can enhance a family’s quality of life | (Yang et al., 2015) | |
Note: *=Proposed relationship
Hospitality industry characteristics and servant leadership attributes
| Author(s) and year | Hospitality industry characteristics | Servant leadership attributes | Author(s) and year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Woods (2016) |
Faith and trust |
Honesty and integrity |
Russell and Stone (2002); Liden et al. (2008); Reed et al. (2011); van Dierendonck, (2011) |
| Bavik (2016) | Direct and honest |
||
| Woods (2016) |
Care |
Service |
Russell and Stone (2002); van Dierendonck (2011); Liden et al. (2008); Reed et al. (2011); Spears and Lawrence (2002) |
| King (1995) Dawson et al. (2011) Bavik (2016) | Empowerment |
Empowerment |
Russell and Stone (2002); Spears and Lawrence, (2002); Liden et al. (2008); van Dierendonck (2011) |
| Dawson et al. (2011) | Community focused | Building community |
Russell and Stone (2002); Spears and Lawrence (2002); Barbuto and Wheeler (2006); Liden et al. (2008); Reed et al. (2011) |
| Dawson et al. (2018) Bavik (2016) | Good listener Ask question Shared ideas | Listen |
Russell and Stone (2002); Spears and Lawrence (2002); Barbuto and Wheeler (2006) |
The integrative framework of the characteristics of servant leadership and the hospitality industry
| Servant leadership Attributes | Hospitality industry characteristics | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Relationship-orientation | Prosocial behavior | Normative behaviors | |||
| Guest Focused | People Orientation | Generosity | Employee development | ||
| Altruism | – | – | ✓ | – | – |
| Behaving ethically | – | – | – | – | ✓ |
| Building community | – | ✓ | – | – | – |
| Growth of people | – | – | – | ✓ | – |
| Creating value | ✓ | – | – | – | – |
| Empathy | – | ✓ | – | – | – |
| Empowerment | – | – | – | ✓ | – |
| Honesty | – | – | – | – | ✓ |
| Humility | – | – | – | – | ✓ |
| Integrity | – | – | – | – | ✓ |
| Interpersonal support | – | ✓ | – | ✓ | – |
| Listening | ✓ | ✓ | – | – | ✓ |
| Putting subordinates first | – | – | – | ✓ | – |
| Relationships | – | – | – | – | – |
| Servanthood | ✓ | ✓ | – | – | – |
| Service | ✓ | – | – | – | – |
| Stewardship | – | – | – | ✓ | – |
| Trust | – | – | – | – | ✓ |
© Emerald Publishing Limited 2019