Leaders or organisations?

Abstract

<jats:sec> <jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Purpose</jats:title> <jats:p>Managers of independent hotels need to maximise organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) among employees to gain sufficient competitive advantage in an increasingly competitive environment, so it is important to understand what affects it. To achieve this, the purpose of this paper is to test if servant leadership, OCB and other related constructs have the same relationships between them in two contrasting parts of the world.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Design/methodology/approach</jats:title> <jats:p>Survey data were gathered from managers of independent hotels in Spain (451) and Iran (429). Spain was selected because it is a developed country that is a leading destination for tourists. Iran was chosen as a contrast, as it is a developing country with a growing tourist industry.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Findings</jats:title> <jats:p>The findings show that Spain and Iran demonstrate different patterns of relationships in the selected variables, suggesting that Iranians trust their leaders more than the organisational systems, whereas the Spanish trust organisational systems more than their leaders. These results are consistent with Spanish culture having higher individualism than Iranian culture. They are also consistent with Iranian culture prioritising traditional values, such as personal loyalty to managers, and Spanish culture prioritising modern values, such as impersonal rules and objective processes.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Research limitations/implications</jats:title> <jats:p>This study suggests that leadership and justice affect OCB in different ways where modern values prevail compared to where traditional values prevail. It suggests that managers of independent hotels in Iran should follow the example of Spanish hotel managers by adopting more objective and fair procedures while showing that inward investors and expatriate managers in Iran should be aware of the importance of personal leadership style. Further research is needed in different countries and regions to improve the generalisability of our findings.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Originality/value</jats:title> <jats:p>This study contributes to the literature on the application of the servant leadership construct, which was developed in the West, to other regional contexts. It also adds to the literature of independent hotels, which is an important yet under-researched part of the hospitality industry.</jats:p> </jats:sec>

Contemporary leadership in hospitality: a review and research agenda

“…Madera et al (2017, p. 60) affirm that leaders have different roles in different cultures and that “what may work in one country may not apply in another country”. In the same line of thought, Nazarian et al (2020) detect different relationships between servant leadership and OCB depending on country of origin. Given the importance of national culture to leadership , we propose two valuable directions for future research: more cross-cultural leadership studies comparing leadership differences among countries; and leadership research in underexplored countries in Africa or Europe.…”

“…Madera et al (2017, p. 60) affirm that leaders have different roles in different cultures and that "what may work in one country may not apply in another country". In the same line of thought, Nazarian et al (2020) Study designs based on cross-sectional data and a single respondent predominate in research on leadership styles in the hospitality industry. Alternative methodological avenues (multiple respondents, multi-wave data collection, longitudinal studies to validate causality, experimental designs, qualitative case studies) are needed to understand the full complexity of leadership phenomena in hospitality.…”

The Relationship between Responsible Leadership and Organizational Citizenship Behavior in the Hospitality Industry

“…Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) constitutes one of the most desired behaviors in organizations, in general and in hotels in particular [4], due to its association to high levels of organizational efficiency [5], organizational effectiveness [6,7], job performance, productivity, customer satisfaction [8], as well as sustainability [3].…”

Effect of Family-Friendly Practices on Employees’ Intention to Quit: The Mediating Role of Organizational Citizenship Behavior

“…According to Nazarian et al (2020), OCB increases an employee's tendency to work more than the assigned duties. Further studies in the health sector have also found that OCB negatively influenced the nurses' intention to quit.…”