Ethical Leadership in the Hospitality Industry

This research essay discusses the importance of ethical leadership in the hospitality industry. It covers topics such as the impact of ethical behavior on employee satisfaction, commitment, and organizational outcomes. The essay also explores the role of trust in maintaining employee engagement and the future of hospitality leadership.

BHM302 Contemporary Leadership Techniques
Semester 2 2018
Research Essay
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[word count: 2023]
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BHM302 CONTEMPORARY LEADERSHIP TECHNIQUES SEM 2 2018
Topic: Ethical leadership in the hospitality industry
The ethical issues that have been publicized concerning the top management of
service organizations are influencing the research towards the importance of ethical
consideration. The most frequently ethical related issues involve conflict of interests,
honesty, respect for others, integrity and customer relationships. The hospitality industry is
challenged with different aspects of unethical behaviour of the staff. These aspects,
include stealing the organization, billing guests of unordered items, imposing a certain
charge to receive a higher guarantee and changing the signed vouchers. Some hotel
managers argue that acting unethically might not lead to unlawful behaviour. The ethical
leader acts as a role model that the subordinates learn from in conducting their daily
activities. He uses the performance appraisal, rewards and punishment to ensure the
followers' accountability for the ethical conduct. Ethical leadership It is highly related to the
employees' satisfaction with their leaders and organizations (Kim & Brymer, 2011).
The leaders and employees in the hospitality industry have to balance between what is
domestically efficient and what is commercially profitable. The hospitality industry is broad,
it includes accommodation and food and beverage for pleasure. The employee is the host
and the consumer is the guest. The relationship between the employee and the consumer
is mediated by the leadership that guides the relationship in an ethical manner and
balance between the domestic setting and the consumer needs (Crick & Spencer, 2011).
Ethical leadership is about demonstrating a normatively conduct that is appropriate
through the personal attitude and the interpersonal relationships with followers through
decision making and effctive communication. The unethical practices pervade in
companies, they lack accountability. Organizations tend to embed the moral and ethical
concepts in their transformation challenge to their leadership.
Although the classical approach of organizations that try to become ethical, do not
focus on ethical leadership. Embedding ethical regulatory processes and activities, like the
code of ethics, requires ethical leadership for successful implementation. The analysis of
ethical leadership requires an interpretation of exercising different assumptions, including
morality, values, general behaviour and beliefs. The ethical thinking is based mainly on
common values, like morals and religious values. Creating a normative ethical system
could contradict with the law, noting that ethics are informal. It guides the norms within
organizations and harmonizes the interpersonal relations (Bachmann, 2015).
The ethical leadership involves personal characteristics, like the neuroticism and
moral reasoning and situational variables, like role-playing and ethical context.
Researchers found that employee empowerment and the harmoney between the true
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BHM302 CONTEMPORARY LEADERSHIP TECHNIQUES SEM 2 2018
ethical intention of the leader and his behaviour act as mediating factors between leaders'
ethical behaviour and the commitment to the organizational of the employees. The leader
ethical behaviour has a direct impact on their followers and their level of job satisfaction
organization and commitment.
The ethical leadership in the hospitality industry, involve applying the ethical
behaviour and focuses on the legal concerns of the unethical behaviour as well. The
ethical codes provide guidance, vision and moral insights through the ethical
communication of values to the hotel organization staff. There are four ethical values that
control the ethical leadership, including justice, integrity, utility and competencies.
The leadership style of the hotel's management is related to their gender, age and the
characteristics of the hotel, including hotel size, age and staff members. Studies resulted
in important findings that revealed that the leadership actions significantly impact the level
of ethical optimization (Kim & Brymer, 2011).
The leadership competency model was developed by David McClelland (1973), as
cited in Testa & Sipe (2012), it is a descriptive tool used to build the capability of human
resources. Organizations depend on competencies, including job analysis, training,
performance appraisal and recruitment and selection. The hospitality competency models
focus on specific behaviours that lead to customer satisfaction. These models are
customer-focused. They include the recognition of customer problems and customer
satisfaction. Both management and leadership take place in the hospitality setting. The
managerial skills are necessary for handling the technical components of the services,
including planning and decision making. The ethical leadership role in the hospitality
industry enables managers to maximize service quality. The long-term success results
from the constant development through leadership skills development (Heyes, Beard, &
Gehrels, 2015).
The organizational justice is related to treating the employees fairly and how it
affects the organizational outcomes. The employees' performance is enhanced when their
outputs exceed the inputs due to the ethical behaviour of their leaders. The ethical leader
can increase the employees' commitment, satisfaction level and extra job behaviour. Also,
he is likely to decrease the turnover rate.
In the hospitality industry, trust refers to the confidence level that the individual has
with regard to the likelihood that the other person would act fairly and ethically. The trust
mechanism determines the relationship between the leader and the followers and shows
how trust can drive the ethical leader to succeed.
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The transformational leadership style could be explained in terms of a mutually-
motivational relationship between the followers and their leaders. The followers can
perform beyond the expectations because the leader can maintain a climate of trust. The
leaders can influence the followers to commit to the organization in terms of concepts of
morality and higher ideals. In addition, he rewards the followers who can achieve the
agreed-upon performance standards (You-De et al., 2013).
According to Boyne (2012), the implicit leadership theory argues that people's
everyday ideas about the leaders' behavior are created according to their perceptions.
These ideas incorporate similarities with the constructs of practical leadership activities
(Boyne, 2012).
Brownell (2010), as cited in Boyne (2012), argues that the servant leadership
incorporates the aspects of moral and ethical leadership. Influencing the followers is
conducted through the leaders' desire to serve that results in equal leader- follower
relationship. The servant leadership style adoption in the hospitality industry is likely to
empower the employees, increase the workplace trust and create personal integrity among
the team members.
The servant leadership style In the hospitality industry, chooses to serve others in
alignment with the industry mission. The hotel managers are required to utilize a mutual
benefit relationship between the leaders and followers by providing benefits and services
to the employees. These services, including coaching, caring and stimulation to contribute
in volunteer activities within the organization. Many organizations in the hospitality industry
adopt the servant leadership principles in its philosophy to achieve success. The servant
leaders view themselves as servants, not leaders, their motive is to serve not to lead. They
are characterized with healing, persuasion, foresight, commitment to people growth,
listening, empathy and awareness. (Ling, Lin, & Wu, 2016).
The theory X and Y describe the leader's attitude towards the human behaviour.
The theory X, represents the employees' performance pessimistic view, while the theory Y,
represents the optimistic view. The theory X leaders in the hospitality industry are replaced
by the theory Y type because of the large number of the employees in the industry. The
hospitality leaders are challenged with making a choice between the two opposing value
sets. The leaders represent the moral example for the group, they tend to align the
followers values with the organizational values, through the vision, consistency, empathy
and integrity. The effective leaders are consistent, they tend to maintain a stable
performance, decrease the employee turnover and create trust. Also, they focus on the
future, they consider the past as an indicator of the future direction of the organization. In
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addition, they foster the change through guiding and influencing the employees. Moreover,
they create a culture-base of shared values through involving the employees in crafting the
programs that they will follow in the future. The personal power of the leaders enables
them to establish emotional links with the followers. This interactive relationship creates
the equality between the leaders and followers and enables leaders to manage things
while leading the team. These characteristics foster the emotional and social commitment
to the workplace and keep the employees attached to it (Alexakis, 2011; Wang, 2016;
Şahin, 2012).
The hospitality work is complex, contradictory and challenging, it incorporates
the pleasures and pains of services production. A big challenge is represented in
employing low skills employees. These employees are required to assist the client to feel
important, admired, welcomed, special and satisfied. The hotels are considered the last
resort jobs because they are associated with the dirty work. It is hard to find the best
talents to fill these jobs, also the turnover rate is high in the industry.
In addition, the hospitality industry is challenged with its ability to control quality
because of the multidimensional nature of its services. It requires employees to show
emotion and welcoming attitude and interaction with the customers with various cultural
dimensions. The ethical leader role is to establish the framework that guides the
employees and customer interaction. They have to provide support, training, coaching and
empower the employees to increase the employee satisfaction and deliver high quality
service (Crick & Spencer, 2011).
The morality of hospitality analyses involves the activities in the cultural, domestic
and commercial domains. Each domain explains a feature of a hospitality activity, where
the cultural domain considers the impact of the belief system on productivity
(Lashley, 2015).
The changing customer preferences and needs obligate hotels to deliver high-
quality service to satisfy customer needs (Md Salleh et al., 2010).
When discussing what the future hospitality leadership is required to know, we
should examine the expectancy theories of motivations. The employee empowerment
represents a good predictor of employee motivation. The future hospitality ethical
leadership should consider both styles of the servant and transformational leadership
styles to articulate their ethical behaviour. The two approaches are liked, both of them
consider the employee empowerment behaviour. Employee empowerment is also
beneficial to middle-level leaders (Boyne, 2012).
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BHM302 CONTEMPORARY LEADERSHIP TECHNIQUES SEM 2 2018
The ethical leader is required to consider the role of trust in maintaining the
employee engagement to organizations in the hospitality industry. The self-motivated
employees are highly engaged to their work and performing their tasks. Trust in the leader
is important, it is a major factor in the relationship between the leader and the followers.
The ethical behaviour of the leaders influences the followers' trust, whether the leader has
the servant or the transformational characteristics (Kelloway et al., 2012). The ethical
leader is trustworthy, he displays characteristics of honesty, caring, acceptance, kindness
and make balanced decisions. He communicates ethics with the employees and sets clear
standards of what should be done at the workplace. Leaders with high behavioural
consistency are those who can transform their moral intention into ethical behaviour.
These leaders are trustworthy by followers. Ethical leaders should involve the employees
in the decision-making and facilitate their potential growth (Hoogervorst, 2011). Johnson,
Shelton and Yates (2012), as cited in Engelbrecht, Heine, & Mahembe (2014), assure that
there is a positive impact of ethical leadership on employees trust, who as a result of
established trust, are more likely to trust their workplace.
In summary, Ethical leadership is about demonstrating a normatively conduct that is
appropriate through the personal attitude and the interpersonal relationships with followers
through decision making and effective communication. Embedding ethical regulatory
processes and activities, like the code of ethics, requires ethical leadership for successful
implementation. The analysis of ethical leadership requires an interpretation of exercising
different assumptions, including morality, values, general behaviour and beliefs.
The ethical leadership in the hospitality industry, involve applying the ethical
behaviour and focuses on the legal aspects of the unethical behaviour as well. The ethical
codes provide guidance, vision and moral insights through the ethical communication of
values to the hotel organization staff. In the hospitality industry, trust refers to the
confidence level that the individual has with regard to the likelihood that the other person
would perform fairly and ethically. The trust mechanism determines the relationship
between the leader and the followers and shows how trust can drive the ethical leader to
succeed.
In the hospitality industry, the servant leadership incorporates the moral and ethical
aspects of leadership. Influencing the followers is conducted through the leaders' desire to
serve that result in equal leader- follower relationship.
Reference List
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BHM302 CONTEMPORARY LEADERSHIP TECHNIQUES SEM 2 2018
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Bachmann, B. (2015). Concepts of ethical leadership and their potential implementation in
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