BHM302 - Ethical Leadership: Techniques and Challenges in Hospitality

This essay provides an overview of ethical leadership theory and its implementation in the hospitality industry, discussing the techniques leaders use to demonstrate their skills, such as inspiring others, effective communication, and managing conflicts. It defines ethical leadership as behavior that promotes civil conduct, open communication, and moral values, enhancing organizational productivity and employee job satisfaction. The essay highlights the importance of ethical decision-making, trust, and integrity in leadership, addressing issues like globalization, health concerns, sustainability, and the need for innovative staff roles. It emphasizes that ethical leaders in hospitality must be team players, guiding their workforce with values and principles, and that maintaining ethical standards improves employee performance, reduces turnover, and enhances profitability. The study also discusses the common ethical issues faced by hospitality leaders, such as sexual harassment and departmental relations, and concludes that a high level of ethical awareness is crucial for success in the hospitality industry.

Ethical Leadership

Running Head: Essay
This essay will focus on the topic of ethical leadership theory and explain the techniques
followed by the leaders to implement this in the hospitality industry. Some issues or challenges
within the leadership faced by leaders when implementing it will be discussed further and what
challenges are expected to be faced by the future leaders in the industry will also be highlighted
in this essay.
There are several leadership techniques which a leader can follow and implement while working
in the industry. Such technique helps in enhancing and demonstrating the existing leadership
skills of the leaders. The broad leadership techniques involve focusing on inspiring other people,
dealing up with difficult people, make history a way to move forward with new techniques,
willingness to learn new things, and integrity. Apart from these techniques, a good leader must
have good communication skills such as listening, complementing other people, managing the
meeting and also have a well developed skill set of verbal as well as non-verbal communication.
A good leader also has to cope with the conflicting opinions of other team members and the main
role of a leader is to inspire the team (Ladkin & Weber, 2011).
The ethical leadership style and theory has attracted a great deal of attention all over the world
and from the leaders belonging to all the industries. A significant relationship is established
between following ethical leadership and the organisational productivity outcomes specially in
the service industry. Ethical leadership can be defined as demonstrating behaviour that is
normatively appropriate by developing interpersonal relationships and by personnel actions and
decision making while promoting civil econduct across the organization by carrying out open
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two-way communication and reinforcing ethics and moral values in the everyday decision
making for the organisation. The ethical leaders are found to be more attractive, legitimate and
credible by the employees as well as the organisation and my promotion of the values including
honesty, inclusivity, and treating the employees fairly and with respect makes the ethical leaders
role models across all industries and organisations. The ethical leaders are also found to
contribute towards the enhancement of the motivation levels, attitude and behaviour of their
subordinates and a direct correlation was found between following ethical leadership in the
organisation and the job satisfaction level of the employees (Bisk Education, 2018).
Maintaining and ethical climate by the leaders of the hospitality organisation also help in
enhancing the organisational commitment for the employees as their values get communicated to
their managers and their subordinates working within the organisation. The leaders in the
hospitality industry influence all the members of the organisation and by following a utilitarian
and rule based ethical decision making style, their subordinates are more likely to embrace their
leadership and follow their instructions as it helps in building a high degree of trust across all
levels of the organisation. The leaders working in the hospitality industry have to practice a
regular and consistent decision making which determines the course of the organisation in the
long run. When this decision making is guided by the ethics and moral values, the leaders are
able to demonstrate courage and conviction emerging as a role model and instilling a sense of
integrity and trust among the members of the organisation. Unethical leaders have to follow the
rules and act ethically regardless of any external pressure or influence. We believe in doing the
right thing and make ethical choices every time to ensure that the behaviour executed by them
matches the values that they strive for. The ethical leaders also carry out objective decision
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making which does not require any justification or excuse and is aligned with the long-term
strategic goals of the organisation and the values that guide their operations and day to day
working (Butler, 2018).
An ethical leadership is said to be successful if it is accomplishing the common goals of the
industry. The successful leadership establishes beliefs, values as well as goals. To achieve the
goals, the organization must require a specific vision. A vision completely helps to explain the
trend in which the industry actually wants to move as well as it is comparatively simple to talk,
pleasing to the customers, stockholders, and also the employees working within the organization.
As a result, it is up to the ethical leaders in the hospitality industry to position and clearly write
out a vision, and to motivate the people who are around them to communicate and apply it in
their day to day activities and tasks. The key issues that put a major impact on the hospitality
industry are technical explosions, improved importance on health as well as well-being,
requirement for picture perfect technology, sustainability regulations, and innovative roles for
staff members, and real time damage control (Javed, Rawwas, Khandai, & Shahid, 2018). Health
and well being has become a major concern which puts a major impact on the entire civilization.
The hospitality industry needs ethical leaders who can guide the workforce guided by the values
and principles. The ethical hospitality leaders should be cultured to become very good team
players as they are the one who can actually set up the best examples for leading the industry. An
ethical leader always tries to treat the team mates or other people in the same way in which they
expect that the other people should treat them and which is right and just. When everybody is
working within the same environment together and shares same goal, then the result can have a
great deal of impact on the growth. The ethical leaders in the hospitality industry are equipped
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with the community skills, the capability to communicate undoubtedly and efficiently, and with
an unambiguous vision of the path ahead and are effortlessly able to stimulate and guide others
(Sayawat, 2016).
Although there is no best leadership style that can be stated for the hospitality industry, the
ethical leadership style is found to be well suited for almost all the industries and situations. A
person with the ethical leadership style will be able to influence and build up the perspective of
their team mates. Such type of leaders has a convincing vision which is simple to communicate
to. Ethical leaders become a role model and also an inspiration for the people who are led by
them as their performance has confidence which is very pleasing to others. These leaders in the
hospitality industry help their team mates to overcome the restrictions by inspiring them to
transform to give better to the organization. The ethical leaders who follow this style of
leadership control other people by making use of their different personality and are guided by a
strong sense of what is right and fair (Media, 2017). Such leaders possess an exceptional vision,
and are filled up of self-confidence as well as they are recognized for using alternative
approaches within the industry. The appealing personality of these leaders puts a positive
impression on others. These types of leaders also display greater self-confidence in their team
mates and put up trust throughout the visible give up.
Ethical leadership is required to further explore the requests of multifaceted hospitality business
surroundings as well as change the requirements of all the stakeholders. The observation of this
hospitality industry as being balanced or unbalanced verified itself to be vital to the suitable
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choice of their leadership style and also puts a major impact on the general health and success of
the organization. Presently, the hospitality companies are facing five common significant
business challenges which include globalization, productivity through development, tools,
intellectual assets, and modification. Such type of challenges provides company with a chance to
play their role of leadership in the growth of new potential to meet up all the challenges. These
five challenges describe a new authorization for hospitality human resource administration in
order to deliver excellence in organizational excellence in three simple ways which are by
becoming an associate with the senior as well as line managers in policy implementation,
execution to guarantee the costs are reduced and maintain the quality, by strongly representing
their apprehensions to the senior management and also to boost up role of employee (Brown &
Trevino, 2006).
Trust is the fundamental element that empowers all relationships including relationship between
a leader and their subordinates. Leadership is about building relationship between the managers,
employees, suppliers, competitors and the surrounding community. With the actions of a leader
match their words and execute a consistent approach people perceive them as being trustworthy.
Ethical leadership also demonstrates loyalty of the leaders towards the organisations and their
devotion to their duties and responsibilities. It involves not making use of or disclosing any
confidential information of the organisation and having the best interests of the organisation and
its members at heart. The ethical leaders also believe in treating everybody fairly and reflect
regularly on their beliefs and practices which facilitates an improvement in the employee
performance and reduces resentment, employee turnover and helps in the improvement of the
employee performance which ultimately results in an improvement in the productivity and the
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Running Head: Essay
profitability of the organisation. The employees are able to trust and ethical leader since they
maintain a reasonable expectation and ensure fair treatment of all the members of the
organisation.
Ethics in any organization must be identified and followed at all times. It does not matter what
type of culture has been adopted by the organization but the main thing to understand is that the
culture must fit in the strategies made by organization. Every organization has its terms and
conditions or in other words they have their policies, to maintain ethicality. The integrity of the
system must be maintained. There are number of impacts of ethics in hospitality industry such as
quality, turnover of an employee, satisfaction of employee, and also decision making (Coldwell,
2016).
The ethical decision making is generally prejudiced by the category of ethical issue which is
faced, ethical problem that are categorized according to the strength of company with
contributors more likely to counter as per the ethical belief if the problem is measured as one of
the important problem. The leaders in the hospitality industry have the accountability of
preserving the maximum level of services, company approval and most favorable return on
venture. In order to meet such objectives, hospitality leaders have to deliver the services which
can meet the need of customers. Usually hospitality leaders are confronted with the ethical issues
such as sexual harassment, the departmental relations, capitulate management, visitor rights,
empowerment, dealer relationships, equal opening as well as public relations (Kim & Brymer,
2011).
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Quality can be achieved only by maintaining the standards of an organization. Basically it cannot
be called as occurrence; it is called as a habit. It engrosses an appropriate estimation of guest
needs, outlook and supplies and tries to establish a suitable standard. Quality in simple words can
be made by the good employees who can admire ethics as well as morality in both aspects i.e.
life and work. Thus ethics must be part of each activity in hospitality with defines the
responsibilities as well as work of each section. Hospitality leaders with excellent skills always
make certain that the vision, task, principles and most importantly ethics of the organization
imitate a responsible culture in a social context. Ethical leadership basically includes individual
competencies; yet, leaders’ possess a larger impact on the ethical actions of their inferiors (Qin,
Wen, Ling, Zhou, & Tong, 2014). The employee who are working within the hospitality industry
need a very high ethical awareness than the other working industries and must have a stronger
ability to review the ethical issues according to the strategy of the association.
In conclusion, it can be described that this essay gives a brief knowledge about the ethical
leadership in the hospitality industry. The role of leaders is properly defined in context to ethical
issues that might be faced by the organization. There are several challenges that an ethical leader
has to face while working in a hospitality organization and these challenges are discussed in the
above section of the essay. There are various challenges and issues which every organization has
to face but the duty of ethical leaders is maintain the integrity and promote team work so that the
challenges can be solved easily and interaction and open communication is facilitated among the
team mates.
References
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