Personal growth or servant leader: What do hotel employees need most to be affectively well amidst the turbulent COVID-19 times?

Pedro Jiménez-Estévez, Benito Yáñez-Araque, Pablo Ruiz-Palomino and Santiago Gutiérrez-Broncano

Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2023, vol. 190, issue C

Abstract: With a focus on serving employees' highest priority needs, servant leaders can promote affective well-being. An important mechanism by which this relationship may manifest is through elevating employees' personal growth, which elicits positive effects that are connected with feelings of affective well-being. However, in turbulent times, furloughed employees may appreciate having a leader who cares for them and is attentive to their needs rather than experiencing personal growth. Using structural equation modeling to analyze a sample of 205 Spanish hotel employees after the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, we found that servant leadership increased the affective well-being of employees both directly and by elevating their personal growth. A multigroup analysis, together with the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis, also revealed that, for active employees, both having a servant leader and experiencing personal growth were important for feeling affective well-being. However, for furloughed employees, only being supported by a caring leader was important. Thus, we shed new light on the mechanisms underlying the positive effect of servant leadership on employees' affective well-being and how this link works in times of severe change, such as those caused by the pandemic.

Keywords: Servant leadership; COVID-19; Personal growth; Hotels; PLS-SEM; fsQCA (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: M1 M12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:tefoso:v:190:y:2023:i:c:s0040162523000951

DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2023.122410

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