Hotel Employees’ Innovative Behavior and Leadership in East Asia: A Focus on Gender Effect

• In Event: Eastern Perspectives on Women’s Leadership Development

Short Description

Findings from 412 survey responses in China, Korea, and Japan show the moderating role of gender on the transformational leadership effect on hotel employees' innovative behaviors in East Asia. The study clarified that the transformational leadership effect is contingent on employees’ gender in the Asian context. Based on findings, theoretical and practical contributions were suggested.

Detailed Abstract

While female employees and their career opportunities are increasing gradually in organizations, little work has explored ways in which to enhance and develop their abilities effectively. Given that female employees are valuable human capital to companies, ways to develop their abilities to produce female employees trained for management is very important to organizational performance (Dezsö and Ross, 2012). Thus, this study intends to examine the way in which employees’ gender influences the effect of leadership behaviors on their innovative behaviors in the hospitality industry.
Innovative behaviors have significant value to companies in today’s competitive business environment, and are particularly important in the hospitality industry, where customers’ needs are diverse, and developing ways to address customers’ needs creatively and innovatively is critical for an organization’s reputation and survival (Horng et al., 2016; Slåtten and Mehmetoglu, 2015, Jaiswal and Dhar, 2015; Amabile, 1997). Therefore, ways to enhance and develop innovative behaviors should be a significant concern on the part of organizations in the hospitality industry.
While individual personal traits are considered important influences on employees’ creative and innovative behaviors (Horng et al., 2016; Kim et al., 2010), research has shown that leadership behaviors also have important effects on their innovative behaviors. Among different types of leadership, transformational leadership has been proven effective, particularly in predicting employees’ performance-related organizational outcomes (Judge and Piccolo, 2004; Lowe et al., 1996; Avolio et al., 1999). Prior research has demonstrated that transformational leaders enhance employees’ task motivation and thus motivate them to become involved in their work proactively and innovatively (Aryee et al., 2012; Jaiswal and Dhar, 2015). However, transformational leadership’s effectiveness is situational and thus is contingent on employees (Wofford et al., 2001; Zhu et al., 2009). Research has shown that employee gender should be considered an influential situational factor because it determines the effectiveness of transformational leadership (Eagly and Carli, 2003; Ayman et al., 2009). This calls for more careful investigations of the role of gender to clarify the effectiveness of transformational leadership. Thus, building on transformational theory and role congruity theory, this study examined the way in which transformational leadership influences employees’ innovative behaviors and further, how their gender influences transformational leadership’s effect on innovative behaviors differentially.
The sample for this study was employees working for large hotels in China, Korea, and Japan. Given that innovative behaviors on the part of frontline employees who need to respond to customers closely and directly are particularly important, only those employees participated in the survey. An online survey was conducted in the capital cities of Beijing, Seoul, and Tokyo. There were 203 samples usable for the analysis in China, 100 in Japan, and 109 in Korea. The analysis of the responses of the 412 employees indicated that transformational leadership is influential in increasing employees’ innovative behaviors. Notably, the effect of transformational leadership on innovative behaviors is contingent on gender, and is greater among female than among male employees. Specifically, the findings showed that a leader’s charismatic behavior has a greater effect on female than on male employees, while leader’s individually considerate behaviors had a greater effect on male than on female employees.
Based on the findings, theoretical and practical implications are discussed. This study is expected to contribute to managing and developing future female leaders effectively, which would enhance companies’ success.

Presenter

• Soyeon Kim, Meiji University