CEO servant leadership and firm innovativeness in hotels

Abstract

Purpose Drawing on the theories of servant leadership and upper echelons, this paper aims to highlight the mechanisms through which CEO servant leadership enhances firm innovativeness in hotels. This study aims to test a multiple mediation model by considering the mediating role of encouragement of participation (EoPART) – a high-performance human resources (HR) practice – and employees’ voice (EVOICE) in sequence. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected from HR managers of 34 hotels in the hospitality industry in Spain, which represents an important international tourist destination. Two methods of rigorous data analysis were used (partial least squares [PLS], structural equation modeling and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis [fs/QCA]), which enabled robust findings to be produced with minimal sample size requirements. Findings CEO servant leadership had a positive indirect effect on firm innovativeness in hotels, via the sequential application of EoPART and EVOICE. Research limitations/implications The findings provide new HR-related insights regarding the encouragement of firm innovativeness in hotels: CEOs can boost innovativeness in their hotels through the development of EoPART systems, which in turn favor EVOICE. Originality/value This is one of the first studies to analyze whether CEO servant leadership has an impact on innovativeness in hotels. Moreover, this study is the first to show the internal mechanisms (EoPART, EVOICE) through which CEO servant leadership encourages hotel innovativeness.

Innovativeness as a determinant of entrepreneurial orientation: analysis of the hotel sector

“…To test our hypotheses (or propositions), two data analysis methods were used. The use of these two methods provides robust and rigorous conclusions (Hern andez-Perlines, Moreno-Garc ıa, & Y añez-Araque, 2016; Ruiz-Palomino et al, 2019). The composites in this study (innovativeness, proactiveness and risk-taking) have adequate reliability and validity values .…”

Servant Leadership, Innovative Capacity and Performance in Third Sector Entities

“…Finally, necessity and sufficiency analyses were carried out to evaluate the effect of the different components. This sequence has been used in previous works such as Ruiz-Palomino et al's. (2019).…”

“…As a result, the servant leader can encourage innovative behavior amongst employees (Liden et al, 2008;Panaccio et al, 2015;Williams et al, 2017;Cai et al, 2018) so as to achieve a positive impact on innovation (García-Morales et al, 2008;Gumusluoglu and Ilsev, 2009;Panaccio et al, 2015) and on innovative capacity (Neubert et al, 2008;Schaubroeck et al, 2011;Yoshida et al, 2014). Previous researches show that companies led by servant leaders tend to improve their innovative capacity (Yoshida et al, 2014;Ruiz-Palomino et al, 2019). Based on the above, we formulate the following hypothesis model: H 2a (Proposition 2a ): Servant leadership has a positive effect on innovative capacity in Third Sector entities.…”

“…In the case of Third Sector organizations, the most relevant innovation is usually process innovation (Hull and Lio, 2006). The innovative capacity tends to produce an improvement in the performance of any type of organization (Damanpour and Gopalakrishnan, 2001;Rosenbusch et al, 2011;Ruiz-Palomino et al, 2019), which is why we can state the following hypothesis. H 2b (Proposition 2b ): Innovative capacity has a positive impact on the performance of Third Sector entities.…”

“…One of these new models is the servant leadership approach. In recent years, servant leadership has become a management approach (Liden et al, 2008;van Dierendonck, 2011;Ruiz-Palomino et al, 2019) suitable for dealing with the changes that are taking place in an increasingly complex environment (Slåtten and Mehmetoglu, 2011). Third Sector entities are not unaware of these changes, so it is necessary to analyze whether this new approach can be used by Third Sector entities to improve their performance.…”