When Leaders Self-Sacrifice in Times of Crisis: The Roles of Employee Emotional Suppression and Leader Coping Strategies

Abstract

While literature articulates the relevance of self-sacrificial leadership to crisis situations, little attention has been paid to employees’ attitudinal and behavioral responses to self-sacrificial leadership. This is a particularly salient gap in the scholarship, given the decisions leaders must make to address challenges in the hospitality industry (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic). Drawing on conservation of resources theory, this pair of field and experimental studies examines how individual differences in employee emotional suppression and leader coping strategy moderate the impacts of self-sacrificial leadership on employee perceptions of leader effectiveness. By sampling U.S. hospitality employees, the studies reveal that leaders who display self-sacrificial behaviors received more favorable ratings on leader effectiveness than others, an effect that is contingent on followers’ emotional suppression and leaders’ coping strategies. The perception of increased leader effectiveness in turn weakened employees’ intentions to engage in negative word-of-mouth toward their organizations.

Resilient business strategies in the German hospitality industry and its viability

“…The developments and possible uses of forms of digitisation could at least counteract the shortage of employees to a small extent. Nevertheless, the hospitality industry must become attractive again for employees to survive (Al-Ababneh et al, 2022), and managers must communicate with them regularly (Schwaiger et al, 2022;Wang et al, 2024). Second, this study examined individual and community catering in the German hospitality industry and compared both core business catering sectors with each other.…”

“…Therefore, in times of crisis, developing or changing business strategies is helpful (Bronner & De Hoog, 2014) as these impact an organisation performance (Sobaih, Elshaer, Hasanein & Abdelaziz, 2021). Targeted business planning, leadership, creativity and innovation of hospitality organisations have a significant impact on their performance (O'Shea et al, 2022;Sobaih et al, 2021;Wang, Wen, Liu, Gao & Madera, 2024). Operational managers are the ones who take action or not to mitigate the negative effects of a crisis (Williams et al, 2017) and to make significant contributions to new, innovative or changing business strategies (Doern et al, 2019).…”

“…As in previous crises, it was considered important to communicate with employees and inform them about the situation of the organisation (Gkoumas, 2022;Kahveci, 2022;Kuckertz et al, 2020;Schwaiger et al, 2022;Wang et al, 2024). E1: 'We have taken them on the journey.…”