Servant Versus Authentic Leadership: Assessing Effectiveness in China’s Hospitality Industry
Abstract
This study compares the effectiveness of servant versus authentic leadership in hospitality firms by examining relationships with group-level trust and individual-level work outcomes (i.e., organizational commitment, work engagement, and work performance), and their influencing mechanisms through trust climate. Using two-wave data from 1,132 employee–supervisor pairs from 80 departments in 16 star-level hotels in China, we find that these two forms of leadership have positive effects on group trust climate and employee work outcomes; however, the magnitudes and paths of their effects are distinct. In comparison with authentic leadership, servant leadership has a more significant effect on creating a trust climate and a more direct effect regarding increasing employees’ positive work attitudes (i.e., organizational commitment and work engagement), ultimately influencing work performance. This study also demonstrates the importance of group trust climate in relationships between group-level leadership and individual-level employee work attitudes and performance. These findings extend the scope of servant and authentic leadership research, and advocate servant leadership in the hospitality industry.
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Social exchange theory has been used to explain how servant leaders enhance followers' helping/OCB and commitment through mediating mechanisms such as trust and justice.
“For example, social exchange theory has been used to explain how servant leaders enhance followers' helping/ organizational citizenship behaviors (Newman, Schwarz, Cooper, & Sendjaya, 2017) and commitment (Ling, Liu, & Wu, 2017), through mediating mechanisms such as trust (Chan & Mak, 2014) and justice (Schwepker Jr, 2016).”
From Servant Leadership: A systematic review and call for future research (2019) · cites this paper as Ling, Liu, & Wu, 2017
Among follower attitudinal outcomes, servant leadership is positively related to employee engagement.
“Among follower attitudinal outcomes, some scholars assessed a positive relationship between servant leadership and employee engagement (Coetzer et al., 2017;Ling et al., 2017;Sousa & van Dierendonck, 2014;van Dierendonck et al., 2013).”
From Servant Leadership and Employee Engagement: A Qualitative Study (2022) · cites this paper as Ling et al., 2017
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Servant Leadership: A systematic review and call for future research
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Servant Leadership and Employee Engagement: A Qualitative Study
Canavesi, A., & Minelli, E. (2022) · Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal · doi:10.1007/s10672-021-09389-9 · Cited by 95 · see citing works
- Authors
- Ling, Q., Liu, F., & Wu, X.
- Affiliations
- South China Normal University (CN)
- Hunan Normal University (CN)
- Xiamen University (CN)
- Corresponding author
- Liu, Fang
- Venue
- Cornell Hospitality Quarterly
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2016-07-10
- Volume
- 58
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 53-68
- ISSN
- 1938-9655 (ISSN-L)
- 1938-9663
- OpenAlex
- W2325979265
- Cited by
- 168
- References
- 20
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2025: 12 · 2024: 15 · 2023: 21 · 2022: 29 · 2021: 19 · 2020: 28 · 2019: 17 · 2018: 15 · 2017: 3
- FWCI
- 22.68
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Cornell Hospitality Quarterly (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management › Job Satisfaction and Organizational Behavior
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management › Employee Performance and Leadership
- Social Sciences › Human Factors and Ergonomics › Employee Performance and Management
- Keywords
- servant leadership, authentic leadership, hospitality industry, hotel employees, organizational commitment, work engagement, employee performance, leader-employee relationship, star hotels
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