Leadership and crisis management towards improvement of hotel performance:

• Main Author: Raed Hussam Mansour Alzoubi
• Format: text::Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2023
• Subjects: Hotel performance
• Institution: Universiti Tenaga Nasional

The Jordanian hotel industry has been severely affected by socio-political tension in the Middle East and the recent Covid-19 pandemic has worsened the situation. It is undeniable that leaders play a vital role in helping hotels deal with difficult situations, but nevertheless it is still unclear whether the deployment of crisis management is due to the leadership styles or other factors. Therefore, this study examines the relationship between leadership styles, leaders’ experience, crisis management and hotel performance from the perspectives of transactional -transformational leadership theory, contingency theory, and the resource-based view theory. Based on a questionnaire survey of 119 respondents currently holding managerial positions in Jordanian 3 to 5- star hotels, the Partial Least Square (PLS) Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) analysis shows the results of examining the direct effect hypotheses that the transformational leadership style has significant positive effects on hotel performance and crisis management. Transactional leadership style has a significant positive effect on crisis management and crisis management has significant positive effects on hotel performance. While transactional leadership style has an insignificant positive effect on hotel performance. Furthermore, the mediation results indicated that crisis management partially mediated the relationship between transformational leadership and hotel performance. While the relationship between transactional leadership and hotel performance was fully mediated by crisis management. Moreover, it was found that leader experience has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between transformational leadership style and hotel performance, while the relationship between transactional leadership style and hotel performance has a negative moderating effect. The results are consistent with the contingency theory which argues that leadership style is contingent upon external and internal factors, and the resource-based view theory which argues that leadership experience is one of the most valuable and unique resources for a hotel when facing a turbulent business environment. Based on the findings, the results show that leadership styles and experience are very important factors in ensuring the survival of a hotel when facing a crisis, while crisis management is an essential practice for a hotel nowadays. This study contributes theoretically to the area of leadership and crisis management while contributing practically to the Jordanian hotel industry.