It is not too much to say that the business performance of the hotel industry which has high reliance on human resources can be influenced by making efficient use of the human resources. Also, the human resources is one of the important factors that a...
It is not too much to say that the business performance of the hotel industry which has high reliance on human resources can be influenced by making efficient use of the human resources. Also, the human resources is one of the important factors that affect the brand image like customer satisfaction and others.
Most of the previous studies about leadership were focused on domestic organizations. Therefore this research could be the first one that studied the difference of leadership styles between the deluxe hotels in Korea and the US. It is providing the information about what leadership style will be most fit into the deluxe hotels in Korea for better efficiency in its management.
The purpose of this study based on the traditional leadership and transformational leadership was to identify how the population factors and external factors affect the leadership styles. It provided the realistic alternatives and suggestions for the future leadership development and change that will be necessary for more competitive hotel.
To achieve the goal of this study, theoretical bases were built through foreign and domestic studies, books and periodicals about the leadership, environment, management strategy, organizational structure and etc. of hotel industry. By referencing the previous studies and literatures that are related to this subject, the research model and specific hypotheses for each influential factors were set up and the questionnaire was developed and analysed with the each statement of variables.
Before the analysis of the hypotheses, the reliability and validity for the questionnaire was measured, and the descriptive statistics, t-test and ANOVA were conducted in order to find out the difference between leadership styles of General Managers in Korea and the US. The population factors and external factors affecting the leadership styles were examined by the multiple regression analysis.
And to study the cause and effect relation between external factors, population and leadership styles of the General Managers, the path analysis through multiple regression analysis were carried out.
The result of verifying the hypotheses are follows:
First, the leadership styles of the General Managers in Korea and the US are relatively different, and the population of the age, academic career, income, tenure of office and the external factors of goal and vision, work remain and job improvement, reward, supporting mechanism and management affected the differences.
Second, the population were proved to affect the traditional leadership and transformational leadership of the General Managers in Korea and the US, and especially the income was the serious factor affecting the traditional leadership style. The income of the General Managers in the US hotels were much higher than the income of the General Managers in Korea.
Third, the external factors were proved to affect the leadership styles of the General Managers in Korea and in th US, and it's influential sub-factors were various.
Fourth, the external factors and population were identified to affect the leadership styles in a direct or indirect way.
The summary of suggestions are follows:
First, there were relative differences in the leadership styles of the General Managers in Korea and the US hotels depending on the affecting factors, and the General Managers in Korea tend to have more traditional leadership style than the General Managers in the US. It shows the directions how the General Managers in Korea can improve their leadership styles.
Second, by stating that General Managers' leadership was affected by income and that especially the income of the General Managers in Korea was much lower than in the US, it is necessary to develop new system for increased income for the General Managers in Korea.
Third, by stating that the external factors affect the leadership, it suggested that the hotel industry has to develop better external environment like management system and performance strategies, and that will lead to the successful operations with the role of effective leadership.
Forth, the leadership styles were not affected by age at all. Therefore the new system for the young age to be promoted to the position of General Manager is necessary. And the General Managers need to be motivated for the continued education and advanced learning in order to be transformational leaders. In addition to that, some innovative system like hotel rotation of General Managers is necessary because of the finding that the shorter the work tenure, the less the traditional leadership style.
There are still some limits of the study in spite of many successful results.
First, due to the limited time and resources, the responses from the entire General Managers of the deluxe 1st and 2nd level hotels in Korea and the US were not possible. And research for the leadership difference was only designed for the General Managers in Korea and the US.
Second, the questionnaire statements used for external factors in this study was based on Six Box Model in Weisbord and this is currently being used to measure the leadership in general corporations. Thus, it led to the limitations on not fully including the entire characteristics of hotel service industry. The questionnaire statements for the leadership was originally developed from the study of Bass. And it was actually the MLQ-5X designed for American corporations. Therefore it could not copy with the cultural difference between Korea and the US.
Third, there were still some external variables not controlled and managed completely during the study.