Seasonal employee leadership in the hospitality industry: a scale development

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the model of seasonal employee leadership (SEL) in a service management process and to create a multi-dimensional scale to gauge this construct. This is because very recent qualitative research by Arasli and Arici (2019), which is the first stage of this scale, recommended a multi-dimensional SEL model for the hospitality industry.

Design/methodology/approach

Making use of data gathered from 1,343 seasonal hotel employees, the authors established a new scale to examine the SEL model. Two separate data sets were collected; the first set was used to perform an exploratory factor analysis, while the second set was processed to confirm the initial factor results using a confirmatory factor analysis.

Findings

The results show that the measurement scale developed in this research provides considerable reliability, as well as convergent and discriminant validities. In particular, the findings confirmed a four-dimensional measurement scale of the SEL: seasonal leader’s qualities, core influence, operational influence and terminal influence.

Originality/value

The paper is the first attempt to develop a new scale which measures the SEL approach in the hospitality literature. Therefore, this study contributes to the current literature through developing and testing the four-dimensional SEL scale and shedding light on the importance of an industry-specific leadership in managing seasonal hotel employees effectively.

Citation

Arasli, H., Altinay, L. and Arici, H.E. (2020), "Seasonal employee leadership in the hospitality industry: a scale development", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 32 No. 6, pp. 2195-2215. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-05-2019-0508