How servant leadership creates and accumulates social capital personally owned in hotel firms
International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management
ISSN: 0959-6119
Article publication date: 7 June 2019
Issue publication date: 4 September 2019
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to test whether servant leaders lead followers to socially interact more frequently, closely and personally with peers, and if this social interaction links servant leaders with employees’ personal social capital, both in terms of bonding (networks linking employees of a similar kind) and bridging (networks linking agents of different kinds).
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected from 403 employees from 59 large Spanish hotels. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses.
Findings
The results reveal that servant leadership has a positive effect on bonding and bridging, which is mediated by employees’ social interactions with peers inside and outside their groups, respectively.
Research limitations/implications
The findings suggest that hotel managers should adopt servant leadership to facilitate social interactions at work, thus allowing employees to individually gain personal assets that improve the hotel’s social capital resources.
Originality/value
This is the first study to analyze whether servant leadership shapes personal social capital in business settings. Moreover, it is the first to show the mechanisms (social interactions with peers inside and outside their groups) through which managerial servant leadership encourages this valuable personal asset in hotels.
Keywords
Citation
Zoghbi-Manrique-de-Lara, P. and Ruiz-Palomino, P. (2019), "How servant leadership creates and accumulates social capital personally owned in hotel firms", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 31 No. 8, pp. 3192-3211. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-09-2018-0748
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited