Reviving employees’ essence of hospitality through spiritual wellbeing, spiritual leadership, and emotional intelligence

Authors: Bayighomog, S.W. and Arasli, H.

Journal: Tourism Management

Volume: 89

eISSN: 0261-5177

DOI: 10.1016/j.tourman.2021.104406

Abstract:

This study contributes to the ongoing discussion stressing the need to reinvigorate meaning and purpose to the younger generation of employees and revitalize the essence of hospitality. To this end, the study proposes and tests a model of how spiritual leadership and emotional intelligence are related, directly and indirectly through spiritual wellbeing, to the creative performance and customer-oriented boundary-spanning behaviors (COBSB) of employees. The research hypotheses were tested using data collected from 238 frontline hotel employees and 53 supervisors and analyzed via nonlinear estimations. The findings revealed that spiritual leadership and emotional intelligence were curvilinearly related to spiritual wellbeing, COBSB, and creative performance. Specifically, too much of spiritual leadership was not necessarily a good thing, and the less emotionally intelligent can sometimes be better off. Moreover, spiritual wellbeing mediated the relationship of emotional intelligence and spiritual leadership with COBSB and creative performance. Implications for theory and practice are discussed further.

Source: Scopus