A Study on the Leadership Style and the Organizational Performance in Korea and USA

Cheon Deok Hee,Young Kwan Lee

doi:10.5539/ijbm.v11n7p42

Abstract

<p>This study aimed to suggest ways Korea’s top-class hotels can improve their global competitiveness, using as a model the developmental process of hotel leadership in the US. We conducted an expert opinion survey on hotel leaders in Korea and the US and explored the differences between their perceptions of emotional leadership and servant leadership and ways to improve organizational performance. We also conducted a quantitative study involving employees of Korea's top-class hotels to investigate the effect of emotional and servant leadership styles on job satisfaction, innovative behavior, and customer orientation. The results suggest that, to improve job satisfaction, respect for values and support for growth under servant leadership should be focused on and that innovative behavior is encouraged by respect for values and the formation of community under servant leadership. To enhance customer orientation, respect for values and support for growth should be focused on. Finally, job satisfaction and innovative behavior contribute directly to improving customer orientation.</p>

Highlights

1.1 Study Objectives and SignificanceUnderstanding leadership outcomes in the Korean and US hotel industries requires that the industries’ developmental processes be examined
This study focused on emotional leadership and servant leadership
We present some of the interviews verbatim below and discuss how the perceptions of emotional leadership and servant leadership differ between the countries

Summary

Introduction

1.1 Study Objectives and SignificanceUnderstanding leadership outcomes in the Korean and US hotel industries requires that the industries’ developmental processes be examined. Since the late 18th century, hotels in the US have developed the world’s top management techniques and shown a leadership style different from Europe’s, as American-style chain hotels have spread worldwide. In Korea, hotels were built in the late 19th century by foreigners, the hotel industry began to develop in earnest only in the 1950s, after the Korean War. In the 1970s, a tourism hotel classification system and certification testing for tourism hotel managers were introduced, improving the quality of the hotel industry (Chung, 2011). Service quality at Korean hotels has significantly improved but has not yet reached the level of the world’s top-class hotels because the Confucian cultural practice of discriminating among people on the basis of social class and looking down upon the service culture still influences the minds of Koreans (Cho, 2003)

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