The Concept and the measurement of Strategic Leadership. The case of Greek Hotel Employees with the use of Exploratory Factor Analysis

Abstract

Over the past two decades, scholars and practitioners are interested in the term of Strategic Leadership. Strategic Leadership is a leader’s ability to anticipate, envision, being flexible, and enable others to make strategic changes as required. There are several researches connecting strategic leadership with various variables of the Human Resource Management (HRM), such as: work stress, (Baysak and Yener, 2015), work commitment (Chiang & Wang, 2012) and role conflict (Palomino & Frezatti, 2016). Hence, it is very important to develop a reliable measurement tool which will explore the nature of strategic leadership and map its dimensions. Barbara Davies & Brent Davies (2004) have already developed a model which consists of both the organizational abilities and the individual characteristics of strategic leaders. The main purpose of the current paper is to study the application of Davies & Davies model (2004) in the hospitality industry. More thoroughly, the empirical data used on this paper has derived by a research consisted of 372 participants who work on Greek Hotel Companies. The method used to analyze the connections between the items of the strategic leadership was factor analysis. The findings support that Davies & Davies model (2004) can be used as a measurement tool in the hospitality industry. Thus, the current paper aims to contribute to the comprehension of the nature of strategic leadership on the hospitality and tourism industry, and trigger future empirical research in the field.