The critical role that national culture and ethical leadership play in fostering employee commitment to service quality in the hotel industry

Abstract

ABSTRACT The hotel industry is the most diverse and fastest growing industry in the world, offering its companies tremendous opportunities for international expansion and immersion in different cultures. However, this creates several obstacles that block the way to success. Through the years, the industry has been facing countless ethical scandals, such as national origin discrimination and sexual harassment, among others, which occur due to the lack of ethical leadership. Another major problem for the hotel industry that is directly associated with both the absence of ethical leadership and an ethical cliate is the decreased employee commitment to service quality. Hardly any hospitality studies focused on employee commitment to service quality. Furthermore, only few hospitality studies examined how ethical leadership translates across different cultures and how it affects the ethical climate in organisations. The scope of this study is to stress the importance of ethical leadership and how it can be used to tackle those critical challenges that the hotel industry has been facing. This is a theoretical study offering an in-depth analysis of ethical leadership. The proposed conceptual model is based on existing literature on ethical leadership, ethical climate and employee commitment to service quality. The cultural and cross-cultural issues are carefully examined and their role in leadership is assessed. The study proposes several strategies that could be used to successfully implement strong ethical leadership and foster a positive ethical climate when operating internationally. It also explains how these variables work together to inspire hotel employees and increase their commitment to service quality.