Servant leadership and psychological empowerment of hotel service employees – the moderating role of openness

Abstract

This paper investigates servant leadership as a predictor of psychological empowerment in hospitality employees. The hypotheses suggest that employees’ openness to experience predicts psychological empowerment and acts as a moderator of the relationship between servant leadership and empowerment. Using survey data from 154 hospitality service employees in 5-star hotels in Europe the study applies a hierarchical moderated multiple regression approach to test the main and interaction effects. The findings support the hypotheses of the study, demonstrating positive main effects of both servant leadership and openness on psychological empowerment as well as a significant interaction effect.

Keywords:

• Hospitality
• leadership
• openness
• psychological empowerment
• servant leadership

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).