Research Article
Can servant leadership prevent hotel employee depression during the COVID-19 pandemic? A mediating and multigroup analysis

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2021.121192Get rights and content
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Highlights

  • Path and conditions for servant leadership to reduce depression symptoms.

  • Servant leaders reduce employee depression by increasing their levels of personal social capital (PSC).

  • Servant leadership increases PSC both in active and temporary laid-off employees.

  • For employees who are temporary laid off, PSC is a resource that is highly important to reduce their depression symptoms.

Abstract

The hospitality industry has been severely hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, with changes that have harmed employees’ psychological well-being. However, having supervisors who are servant may make a difference. With a focus on serving others and the care taken to ensure their employees’ highest priority needs are served, these leaders could help employees feel less depressed in these complicated times. By instilling servant behaviors in followers that help them become people that others can trust or with whom they can develop friendships, leaders could help these employees earn greater levels of personal social capital (PSC) through which to more successfully address pandemic times, especially if furloughed. Using structural equation modeling to analyze a sample of 205 hotel employees in Spain, we found that servant leadership directly decreases depression, and that PSC mediates this relationship. Our multigroup analyses (MGA) findings also reveal that when these employees are furloughed, the negative effect of PSC and the mediating role of PSC in this relationship is stronger. New light is thus shed on how servant leadership is effective in reducing employee depressive symptoms in times of severe changes such as those produced by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Keywords

Servant leadership
COVID-19
Time of change
Personal social capital (PSC)
Employee depression
Hospitality industry

Cited by (0)

Pablo Ruiz-Palomino is Associate Professor of Business Management at University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain. He earned a Ph.D. in Business Administration at this same University in November 2008, which was awarded the 1st Prize in the 2010 (IV) Edition of FORETICA-MSD for Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility Research (International Call). Since then, he has acted as visiting scholar in a number of prestigious universities such as Bentley University, University of Arizona, IESE Business School, Alliant International University and University of Edinburgh, among others. His-research interests are ethical leadership, organizational behavior, and social capital in business, tourism, and hospitality contexts.

Benito Yáñez-Araque is Adjunct Professor of Business Management and Marketing and Chief Officer for Culture, Sport and University Extension in Toledo at University of Castilla-La Mancha. He holds a Business Management and Administration B.A. degree and Ph.D. in Economics, Entrepreneurship, Management of SMEs and Family Businesses from the University of Castilla-La Mancha, and the M.A. degree in Occupational Risks Prevention (Workplace Safety, Occupational Health and Ergonomics and Applied Psychosociology) from the International University of La Rioja, and the Secondary and Baccalaureate Teacher Training M.Ed. from the University of Extremadura. His-major fields of research are innovation, human resources, strategy, organizational behavior, training and MICE.

Pedro Jiménez-Estévez is Associate Professor of Business Management at the University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain. He received his PhD in Economics and Business from the same University in 1997. His-research interests include strategic management, corporate social responsibility and human resource management, especially in tourism and hospitality contexts. He currently holds the Santander-CSR Chair at the University of Castilla-La Mancha.

Santiago Gutierrez-Broncano holds a PhD in Business Organization from the San Pablo CEU-Madrid University (2003), MDD in Business Management and Administration from the IADE-Autonomous University of Madrid (2005) and a Bachelor in Business Administration and Management from the University of Alcalá de Henares (1998). He is currently an Associate Professor of Business Organization of the Department of Business Administration in the University of Castilla-La Mancha in the Faculty of Social Sciences of Talavera. Before joining the University of Castilla-La Mancha, he was a professor at the Rey Juan Carlos University of Madrid and the Catholic University of Avila. His-current research focuses on the development and improvement of the competitiveness of companies through the implementation of different strategies: internationalization, corporate reputation, total quality management or high-performance practices in personnel management.

© 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc.