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

Pablo Ruiz-Palomino; Benito Yáñez-Araque; Pedro Jiménez-Estévez; Santiago Gutiérrez-Broncano

doi:10.1016/j.techfore.2021.121192

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

Technol Forecast Soc Change. 2022 Jan:174:121192. doi: 10.1016/j.techfore.2021.121192. Epub 2021 Sep 7.

Authors

Pablo Ruiz-Palomino¹, Benito Yáñez-Araque², Pedro Jiménez-Estévez³, Santiago Gutiérrez-Broncano⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Business Administration, University of Castilla-La Mancha, Faculty of Social Sciences, Cuenca, Spain.
² Department of Physical Activity and Sports Sciences, Applied Intelligent Systems Research Group, University of Castilla-La Mancha, Av. Carlos III, s/n, 45071 Toledo, Spain.
³ Department of Business Administration, University of Castilla-La Mancha, Faculty of Social and Legal Sciences, Toledo, Spain.
⁴ Department of Business Administration, University of Castilla-La Mancha, Faculty of Social Sciences, Talavera de la Reina, Spain.

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