Preparing for the "black swan": Reducing employee burnout in the hospitality sector through ethical leadership

Anis Ali; Tasawar Abdul Hamid; Rana Tahir Naveed; Irfan Siddique; Hyungseo Bobby Ryu; Heesup Han

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1009785

Preparing for the "black swan": Reducing employee burnout in the hospitality sector through ethical leadership

Front Psychol. 2022 Oct 12:13:1009785. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1009785. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Anis Ali¹, Tasawar Abdul Hamid², Rana Tahir Naveed³, Irfan Siddique⁴, Hyungseo Bobby Ryu⁵, Heesup Han⁶

Affiliations

¹ Department of Management, College of Business Administration, Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University, Al-Kharj, Saudi Arabia.
² OUS Royal Academy of Economics and Technology in Switzerland, Zurich, Switzerland.
³ Division of Management and Administrative Sciences, University of Education (UE) Business School, University of Education, Lahore, Pakistan.
⁴ Faculty of Management Studies, University of Central Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan.
⁵ Food Franchise Department, College of Health Sciences, Kyungnam University, Changwon, South Korea.
⁶ College of Hospitality and Tourism Management, Sejong University, Seoul, South Korea.

Abstract

Hospitality is at a crossroads. While the growth and developmental indicators in this sector show economic potential, the rising employee burnout rate is a serious challenge to hospitality management. Literature suggests that an ethical leader can reduce employee burnout significantly. Although hospitality employees face a higher risk of burnout than other service segments, shockingly, past leadership studies did not focus on how ethical leaders in a hospitality organization may reduce the risk of burnout. Therefore, we conducted this research to explore ethical leadership-burnout relationships in the hospitality sector with the mediating effects of subjective wellbeing and employee resilience. A questionnaire was provided to employees in different hotel organizations (n = 346). Structural equation modeling was employed for hypothesis testing. The statistical evidence supported the theoretical assumptions that ethical leadership negatively predicts employee burnout, and subjective wellbeing and resilience mediate this relationship. The outcomes of this study suggest different theoretical and social implications. For example, the findings indicate the effectiveness of ethical leadership in reducing employee burnout in the hospitality sector. Several other implications have been discussed in detail.

Keywords: burnout; ethical leadership; hospitality; resilience; subjective wellbeing.