WORK ENGAGEMENT, EMPOWERMENT AND LEADERSHIP STYLES: ANALYSES FROM CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES IN HOTEL MANAGEMENT

Abstract

Tremendous pressure is put both on people and organizations, to improve their performance in a rocket fast changing, extremely competitive business world (Stander & Rothman, 2010). High performance is considered as indispensible but extraordinary performance is what people are pursuing today. Insomuch that mere motivation, satisfaction or devotion of employees will remain insufficient but bursts of energy to work is what needed. Work engagement fits best to this context. Till today; piled up research on work engagement indicate its positive relations with job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and citizenship behavior. It is known that engaged employees are more productive and report higher levels of health and well-being (Laschinger et al., 2008; Bakker & Demerouti, 2007; Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004). The link between financial returns and positive outcomes as employee satisfaction, motivation or work engagement has also been set forth (Xanthopoulou et al.,2009; Harter et al., 2002). Both practice and research put forward that employees need to feel and be empowered to be truly engaged. Major aim of this study is to figure out the impact of empowerment on engagement and the most effective leadership style for employees to perceive empowerment that will lead them to be engaged. Some of the existing studies in literature signal the culture-bound effect of leadership style for employees to respond positively on empowering practices (Avolio et al., 2004; Pellegrini & Scandura, 2006). The sample of the present research consists of 621 managers and employees attending from 18 hotels (4 and over star) located in Istanbul and Antalya cities. Correlation and multiple regression analyses are conducted to test the hypotheses besides factor and reliability analyses of the research instruments. Demographics are also examined by using ANOVA and t-tests to find out group differences. Findings indicate factors of empowerment external to the employees such as organizations' culture, climate, or management practices all contribute to the levels of work engagement through partial mediation of employees' empowerment perception. Leadership styles moderate the relation between external factors and perception of empowerment in which nourishing style has the most contribution. World chain hotels score highest for both domains of empowerment and work engagement that tend to increase with age, tenure, and position of the employees.