Over the past few years, emotional intelligence (EI) has generated significant interest and a wealth of research as a possible area of insight into what determines outstanding performance in the workplace (Ashworth, 2013:8; Pillay, Viviers and Mayer, 2013:1). The internal environment of organisations in the labour-intense hospitality industry is complex and dynamic. Given the unpredictability of change, the researcher found the hospitality industry to be an intriguing milieu within which to ascertain the importance of EI in predicting leaders’ effectiveness as a measure of outstanding performance. As employees are the internal customers of any hotel organisation, representing many hotel organisations’ only true competitive advantage, the purpose of this quantitative investigation was to examine the relationship between leaders’ EI and followers’ motivational behaviour and organisational commitment. Despite the intuitive plausibility of the assumption that leaders who exhibit EI competencies contribute to outstanding performance, the issue of followers’ motivational behaviour and organisational commitment as leadership indices has received little empirical attention. This study sets out to integrate prior findings on EI, motivation and organisational commitment, to support these findings in literature, and to incorporate these findings into a comprehensive conceptual framework. Using critical realists’ post-positivistic philosophical assumptions, the researcher used the Emotional and Social Competencies Inventory (ESCI) to assess leaders’ EI. Furthermore, the Motivational Sources Inventory (MSI) was used to assess followers’ motivational behaviour, while Organisational Commitment Scales (OCS) were used to assess followers’ organisational commitment. The survey respondents consisted of 120 leaders and 435 followers from 13 hotels in four prominent hotel groups in South Africa. The quantitative data collected from the surveys was analysed quantitatively using SPSS to reach substantial results with inferences. The analysis of variance revealed an overall positive relationship between demographic variables and Leaders EI, followers’ motivational behaviour and followers’ organisational commitment. The correlational analysis revealed positive relationships between leaders’ EI and followers’ motivational behaviour and organisational commitment (R= 0.05-, p<0.01) except for instrumental motivation. The correlation between leaders’ emotional self-awareness and followers’ intrinsic process motivation was somewhat weak while the relationship between leaders’ emotional self-awareness and instrumental motivation was found to be sufficient, but statistically not significant. The researcher can conclude that generally the results of this study reveal that organisational leaders can positively influence the motivational behaviour and organisational commitment of their followers by enhancing their own EI competencies. The results add to the leadership literature by illuminating possible antecedents to leadership effectiveness. It is believed that this research will help the hospitality industry at large in clarifying the importance of EI competencies in leadership as a means of obtaining positive motivation behaviour and commitment from followers. Furthermore, the findings have both managerial and research implications for hospitality operations strategy formulation in order to gain competitive advantage and improve the financial position of the businesses.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:rhodes/vital:19963 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Chipumuro, Juliet |
| Publisher | Rhodes University, Faculty of Commerce, Management |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, Doctoral, PhD |
| Format | 368 leaves, pdf |
| Rights | Chipumuro, Juliet |
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