So, what does hospitality mean, apparently the friendly and generous reception and entertainment of guests, according to a search on google? Considering that, did you ask yourself why an industry with such a name and definition is not very hospitable to its employees?
I always ask myself that question, the following article will introduce and define the concept of abusive leadership style and will analyze its effect on the individual.
There are many abusive styles and definitions but in this short article the following definition will be chosen, abusive supervision is defined as a behavior adopted by a supervisor which is perceived as hostile by the subordinates, this behavior can be displayed verbally or non-verbal (Tepper, 2000).
Such behavior affects the employees in many ways, impacting dimensions like their emotional well-being. This leads to issues that can influence the job performance of the subordinate and affect the productivity of the entire organization (Alfes et al., 2012; Kong et al., 2018) not even mentioning that in time is a major contributor to the high turnover rate.
Even more, this phenomenon so common in the Hospitality Industry can lead, for example, to emotional exhaustion (Harvey et al., 2007) and burnout which is decreasing job satisfaction which is another characteristic of turnover.
Such practices if repeated can create a domino effect that is poisoning the work environment because the behaviour can be imitated by subordinates and transmitted down the chain of command (Hon and Lu,2016) which again affects job performance, especially because the industry is highly reliant on emotional labor, and generating negative emotions in employees will not, in any case, help.
In the last decade, there are just a few studies that are trying to investigate the reasons behind such a nocive leadership approach, despite that it has been proven that it causes a high level of psychological distress.
Is been shown that when the abusive tactics are low the service quality is high (Mathe and Slevitch,2013)
Vice versa, when abusive leadership is used, then, the involvement and the organizational commitment of subordinates are gradually reduced (Lyu et al,2016a). Creating a series of consequences that are affecting employee-helping behaviour.
Studies have shown that when such behavior is perpetuated the employees are manifesting their disapproval by being silent and this may potentially be the moment that is generating the turnover cognition.
While work engagement is decreasing too, leading to deviant behaviour , for example hiding knowledge, which may be the point where negative coping mechanisms like drugs and alcohol abuse attach.
Such deviant behaviour then produces counter-productivity, all starting from the abusive supervision and this is revealed by a study on 265 restaurants in the USA that confirm the statement (Detert et al. 2007) so can be said that even if managers clearly reject such possible consequences the pieces of evidence prove the contrary.
Such counterproductivity has implications on productivity from many points of view one of which can be food wastage, that is generating a considerable loss for the companies every year.
Such aspects are affecting the companies more, but what are the consequences on the employees’ health, has been revealed that such leadership is affecting the employees’ psychological well-being by generating low vitality and high strain which is causing such a high level of burnout (Nyberg et al,2011).
This article’s purpose is not to promote a victim image of the employees within the Industry but rather to understand the dimensions of such leadership behavior and to find solid and durable solutions to such causes.
Studies show an underlined logic and rational outcomes, which cannot be seen once operating through the lens of abusive/directive leadership styles. Those studies are explaining that burnout is reduced once the employees feel supported by their companies.
But where is the dissatisfaction coming from? You may ask. Well, there is a thing called relational-interdependent self-construal, behind the complexity of the term is just stating that people have the tendency to see and evaluate themselves based on their close relationships (Jian et al., 2012).
Now take the following example, of an aggressive leader at work who is having few addictions, and work together for a minimum of 12 hours a day and 5 days a week, which also tends to look down on its own staff.
Pretty simple to draw the conclusion of where the dissatisfaction and burnout are coming from isn’t it? Again, studies have shown that coworkers’ support in such cases can reduce burnout and increase the company’s commitment (Xu et al., 2018), which in theory sounds quite well, but what about the other tendency to copy the leader’s behavior and act in the same way towards the rest of the staff?
There can be many solutions and approaches and the commonality of all of them is characterized by their educational perspective, as missing educational content regarding the causes that produce such mechanisms and individuals’ reactions to them may be the first cause of their creation, and can be a better approach than the blaming strategies so common in the industry.
Such approaches are mentoring, coaching and effective HR strategies, because in my opinion based on multiple research materials, HR is responsible for designing and implementing strategies that assure safety and a high level of performance for their staff, and those strategies are missing or inefficiently implemented in the Hospitality Industry.
But how this abusive leadership can be recognized, well is been said that the most common tracker is the verbal threat, if you are working in the industry, you probably know what I mean. On top of that Hight et al. (2019) interviewed hospitality employees about the attributes that create a bad manager and the respondents state that one characteristic of it is abusive supervision.
But there is no such thing as blaming the managers for their approaches. I do honestly believe, and there are some studies supporting my beliefs; that the uniqueness of the hospitality industry can cause abusive supervision.