Fostering employee promotive voice in hospitality: The impact of responsible leadership

Abstract

Promotive voice refers to employees sharing novel ideas or suggestions aimed at improving the functioning of their work unit or organization. However, in many cases, employees reserve their contribution of constructive ideas for situations where they feel their contributions are acknowledged and appreciated by their managers. The manager’s leadership style is therefore of utmost importance in fostering employee voice. Responsible leadership has thus become desirable in service contexts, where conflicting interests arise among stakeholders, but little is known about this leadership style in hospitality. Drawing on conservation of resources theory, we explore how and when responsible leadership fosters employee promotive voice. A time-lagged survey collected data from 392 five-star hotel employees in Turkey. Testing a moderated mediation model using partial least squares showed that responsible leadership increases employees’ relational energy, generating greater promotive voice in hotel settings; furthermore, prevalent law and code climate strengthens responsible leadership’s effect on relational energy.