Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

2-2025

Abstract

While literature articulates the relevance of self-sacrificial leadership to crisis situations, little attention has been paid to employees’ attitudinal and behavioral responses to self-sacrificial leadership. This is a particularly salient gap in the scholarship, given the decisions leaders must make to address challenges in the hospitality industry (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic). Drawing on conservation of resources theory, this pair of field and experimental studies examines how individual differences in employee emotional suppression and leader coping strategy moderate the impacts of self-sacrificial leadership on employee perceptions of leader effectiveness. By sampling U.S. hospitality employees, the studies reveal that leaders who display self-sacrificial behaviors received more favorable ratings on leader effectiveness than others, an effect that is contingent on followers’ emotional suppression and leaders’ coping strategies. The perception of increased leader effectiveness in turn weakened employees’ intentions to engage in negative word-of-mouth toward their organizations.

Keywords

Self-sacrificial leadership, Emotional suppression, Coping, Conservation of resources theory, Leader effectiveness

Discipline

Organizational Behavior and Theory

Research Areas

Strategy and Organisation; Organisational Behaviour and Human Resources

Publication

Cornell Hospitality Quarterly

Volume

66

Issue

1

ISSN

1938-9655

Identifier

10.1177/19389655231223370

Publisher

SAGE Publications

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