The Effect Of Ethical Leadership On Hotel Employees’ Subjective Well-being:The Mediating Role Of Psychological Empowerment And Interpersonal Trust

The expanded number of employees in tourist hotel has been triggered by the booming development of hospitality and tourism industry.While solving the employment problem for a large number of laboring population,there are also some issues we should pay attention to,for example,uncompetitive salaries for bottom service personnel,work-leisure conflicts(WLC)and less working enjoyment due to the job burnout.The low level of job satisfaction and well-being leads to a decline of quality of services(QoS),and ultimately affects the customer experience.At present,managers have realized the significance of promoting and protecting staff happiness when being in charge of the hotel business,and have correspondingly made explorations and efforts in the field of human resources management.However,previous attention mostly focused on the compensation system,personnel system or work environment,and it was generally believed that the study of job satisfaction is equivalent to the study of employees’ well-beings.Limitations exist in both academic and practice circle when considering the subjective well-being of hotel employees,and less discussion on the issue of employees’ well-being has been conducted from the perspective of leadership.Ethical leadership as one type of leading style,receives a growing attention and advocacy.Starting from the theory of social exchange,this paper is,therefore,intended to explore the relationship between ethical leadership and hotel employee happiness by introducing two mediating variables--psychological empowerment and interpersonal trust,and explore how their interaction mechanisms work.To achieve the research objective,research model and assumptions related to ethical leadership,subjective well-being,psychological empowerment and interpersonal trust are proposed by the author based on the very systematic literature review.In order to verify the assumption,the author has designed a questionnaire for hotel staff based on the mature measurement scale developed by foreign scholars.A questionnaire survey was conducted on 309 employees of three four-star hotels in Liaoning and Xinjiang.A total of 309 questionnaires were distributed and 283 were collected,of which 250 were valid.Data analysis software spss20.0 was utilized to analyze the sample data.The results of the data analysis indicate that all the assumptions are established,and it can be concluded that:(1)Ethical leadership can significantly improve the job satisfaction and life satisfaction of hotel employees,that is,subjective well-being.(2)Ethical leadership can significantly improve the psychological empowerment and interpersonal trust perceived by subordinates.(3)Psychological empowerment and interpersonal trust play a mediating role between ethical leadership and job-life satisfaction of employees.Consequently,the research model proposed in this paper has basically been verified.According to the result,the author suggested that leaders in hospitality industry should be trained to be ethical to enhance the ethical leadership standard at all levels of management,which further implies that leaders should pay more attention to the psychological empowerment and interpersonal trust of the hotel employees,creating a good working atmosphere and improving their subjective well-being,therefore to promote a sustainable and healthy development of hotel management.