The purpose of the study is to examine the link between followership resilience and organizational sustainability in hospitality. In particular, it explores followers' propensity to seek guidance (low-initiative employees) or take the initiative (high-initiative employees) as well as the tendency to doubt the decisions of supervisors (low-trust employees) or trust superiors' judgments (high-trust employees). A mixed-methods research design is applied, using both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Empirical data is collected through a combination of exploratory and descriptive research strategies. A 12-item questionnaire reveals the predominant follower propensities. The majority of bottom-level workers indicate low-to-moderate initiative propensity, and the majority of managers show moderate-to-high initiative propensity. Regarding follower trust in superiors, most of the subordinates express low-to-moderate trust propensity. The chapter also identifies advantages and disadvantages of employees with opposing propensities from an organizational sustainability perspective.
TopIntroduction
Over the past decade, organizational sustainability has steadily gained popularity as a research subject. A quick search in the Web of Science Core Collection database confirms this observation – the term ‘organizational sustainability’ was used in 29 titles of WoS-indexed publications in 2023, compared to four in 2013 and zero in 2003. The majority of research has examined it as a function of governance boards and executives rather than non-executive employees (Merriman, 2016). Researchers' attention is primarily focused on the importance of formal leadership (e.g., Tripathi et al., 2019; Chams & García-Blandón, 2019; Ugoani, 2020) and on the practices leaders could implement to promote organizational sustainability (e.g., Hernandez et al., 2015; Pellegrini et al., 2018; Batista & Francisco, 2018; Nawaz & Koç, 2019).
However, a focus on formal management structures and processes does not allow for capturing the micro-foundations of organizational sustainability (Carmeli et al., 2017). The micro-level approach has the potential to point more at individual perceptions and situations, which can advance our understanding of organizational behavioral issues during the process of sustainable development (Cooper et al., 2017). From this perspective, it is difficult to explain the neglect of employees' perceptions regarding their role as followers. Studying followership role orientations can contribute to increasing employee resilience (Kotsev, 2021), which is positively associated with organizational resilience (Cojocaru, 2022) and related organizational sustainability and prosperity (Florez-Jimenez, 2024).
In labor-intensive sectors such as hospitality, employee participation in the organizational sustainability process is more of a concern (Rezapouraghdam et al., 2019). This participation is determined by factors such as organizational culture (Shodeinde et al., 2022), relationships (Núñez-Ríos et al., 2020), spiritual capabilities, emotional intelligence, and trust (Batool et al., 2022). What they have in common is that they all relate to employee direct support and involvement with the concept of organizational sustainability. However, is it possible to achieve organizational sustainability if employees, despite their good intentions and intellectual capabilities, are not sufficiently resilient and flexible in meeting the daily challenges of their work?
Although hospitality literature on the relationship between sustainability and resilience is still in its infancy (Prayag, 2017), the answer to this question is quite obvious. The long-term sustainability of an organization is only possible if the organization is resilient (Derissen et al., 2011), which has a positive relationship with individual resilience (Rehman et al., 2021). According to recent publications, follower resilience can significantly improve organizational resilience (Raetze et al., 2021; Liang & Cao, 2021; Farar, 2021). Tengblad (2018, p. 39) points out the significance of constructive followership as an organizational social resource and draws attention to “the need of taking a holistic perspective in decision-making and the ability to act swift, agile and imaginatively for preventing crises and to exploit opportunities”.