Abstract

Purpose: The hotel industry needs a leader who can actively demonstrate leadership to respond to and accept changes in the organization in a highly competitive and fast-changing environment. Therefore, the role of leaders who instill clear vision and goals of the organization in their members, listen to their opinions, and empathize is paramount. Leaders should encourage successful organizational activities based on active participation by employees and create the best environment for working with a sense of mission and responsibility. This study aims to identify the relationship between empathy leadership and job engagement as a result variable of team cohesion in the hotel culinary department and conduct empirical studies on the role of empathy leadership and job engagement. Research design, data, and methodology: The data were collected from employees who work in culinary department at a five-star franchise hotel located in the Seoul metropolitan area. Because it is difficult to conduct a survey through face-to-face contact with employees due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the online survey was conducted from February 1 to February 28, 2020. A total of 330 questionnaires through online were distributed and 268 employees completed the survey, yielding a response rate of 81%. Of the 268 returned responses, 27 responses were not usable due to missing information. Thus, a total of 241 responses were used for analysis. Results: The study results are as follows. First, it has been shown that the empathy leadership of culinary department in hotel companies has a significant positive impact on the job engagement. Second, it has been shown that job engagement has a significant positive effect on members' team cohesiveness. Third, empathy leadership of hotel companies' culinary department has a significant positive impact on members' team cohesiveness. Fourth, job engagement has a significant positive (+) mediating effect in the relationship between empathy leadership and team cohesiveness in culinary department. Conclusion: This study supports the theory that an emotional and empathic leader's behavior or ability can change the effectiveness or atmosphere of a rapidly changing hotel culinary team organization by presenting a research model on the effect of empathic leadership on job engagement and team cohesiveness. And hotel chefs should be more aware of the importance of empathic leadership and make them a human resource of the organization through formal and informal communication with culinary employees.