LEADERSHIP, WELL-BEING, ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT AND QUALITY OF WORK LIFE AMONG HOTEL EMPLOYEES DURING COVID-19

The coronavirus (COVID-19) epidemic of 2019 forced organizations to make considerable changes to the way they run their operations. In a chosen tourist hotel in Livingstone, the tourist capital of Zambia, this study examined whether a transformational leadership style is superior to a transactional leadership style in fostering employee well-being and organizational commitment. Although understandably that the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on employee well-being, work-life balance, and organizational commitment have not yet been determined, the present paper discusses the potential connections. The study’s main objective was to determine how Leadership Style affects Employee Well-Being, and Organizational Commitment and Quality of Work Life of hospitality staff amid COVID-19. Four hypotheses guided the study. The study’s population comprised 310 workers from one hotel. The instruments for data collection were Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ), Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ), Quality of work life questionnaire (QWL). Means, median, and mode as well as inferential statistics such as T-tests and partial least squares regression (PLS) were used as statistical tools for the analysis. The findings of the study reveal that, the results were more inclined to support transformational leadership in the hospitality industry, which implied that hospitality managers be equipped to use a transformational leadership style to enhance employee well-being, quality of work-life and organizational commitment. There was a relationship in terms of transactional relationship with organizational commitment though it was insignificant with a path coefficient of 0.013 and T-statistics of 0.056