The effects of leadership in line managers on motivation and satisfaction of employees towards intention to leave in a luxury travel agency in Bangkok.

Abstract

The current situation of travel industry in Asia has been almost transformed because of the increasing number of new travel agencies, the price constraint but high expectation from the customers. The objective of this research is to investigate how different leadership style of different line managers affect motivation and satisfaction of the employees in the team and leads to intention to leave the company. The theoretical frameworks which the researcher selects are Contingency approach and Hersey and Blanchard’s Situational Theory which composes of 4 dimensions of leadership style: directing, coaching, supporting and delegating styles to match different levels of ability and willingness of staffs in the team and another theory is Motivation – Hygiene Theory inclusive of Motivational factors (Intrinsic factors) and Hygiene factors (Extrinsic factors). To collect the data, one on one interview is conducted with 23 people in the company by using different interview questions between line managers and employees. The results reveals that Country Manager, Product and Marketing Manager and Operations Manager use supporting leadership style into their team. However, the conflict happens when the staff under Country Manager does not accept her leadership style. Another leadership that the researcher found in this travel agency is coaching style that Sales and Reservations Manager uses but this manager still stands between coaching and directing styles sometimes. It depends on whom the manager deals with. The best leadership style which is delegating style can be found in Financial Controller Manager from accounting team where staffs have high ability to perform tasks and willingness to engage in tasks.