The role of intellectual leadership in corporate strategies applied during crisis: An implementation in hotel managements

Political, economic, terrorism, natural disasters or epidemics crises are the situations which are difficult to predict, disrupt future plans, threaten even the existence of the business if they are not resolved urgently. While hotel businesses operating in the tourism sector are significantly affected by the crises they experience with their sensitive structure to crises, the strategies implemented and the measures taken in this process are of vital importance for the continuity of the business. Hotel businesses can successfully end crises by failure, due to lack of leaders or with managers who can think strategically, have vision, are sensitive to social events, have high judgment skills, and can make a difference with their intellectual, rational and emotional competencies. In this study, in order to reveal whether the intellectual leadership characteristics of hotel managers have a significant effect on their corporate strategies implemented in crisis periods. Research data were collected from 321 senior hotel managers in 5-star hotels in Istanbul and Antalya. Analyzes were made by SPSS 25.0 and AMOS 24 programs. Results show that while hotel managers in Istanbul prefer to grow in times of crisis, their managers in Antalya prefer to shrink more. Concurrently, it is seen that hotel managers in Istanbul have a higher perception of intellectual leadership characteristics compared to those in Antalya. It has been concluded that the crises did not have an effect on the growth decisions of the hotel managers, but had a significant effect on the downsizing decisions, the intellectual leadership competency, the competency of empowering the business and stakeholders, and the competency of corporate representation have a positive effect on the growth decisions, while only the intellectual leadership competency factor has been found to have a negative effect on the downsizing decisions. In addition, it has been determined that the intellectual leadership characteristics of hotel managers in natural and biological crises have a negative mediating effect on their strategic decisions for growth, and also they have a mediating effect on their strategic decisions towards downsizing to reduce the negative effect.