Abstract
Disaster and emergency are not new phenomena which have significantly affected and plagued businesses for a long time globally (Alzoubi & Jaaffar, 2020). However, disaster and emergency like the COVID-19 pandemic is a new situation experienced by the globe since late 2019. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic hotel industry all over the world, particularly Australia where the hotel industry is one of the major contributors to the Australian economy, has been severely affected by millions of job losses and slicing down the revenue. Therefore, the urgency of appropriate leadership style among the various leadership styles like: autocratic, participative, transactional, servant, and transformational, has increased to prevent the businesses from severe losses and damages caused by disaster and emergencies situations. In this regard, this thesis has studied the role of transformational leadership in managing the business in disaster and emergency based on the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on the hotel industry in Australia. It is important to understand whether a transformational leadership style is appropriate in managing the hotel business during this challenging time. Transformational leadership is about encouraging the followers to transform, think out of the box, use innovative ideas, take ownership of their role, and to boost their confidence (Livingston, 2016) in order to motivate the followers for growth and sustainability of organization with their vision (Chapman, 2017). For this research study, 10 hotels from New South Wales of Australia were selected, where the participants of the research were the managers, leaders, owners, and key employees. From these ten hotels, 15 employees were finalized as respondents (10 leaders and 5 key employees). A qualitative research method was used for the study where data were collected by face-to-face and online interviews using semi-structured questionnaires. The collected data and information were analysed based on the model as mentioned by Warrilow (2012) and the thematic research method. For this research study, the researcher has analysed the key components behaviour in transformational leadership such as Idealised influence or Charisma, Inspirational motivation, Intellectual stimulation, and Personal and individual attention. suggested by Warrilow (2012). It is revealed from the current study that transformational leadership style has helped managers and leaders for effective communication, better decision making, promoting innovation & critical- strategic thinking, as well as support in increasing sales. It was found that there was an influence of leader's personal attributes over employees' engagement, transformational v leaders were open in their communication, confident and honest to their employees, and the leader's personal attributes including demographic factors for instance years of work experience, education are more important in enhancing the trust and confidence of their employees (followers). It was found that leaders who were following transformational leadership were more positive and always encouraged their team members. In those hotels where leaders implemented transformational leadership style, their followers agreed that there was a common vision and team spirit in their hotel during COVID-19. Additionally, the current research also found that the hotel's leaders or managers who applied transformational leadership style were successful to encourage innovation and to find new ways to increase sales than the leaders or managers who adopted other leadership styles. The outcome of this study is important to fulfill the knowledge gap as there is almost no empirical research related to transformation leadership and its impact during COVID-19. The study will be helpful to guide hotel managers and leaders to understand the role of transformation leadership and to plan their strategies to deal with complexities during a difficult time like the COVID-19 pandemic. Besides these, the outcome of the research is also practically significant to organizations like academic institutions, research organizations, Australian Hotel Association (AHA), and other policy-making Australian government and non- government bodies