Liderança e qualidade dos serviços: um estudo nos restaurantes do corredor turístico de Natal/RN

Abstract

This study aims to assess the relationship between leadership and the quality of Services offered by restaurants within the tourism hall of Natal (Brazil). When taking into account the transactional leadership, the transformational leadership was the theoretical basis in terms of leadership (NORTHOUSE, 2004). Service quality sustainability is known to be achieved through the difference between the generated expectation and the perception towards the Services being offered. This has been advocated by Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry (1985). This study is an exploratorydescriptive analysis on 37 restaurants comprising the tourism hall. They are all qualified to attend the visitors. The responders were both those in management positions and customers. The former ones were inquired regarding leadership whereas the latter ones were questioned regarding the quality of Services. Validated questionnaires were applied. SERVQUAL was used to assess the quality of Services that underwent change, and one more specific dimension was added. In total, six dimensions were considered. Regarding leadership, a seven-dimension MLQ-6S was utilized. In orderto analyze the relationship among the variables, Pearson correlation coefficient was used. Correlation was only observed between the dimension “laissezfaire leadership” and the dimensions “assurance, empathy and restaurants”. This is in agreement with the proposal presented by this study since there was no correlation between either transformational or transactional leadership and any of the variables indicative of quality.