Intellectual structure of leadership studies in hospitality and tourism

Purpose This study aims to investigate the intellectual structure of leadership research in the hospitality industry through citation, co-citation and heat map analysis. Design/methodology/approach Systematic bibliometric mapping was done using citation and co-citation analysis. This study covered journals from 1985 to 2020. Findings After reviewing 172 published articles with 10,276 citations, results identified five main clusters. Practical implications Hospitality managers can choose certain qualities (i.e. charisma, individualized consideration) or use servant leadership characteristics (i.e. selflessness) to direct employees toward more discretionary behavior. Originality/value Former holistic studies on leadership applied different approaches, such as review studies (i.e. systematic review and meta-analysis) or evaluative studies (e.g. productivity measures). It mainly focused on extending the understanding of different leadership types in tourism and hospitality. Nevertheless, relational studies (e.g. citation analysis, bibliographic analysis) remained untouched.