Investigating the Effect of Staff Self-Leadership on Internal Branding and Role Identity in Hotel Industry: A Case Study of 5-Star Hotels in (Mashhad)

The current applied descriptive-correlational study sought to investigate the effect of staff self-leadership on the outcomes of internal branding and role identity in the hotel industry. The statistical population of the study comprised all the staff of 5-star hotels in Mashhad, out of whom 120 people were selected through the Morgan table using simple random sampling. The required data were collected via the standard Zhang and Zhou questionnaire (2021) whose face and construct validity were measured through expert approval and factor loads, respectively. Moreover, the reliability of the questionnaire was measured and confirmed using the Cronbach's alpha test. Finally, the collected data was analyzed via structural equation modeling. The findings of the study indicated the significant positive effect of self-leadership on brand knowledge, brand commitment, and brand citizenship behavior through factors such as the visualization of successful performance, self-goal-setting, self-talk, and self-aggrandizement. Furthermore, self-leadership factors also influence brand knowledge, brand commitment, and brand citizenship behavior through role identity. It could, therefore, be concluded that promoting self-leadership behaviors helps the internal growth of an organization’s brand and facilitates internal branding through role identity.