Employee training and service quality in the hospitality industry

ABSTRACT

This study examines the relationship between employee training and service quality in the hospitality industry. The study tested the impacts of perceived access to training, perceived benefits of training and perceived support for training on service quality in the hospitality sector. Survey technique was used for the data collection. The research participants were frontline employees and their customers. The frontline employees responded to the training dimensions, while the customers’ completed the questions on service quality. One hundred and twenty useable surveys were included in this study. This study reveals a significant relationship between the employees’ perception of the benefits of training, support for training and service quality. This study offers some important management and theoretical implications.     

Assessing the Effects of Leadership Styles on Employees’ Outcomes in International Luxury Hotels

This study examines the effects of transformational, transactional, and non-transactional leadership on hotel employees’ outcomes including extra effort, perceived efficiency, and satisfaction with managers. Employees from eleven 4-star hotels in Spain provided the collected data. A series of statistical analyses (1) identify the elements of three leadership styles using a multi-factor leadership questionnaire (MLQ-5X); (2) examine the effect of leadership styles on employees’ outcomes. The results of this study indicate that “idealized attributes” of transformational leadership and “contingent reward” from transactional leadership are the most important factors that positively affect all three outcomes (i.e., extra effort, perceived efficiency, and satisfaction); and (3) to assess the moderating effect of different types of ownership of hotel properties on the relationship between styles of leadership and outcomes of employees’ activities other than these two elements, the significant factors indicating positive or negative relationships vary depending on the types of individual outcomes as well as ownership of hotel properties. The discussion sections indicate theoretical and practical implications of the findings.     

Seasonal employee leadership and turnover intention in the hospitality and tourism industry: Serial mediation model workplace ostracism and work alienation

Based on the Conservation of Resources Theory, this research aims to examine the relationship between seasonal employee leadership (SEL) and turnover intention (TI). The data was obtained by administering a survey to 450 seasonal employees working in 15 five-star hotels in Antalya. The findings revealed that SEL reduces TI, which is an important problem for the tourism industry. The study results show that SEL was negatively related to workplace ostracism (WO) and work alienation (WA) and TI. Further, the findings show the serial mediating effect of WO and WA between SEL and TI. The study makes useful recommendations to managers to eliminate ostracism, curb the feeling of alienation and decrease TI.     

Part-time restaurant employee perceptions of management practices: An empirical investigation

The UK hospitality industry increasingly relies on part-time rather than full-time employees to provide more flexible and cost-effective operations with potential trade-offs for service quality. Part-time employees can be divided into two distinct groups – permanent and temporary – each with very different employment rationales. This study compares full-time and part-time employee perceptions of management practices across twelve Cardiff-based restaurants using a self-administered questionnaire. There were significant differences between full-time and part-time employees but no difference between temporary and permanent part-time employees who were equally dissatisfied with management practices, job attitudes and job behaviours. The qualitative data showed the two part-time employees' sub-groups had different needs. Despite this they were treated as a homogenous group by managers. Lack of management understanding of part-time staff impacts on how they are treated and ultimately on service quality and customer satisfaction.     

包容型领导对员工创新行为的影响：基于组织和谐的中介作用及组织创新氛围的调节作用

员工创新行为是组织塑造竞争优势的重要环节。尽管已有研究表明领导风格能够对员工创新行为产生显著影响,但目前对于二者之间的作用机制和边界条件却知之甚少。文章基于国内新能源行业422名在职人员的有效调查问卷数据,构建并检验一个被调节的中介效应模型。实证研究结果表明：包容型领导对员工创新行为具有显著正向影响;组织和谐能够在包容型领导与员工创新行为关系中起中介作用;组织创新氛围在包容型领导和组织和谐之间起着正向的调节作用,组织创新氛围越强,包容型领导对组织和谐的影响程度随之增强。文章解释了包容型领导对员工创新行为的作用机理,不仅打开了二者之间的“黑箱”,也为员工在组织中如何有效增强创新行为提供了管理启示和对策建议。     

Employee Training in SMEs: Effect of Size and Firm Type—Family and Nonfamily

The study examined the main and interaction effects of size and firm type on a variety of informal and formal training programs in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Samples of 448 family and 470 nonfamily SMEs were separated into four size groups and differences were assessed using multivariate analyses of variance. The results point to prevalence of informal training for all sizes and an increase in adoption of formal, structured, and development-oriented training with increasing firm size (especially for firms with 20–99 employees). This pattern was evident for nonfamily but not for family firms. For family firms, formal training programs increased significantly during the critical growth phase only (20–49 employees). Gaps in employee training between the two types of firms were greatest at 50–99 employees but narrowed thereafter at 100–199 employees. The approach to employee training in family SMEs is in consonance with their slower growth, informal management styles, limited financial resources, and greater emphasis on efficiency compared with nonfamily SMEs.     

The Influence of Servant Leadership on Restaurant Employee Engagement

Servant leadership is a leadership philosophy which addresses the concerns of ethics, customer experience, and employee engagement while creating a unique organizational culture where both leaders and followers unite to reach organizational goals without positional or authoritative power. With employees viewed as one of the greatest assets for organizations, maintaining loyal, productive employees while balancing profits becomes a challenge for leaders, and drives the need to understand employee engagement drivers. Thus, the purpose of this study was to qualitatively explore servant leadership from the perspective of employees. Participants were 11 employees from a servant leadership led restaurant who took part in two focus groups. The modified van Kaam method (Moustakas 1994) contributed to data analysis, which examined employee responses for comparison and assessment. Several themes emerged including servant leader experience, servant leader traits, the impact of servant leadership, the application of servant leadership, and limited employee attrition. The themes revealed servant leadership positively influences employee engagement while contributing to employee loyalty to the workplace. Based on the servant leader experience, participants were more committed, built healthy work relationships, and actively participated in achieving organizational goals. Findings are discussed in light of current research and practical applications are provided.     

为何中国员工偏好沉默——威权领导对员工建言的消极影响

采用问卷调查方式收集了66名领导与其286名下属的配对样本,运用层级回归的方法,探讨了威权领导对员工建言的影响及其作用机制。结果表明,威权领导和员工权力距离都对员工建言存在显著的负向预测效应。另外,员工权力距离还会调节威权领导对员工建言的效应,当员工权力距离较高时,威权领导与员工建言间的关系较弱。最后,员工心理授权部分中介威权领导、员工权力距离对员工建言的影响,完全中介威权领导和员工权力距离的交互项对员工建言的影响。这些研究结果有助于理解中国传统领导行为对员工建言的影响以及影响的中介机制和边界条件,具有重要的理论意义和实践意义。     

Is transformational leadership always good for employee task performance? Examining curvilinear and moderated relationships

Transformational leadership, generally considered as a desirable leadership style, has positive effects on various performance outcomes of employees; however, its productivity has been called into question because of a relative neglect of its negative aspects. Addressing this gap, an attempt at rethinking the relationship between transformational leadership and employee performance is important. The paradoxical perspective indicates that conflicting positive and negative effects of transformational leadership can coexist, which provides possibility and rationality for thorough consideration of employees’ task performance influenced by transformational leaders. Integrating the principle of diminishing marginal utility and the “Too-Much-ofa-Good-Thing (TMGT)” effect, this research explores an inverted U-shaped relationship between transformational leadership and employee task performance. Furthermore, applying social cognitive theory, we assume an employee’s proactive personality moderates the curvilinear influence of transformational leadership on employees’ task performance. As expected, results from a study of data from 209 supervisorsubordinate relationships from China showed that the inverted U-shaped relationship between transformational leadership and employees’ task performance was moderated by employees’ proactive personality. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Is transformational leadership always good for employee task performance? Examining curvilinear and moderated relationships

Transformational leadership, generally considered as a desirable leadership style, has positive effects on various performance outcomes of employees; however, its productivity has been called into question because of a relative neglect of its negative aspects. Addressing this gap, an attempt at rethinking the relationship between transformational leadership and employee performance is important. The paradoxical perspective indicates that conflicting positive and negative effects of transformational leadership can coexist, which provides possibility and rationality for thorough consideration of employees’ task performance influenced by transformational leaders. Integrating the principle of diminishing marginal utility and the “Too-Much-of-a-Good-Thing (TMGT)” effect, this research explores an inverted U-shaped relationship between transformational leadership and employee task performance. Furthermore, applying social cognitive theory, we assume an employee’s proactive personality moderates the curvilinear influence of transformational leadership on employees’ task performance. As expected, results from a study of data from 209 supervisor-subordinate relationships from China showed that the inverted U-shaped relationship between transformational leadership and employees’ task performance was moderated by employees’ proactive personality. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

The Relationship Between Transformational Leadership and Followers’ Perceptions of Fairness

Of recent time, there has been a concern about ethical leadership and ethics in business. Research on leadership did not pay a lot of attention to fairness and many authors have studied the relationship between leader fairness and factors such as outcome satisfaction and trust in leader for instance. For the moment, there is no study that focused on the direct relationship between transformational leadership and fairness. That’s why; in this paper our aim is to study the relationship between transformational leadership and the employees’ perceptions of fairness, mainly the three types of fairness which are distributive, procedural, and interactional in French firms. A questionnaire survey was sent to employees working in the industry and service sectors. A sample of 100 respondents was collected. We found a partial relationship between employees’ perceptions of fairness and transformational leadership. More specifically, we found that procedural and interactional fairness are strongly associated with transformational leadership.     

The Effects of Ethical Leadership and Ethical Climate on Employee Ethical Behavior in the International Port Context

This study empirically examined the effects of ethical leadership and ethical climate on employee ethical behavior in the international port context using survey data collected from 128 respondents who worked in Taiwan International Ports Corporation (TIPC) in Taiwan. Research hypotheses were formulated from the previous literature and tested using structural equation modeling. Results indicated that ethical leadership had a significant impact on ethical climate and the ethical behavior of TIPC employees. Ethical climate was found to be positively associated with employee ethical behavior. The theoretical and practical implications of the research findings are discussed.     

Making working in retailing interesting: A study of human resource management practices in Danish grocery retail chains

This paper discusses how five retail chains in the Danish grocery industry attempt to make low-wage, low-status store-level retail jobs as checkout operators and sales assistants interesting. It does so from the perspective of both retailers and employees. Following analysis of the social and institutional context of Danish grocery retailers, we identify three types of retail employees (transitional workers, core employees and career seekers), who have different motivations and aspirations for working in grocery retailing. The central challenge for retailers is to make store-level retail jobs interesting to the different employee types. Although retailers mainly focus their attention on career seekers, we find that working in retailing is interesting for all employee types because the retailers are currently able to meet their respective motivations and aspirations. Nevertheless, we identify several areas in which retailers can improve their practices.     

The golden mean: Research on the mechanism of customer participation in employee service innovation

Service innovation is of importance in achieving business success. This study aims to understand how customer participation affects employees' service innovation through zhongyong thinking and verify the moderating role of leadership empowerment in the service section. Data were collected through a paired questionnaire survey with 352 valid frontline employees and their superiors in the starred hotel industry. Multiple linear regressions and bootstrap analysis were performed to examine the hypotheses. The results indicate that customer participation is positively related to zhongyong thinking and service innovation, and zhongyong thinking partially mediates the main effect. In addition, service innovation is more substantial when leadership empowerment is high, and customer participation has a weaker impact on zhongyong thinking when leadership empowerment is low. This study contributes to the employee service innovation literature by confirming that customer participation and employees' zhongyong thinking play vital roles in the Chinese service context. This study also helps service managers understand that empowering their subordinates can facilitate employees' service innovation.     

Retaining a Mexican Labor Force

This paper sets forth the findings of a research study undertaken in Chihuahua, Mexico. The length of stay of 1 866 employees in six maquiladora plants is analyzed across a maximum of 24 months. By drawing on discrete time hazard modeling, the research analyzes the extent to which work and nonwork factors contributed to employee length of stay in the late 1980s. It examines, in particular, the influence of position, cohort grouping, plant type, and demographic characteristics on employee duration in the participating plants.The findings show that line operators at the peak of high employment turnover in the maquiladora industry remained employed for an average of 10 months. The study highlights important differences, for the results were not uniform across all maquiladora employees. There were variations in length of stay among employees of different types of plants, in different positions in the same company, different months of entry, and different migrant status.Important ethical issues can also be raised from the study, notably the question of structural turnover being intentionally designed as a consequence of the hiring policies of the multinational corporations in the area.     

The Power of One to Make a Difference: How Informal and Formal CEO Power Affect Environmental Sustainability

This study empirically investigated the impact of ethical leadership on employee burnout, deviant behavior and task performance through two psychological mechanisms: (1) developing higher levels of employee trust in leaders and (2) demonstrating lower levels of surface acting toward their leaders. Our theoretical model was tested using data collected from employees of a pharmaceutical retail chain company. Analyses of multisource time-lagged data from 45 team leaders and 247 employees showed that employees’ trust in leaders and surface acting significantly mediated the relationships between ethical leadership and employee burnout, deviant behavior and task performance. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings for understanding how ethical leaders influence employees’ attitudes and behavior.     

Interpersonal Stress Reactions and Service Quality Responses among Hospitality Industry Employees

Work stress is now recognised as a major issue in the human resource management arena, for both staff and management. Within the hospitality industry context, service quality issues are beginning to assume major importance in the success of many operations. This study has sought to understand interpersonal conflict work stress responses associated with hospitality industry employee-management conflict, together with approaches to service quality issues among a sample of Australian hospitality industry domain was the sole predictor of the clearer and more autonomous work role stress response, and the management service quality domain was the predictor of the better management communication stress response. Better communication by management presented as the dominant stress response, and was found to be particularly associated with femalae hospitality industry employees. Implications of these findings for both hospitality industry employees and for hospitality industry management are explored.     

Employees’ Reactions to Peers’ Unfair Treatment by Supervisors: The Role of Ethical Leadership

Little is known about employee reactions in the form of un/ethical behavior to perceived acts of unfairness toward their peers perpetrated by the supervisor. Based on prior work suggesting that third parties also make fairness judgments and respond to the way employees are treated, this study first suggests that perceptions of interactional justice for peers (IJP) lead employees to two different responses to injustice at work: deviant workplace behaviors (DWBs) and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs). Second, based on prior literature pointing to supervisors as among the most important sources of moral guidance at work, a mediating role is proposed for ethical leadership. The article suggests that supervisors who inflict acts of injustice on staff will be perceived as unethical leaders, and that these perceptions would explain why employees react to IJP in the form of deviance (DWBs) and citizenship (OCBs). Data were collected from 204 hotel employees. Results of structural equation modeling demonstrate that DWBs and OCBs are substantive reactions to IJP, whereas ethical leadership significantly mediates reactions in the form of DWBs and OCBs. Behavioral ethics and managerial implications are discussed.     

How Leadership and Commitment Influence Bank Employees’ Adoption of their Bank’s Values

Retail banking is facing many challenges, not least the loss of its customers’ trust and loyalty. The economic crisis is forcing banks to examine their relationships with stakeholders and to offer greater reassurance that their brand promises will be delivered. More than ever, banks need to stand for something positive and valued by stakeholders. One way to achieve this is through paying more attention to brand values. Our article explores how values are adopted by employees within a bank. When employees ‘live’ their brand’s values, their behaviour during customer interactions reflects this, encouraging the strengthening of customer relationships. Specifically, we test the relationship between leadership style, employee commitment, and the adoption of values. Data was collected from a survey of 438 branch employees in a leading Irish retail bank. The study found that a structured and directive leadership style was effective at encouraging the adoption of the bank’s values. Moreover, when employees are committed to the organisation, this has a significant impact on their adoption of values. Thus, this study supports the literature which suggests that leadership and commitment are prerequisites for values adoption.     

Just the Right Amount of Ethics Inspires Creativity: A Cross-Level Investigation of Ethical Leadership,Intrinsic Motivation,and Employee Creativity

Based on ideology-infused psychological contract theory and cognitive evaluation theory, this study investigated the curvilinear relationship between ethical leadership and employee creativity. A curvilinear mediation model was proposed to explain the impact of ethical leadership on creativity, using employee intrinsic motivation as the mediator. Applying a two wave sampling design that consist 258 employees and their leaders, we found that employee creativity improved as ethical leadership increased from low to moderate levels. However, the employee creativity improvement was attenuated when ethical leadership increased from moderate to high levels. Furthermore, the study also revealed that employee intrinsic motivation partially mediated this curvilinear relationship. The theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.