That's Not Fair!

ABSTRACT

Organizational commitment has been shown to be significantly negatively related to employee turnover. Given the high incidence of employee turnover in the hospitality industry, practitioners and academics alike should be focused on a more complete understanding of this phenomenon. The present study is an exploration into the identification of the relationships among organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and organizational justice. The study was conducted with employees of a major casino-hotel. Results indicated that organizational justice has an indirect positive impact on organizational commitment by working through job satisfaction. Practical implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Stay away from fickle supervisor! Supervisors’ behavioral fluctuation diminishing the effect of job embeddedness on employees’ service behavior

This study examined how hotel employees’ job embeddedness influences their in-role and extra-role service behaviors, and under what boundary conditions this influence can be magnified based on the psychological ownership and information-processing theories. Using longitudinal data from a matched sample of 163 hotel employees and their supervisors in China, the moderated mediation analysis revealed that affective commitment mediated the effect of job embeddedness on in-role and extra-role service behaviors, while a supervisr’s behavioral fluctuations moderated the mediation of affective commitment between job embeddedness and in-role and extra-role service behaviors; this mediation effect was stronger for employees with a supervisor exhibiting stable behaviors. These findings provide theoretical and managerial implications for tourism researchers and practitioners.     

The effects of ethical leadership on manager job satisfaction,commitment, behavioral outcomes,and firm performance

This study investigates the effects of ethical leadership on a hotel middle manager's job satisfaction and affective commitment, which in turn influence that manager's behavioral outcomes (e.g., extra effort and turnover intention) that can also impact the hotel's performance. Mail surveys were distributed to 30 U.S. hotels, representing more than 8 different national and international brands, and 324 middle managers participated in the survey. This study demonstrates that executives’ ethical leadership is positively related to their middle managers’ job satisfaction and their affective organizational commitment. Middle managers’ job satisfaction is positively related to organizational commitment, but job satisfaction does not necessarily lead to their willingness to exert extra effort. The positive linkage between middle managers’ extra effort and the hotel's competitive performance is also confirmed.     

Predictors of Service Effort

ABSTRACT

Improving service quality will continue to be a vital goal for hospitality and tourism organizations in the new millennium. As service worker performance directly impacts customer's evaluation of quality, further investigation of methods of improving performance are necessary. Service effort is a construct that has received little attention in the literature, but may be a significant factor in linking employee attitudes and customer perceptions of service quality. This exploratory study tested three popular managerial constructs to determine the extent to which they predict service effort. Using data from 331 service workers from two cruise line operations organizations, motivation, organizational commitment and job satisfaction were regressed against service effort. Results indicate that organizational commitment was the greatest predictor of service effort, followed by motivation. One dimension of job satisfaction (satisfaction with company), failed to yield a significant relationship with service effort, while satisfaction with supervisor yielded a slightly negative coefficient. Implications for hospitality and tourism managers and organizations are discussed.     

Organizational support versus supervisor support: The impact on hospitality managers’ psychological contract and work engagement

Considering perceived organizational support (POS) and perceived supervisor support (PSS) at the same time and understanding which one is more critical receives little attention. A scenario-based experimental design was conducted to examine the influences of high PSS & low POS and low PSS & high POS on hospitality employees’ psychological contract (PC) and work engagement. The results show that managers experience both psychological contract breach (PCB) and lower work engagement under these two imperfect situations. Furthermore, managers have relatively higher PCB and lower work engagement under the situation of receiving lower PSS than receiving lower POS. Finally, it was found that PCB has a more negative influence on managers’ work engagement when receiving lower PSS. Theoretical and practical implications based on the results are discussed.     

Leader Apology in the Employee–Organization Relationship: The Roles of Subordinate Power Distance Belief and Leader Competence

According to the organizational support theory, leaders' words and deeds are not only the products of their own will but also a reflection of organizations' standpoints. We thus focus on leader apology in the case of organizational transgressions and predict that leaders' apologetic acts are likely to influence employees' organization-oriented attitudes and behaviors. Specifically, leader apology is hypothesized to positively influence employees' perception of organizational support, which in turn, is positively associated with employees' helping and risk taking behavior. Furthermore, drawing upon the organizational support theory that delineates the discretion and value perceived in the employee-organization relationship, we further propose that employees' perceived leader competence and power distance belief serve as two contingencies that influence the relationship between leader apology and employees' perceived organizational support. In particular, this relationship is stronger when employees perceive higher leader competence or hold stronger power distance beliefs. Two multi-wave data collected from hospitality employees support these hypotheses. The findings provide a new perspective to comprehending leader apology within the employee-organization relationship wherein leaders are considered as organizational agents. This research extends the existing literature on leader apology that largely focuses on leader apology following leaders’ transgressions and leader-oriented outcomes.     

Burnout and Service Employees' Willingness to Deliver Quality Service

ABSTRACT

Employees are vital for enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty in service organizations because their proactive involvement is an essential part of delivering the services offered. With the recent rapid growth of tourism in the Macau SAR, service employee workloads are clearly increasing, and consequently one would expect that the incidence of job burnout is rising. This study uses the well-known Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) to investigate the relationship between service employees' burnout and their willingness to deliver quality services. Self-administered questionnaires from 110 operational staff in three hotels in Macau have been analyzed. The results indicate that job burnout reduces staff's willingness to deliver quality services and that this effect is moderated by individual staff's level of affective organizational commitment, and their perceptions of the extent of organizational and supervisor support provided by the organization. Based on these results, practical managerial strategies to improve service performance are identified.     

The effects of service climate and internal service quality on frontline hotel employees’ service-oriented behaviors

When employees in a service profit chain receive quality internal services, they provide quality services to external customers, but extant research does not address what connects internal and external services. This study espouses service climate as an integral part of the service profit chain by exploring its role in linking internal service management and external service performance, and the boundary conditions in which it operates. Data collected from 538 employees of 81 department managers in 24 Chinese hotels were examined using hierarchical linear modeling. Results suggest that managers’ commitment to service quality affects service climate through empowering leadership, service climate links empowering leadership and employee service-oriented behaviors, and external departments’ internal service quality strengthens the positive effect of service climate on service-oriented behaviors. This study advances the literature by integrating service climate and internal service quality into the service profit chain, helping hospitality managers understand how to foster service-oriented behaviors.     

How to fuel employees’ prosocial behavior in the hotel service encounter

With mounting customer expectation for excellent service, frontline service employees’ prosocial service behavior is of great importance since it helps enhance customers’ perceived service quality, which is critical for maintaining a hotel’s competitive advantage relative to its comp set. Regardless of the importance of prosocial service behavior, role clarity, perceived organizational support, and psychological empowerment in encouraging employees’ prosocial service behavior has not received much attention. This study examines the effects of the above three predictors on the prosocial service behavior of customer-contact employees. The authors developed a conceptual model of prosocial service behavior and empirically tested it using structural equation modeling. The findings suggest that role clarity and psychological empowerment have a direct influence on prosocial service behavior. Psychological empowerment partially mediates the relationship between role clarity and prosocial service behavior and fully mediates the relationship between perceived organizational support and prosocial service behavior.     

The influence of exploitative leadership on hospitality employees’ green innovative behavior: A moderated mediation model

Growing awareness of environmental sustainability in the hospitality sector has made employee green innovative behavior an important element of their establishment’s performance. Drawing from ego depletion theory, this paper aims to study how and when exploitative leadership influences hospitality employees’ green innovative behavior. We collected data from 467 full-time hospitality employees and their direct leaders in 96 teams, and examined a cross-level moderated mediation model employing multilevel path analysis. The results showed that exploitative leadership in the hospitality sector negatively associates with hospitality employees’ green innovative behavior, mediated by their emotional exhaustion. The results further showed that perceived organizational support moderates the influence of exploitative leadership on emotional exhaustion and subsequent green innovative behavior. Implications for theory and practice in the hospitality sector are discussed.     

Employees intent to leave: A comparison of determinants of intent to leave versus intent to stay

The purpose of the study is to examine whether the predictors that decrease employee intention to leave will also increase employees’ intention to stay. Therefore, the objective of the study is twofold: (1) to examine the influence of perceived organizational support, perceived supervisors’ support, and organizational commitment regarding intent to leave and (2) to investigate the influence of the same variables on intent to stay. A total of 416 hospitality employees in the U.S. participated. The results suggest that perceived organizational support and organizational commitment decreased intent to leave while only perceived organizational support had a positive impact on intention to stay. Implications detail ways that hospitality organizations can focus on increasing their employees’ commitment through perceived organizational support as a critical component of turnover culture.     

Crafting and testing a central precept in service-dominant logic: Hotel employees’ brand-citizenship behavior and customers’ brand trust

Employees play an important role in hotel service branding. Their enactments of positive brand-supportive behaviors help nurture positive customer–brand relationships. This study explores the relationship between employee perceived organizational support, brand citizenship behavior, and customers’ perceptions of brand trust. Two questionnaire surveys were carried out in high-contact hotel service firms collecting employee and customer data by matched-questionnaires. The results of the study indicate that brand-citizenship behavior consists of three components: willingness-to-help, brand enthusiasm, and propensity for further development. Propensity for further development has a significant direct positive effect on the other two components, and the other two components both have significant direct positive effects on customer's brand trust. Employee-perceived higher levels of organizational support increase performance of brand citizenship behavior. The study includes empirical findings, contributions to theory, limitations, and direction for future research.