Hospitality diversity management and job satisfaction: The mediating role of organizational commitment across individual differences

The present study examines the effects of diversity management on hospitality employees’ organizational commitment and their job satisfaction taking into account individual differences. A representative sample of hotel workers were surveyed in the Canary Island, one of the main tourist destinations in the world, which receives over fifteen million tourists a year. Using moderated mediation analyses, the study confirms our hypothesis that employees’ perceptions of diversity management have a positive and significant direct effect on job satisfaction. In addition, an indirect effect through employees’ organizational commitment was found. Results support the moderating role of age, but not of ethnic origin or gender on the proposed mediation. From a managerial perspective, hoteliers should be encouraged to consider diversity management when they plan their human resource policies due to its positive effects on employees’ job satisfaction and organizational commitment.     

Hospitality studies and hospitality management: A symbiotic relationship

The key contribution of this paper is to critically analyse advances made since the introduction of hospitality as a higher education subject, to capture contemporary thinking, and to support the recognition of the intellectual benefits for hospitality management theory and practices of a curriculum informed from a social science-based studies perspective. The benefits of this inter-relationship are demonstrated through the inclusion of an illustration informed by historical means of enquiry, which applies hermeneutical analysis and interpretation of St. Benedict's Rule (c. 530 A.D.). This serves to tangibly demonstrate the academic rigour, value, and educational gains achievable through a symbiotic relationship between hospitality studies and hospitality management.     

The link between environmental uncertainty,organizational agility,and organizational creativity in the hotel industry

Informed by the confusion theory, this study tests the three main aspects of environmental uncertainty on organizational creativity and extends the moderating model of organizational agility in uncertain environments. The data were collected from 174 managers of five-star hotels. Construct validity and the hypotheses were tested using AMOS 26.0. The findings show that organizational agility moderates the negative impacts of competitive and technological uncertainty on organizational creativity. The results suggest that in highly dynamic and complex environments, organizations must reduce bureaucracy to manage the challenges of uncertainty. Informed by the confusion and contingency theories, this study offers new insights into the relationship between environmental uncertainty, organizational creativity, and organizational agility in the hospitality industry.     

Contingent work in the hospitality industry: A mediating model of organizational attitudes

It is widely accepted that work status has an impact on emotional attachment to the organization, because of the different ways in which the two categories of workers, contingent and regular, are treated in the same organization. This study aims to investigate the effect of work status on affective commitment and how this relationship is influenced by identification processes.     

A deeper look at national culture and leadership in the hospitality industry

Increased internationalization and demographic shifts have made multicultural management a prime concern for hospitality leaders. Past research suggests that cultural similarity between managers and subordinates impacts employees’ appraisal of their leaders and work-related attitudes. Extending this line of research, the purpose of this paper is to examine more closely how employees evaluate leaders with varying national cultures and identify any subsequent employee responses. First, the results of an open-ended questionnaire on cultural influences, perceived leadership and work-related outcomes administered to 112 hospitality managers and staff members in a highly multicultural environment are discussed. Next, perspectives drawn from in-depth interviews with 12 hospitality stakeholders help to synthesize the findings. The results suggest that this is a highly complex issue, which can have a significant impact on employee reactions their leaders and the service received by guests. Implications for hospitality leaders are discussed.     

Understanding food truck customers: Selection attributes and customer segmentation

Given the steadily increasing popularity of food trucks among consumers, this study investigated customer selection attributes and dining intention toward food trucks and compared the importance of the selection attributes by customer segments based on respondents’ food-related lifestyle. The results of an online survey from 421 food truck customers indicated that out of the six food truck selection attributes identified (i.e., marketing/setting, food quality/value, service quality, dietary considerations, reputation, and experience), food quality/value ranked the highest among general food truck customers who were classified into four groups: health-conscious, price-oriented, taste-oriented, and convenience-oriented. Among them, two groups—health-conscious and taste-oriented—had a higher dining intention at a food truck than other types of customers, and the importance of all six attributes differed significantly across customer segments. The findings of this study provide meaningful theoretical and practical implications.     

Hospitality codes and Social Exchange Theory: The Pashtunwali and tourism in Afghanistan

The Afghan people are shrouded in rumour, myth and superstition. Drawing upon insights from military personnel, intelligence operatives, journalists and others, this study uses Social Exchange Theory (SET) to frame our understanding of their underpinning cultural code, the Pashtunwali. The study contributes both theoretically and empirically: The nature of the Pashtunwali highlights that SET cannot adequately frame some cultural exchange practices and a hybrid framework for negotiated and reciprocal exchange is presented. Furthermore, contextually, this is the first study that explores a code of hospitality through a social exchange lens to explore potential tourism development. A framework exists upon which commercial activity can be built without altering beliefs, social dynamics or day to day pursuits. For commercial development to be successful, it must yield similar or greater levels of income to those that currently exist, more importantly, traditions of autonomy and self-dependence will affect employment and training within an emergent tourism industry.     

Hospitality Culture and Climate: A Proposed Model for Retaining Employees and Creating Competitive Advantage

In order to gain competitive advantage, companies must determine the relationship between human resource practices and firm performance. This conceptual article proposes a model that highlights the importance of selecting people who “fit” within the organizational culture and climate of the firm. The authors propose combining established scales of hospitality culture and climate in order to assess a candidate's fit to the organization. Ideally, these people would be more hospitality service oriented and could foster the “spirit of hospitality” through the organization and thus, on to the customer. Hiring the right people will also lead to increased organizational commitment, consequently, reducing turnover levels. This in turn will lead to higher service levels, increased customer satisfaction, and loyalty.     

The antecedents of memorable tourism experiences: The development of a scale to measure the destination attributes associated with memorable experiences

Providing visitors with memorable tourism experiences (MTEs) is important for achieving success in the highly competitive tourism marketplace. To support destination managers, this paper developed a scale instrument that conceptualizes the attributes of destinations associated with MTEs. Following a rigorous scale development procedure, this study identified a 10-dimensional construct that affects MTEs. The data support this dimensional structure of the attributes of destinations affecting MTEs and the internal consistency and the validity (i.e., content, construct, convergent, and discriminant) of the scale. The theoretical and managerial implications of the study's results are discussed.     

Hospitality service employees’ coping styles: The role of emotional intelligence,two basic personality traits,and socio-demographic factors

This study examines the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI) and three coping strategies (task-, emotion-, and avoidance-oriented coping) using an adult, hospitality industry population specifically in hotel and restaurant work environments. The hierarchical regression indicates that EI is by far the most dominant predictor of task coping among all selected explanatory variables; EI does not have much influence on emotion coping after the entry of two basic personality traits (neuroticism and extraversion); and EI is significantly related to avoidance coping encompassing distraction and social diversion. In addition, this study reveals the role played by age and work experience in individual coping efforts and a high possibility of female workers as a task-oriented coper in hospitality work settings.     

Work environment and atmosphere: The role of organizational support in the creativity performance of tourism and hospitality organizations

In this study, we developed and tested a new model of how organizational support affects the organizational work environment and atmosphere that facilitates creativity. A field study of 320 employees showed that organizational support was positively related to the work environment for knowledge sharing, motivation, procedural justice, and promotion. Further, the work environment plays a mediating role between organizational support and employee creativity. These measures of an organization's environment of procedural justice are related to employees’ motivation and knowledge sharing, which predict employees’ promotion.     

Identity judgements,work engagement and organizational citizenship behavior: The mediating effects based on group engagement model

The group engagement model (Tyler & Blader, 2003) suggests that organizational identification is based on both the individual's evaluation of the status of their group as perceived by outgroups (i.e., pride) and his/her view about their status within the group (i.e., respect). However, prior research has not examined the factors which influence organizational identification, and subsequently lead employees to feel engaged and exhibit positive extra-role behaviors that benefit the organization. Using time-lagged data from both service employees and their supervisors, our findings demonstrate that both pride and respect are positively related to organizational identification, and organizational identification is positively related to work engagement and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). More importantly, organizational identification mediates the relationships between the antecedents (i.e., pride and respect) and consequences (work engagement and OCB). Overall, the study provides compelling support for the group engagement model in predicting key job attitudes and behaviors amongst service employees.     

The intellectual structure of research in hospitality management: A literature review using bibliometric methods of the journal International Journal of Hospitality Management

The purpose of this study is to analyze the existing literature on hospitality management from all the research papers published in The International Journal of Hospitality Management (IJHM) between 2008 and 2014. The authors apply bibliometric methods – in particular, author citation and co-citation analyses (ACA) – to identify the main research lines within this scientific field; in other words, its ‘intellectual structure’. Social network analysis (SNA) is also used to perform a visualization of this structure. The results of the analysis allow us to define the different research lines or fronts which shape the intellectual structure of research on hospitality management.     

Measuring hotel performance using the balanced scorecard: A theoretical construct development and its empirical validation

A key contribution to the performance measurement literature was the introduction of the balanced scorecard (BSC) in 1992. However, despite its appealing rationale in capturing different aspects of performance and its wide and increasing use in a range of industries, there has been no rigorous psychometric development and testing of performance scales from the BSC perspective in the hospitality industry. In order to contribute to fill this gap, this study adopted a two-stage design seeking to develop and test a scale of organizational performance using the BSC in the hotel sector. In Stage 1, the authors generated and refined the scale items, recognizing unique characteristics of the hotel sector. In Stage 2, the scale has been assessed in terms of dimensionality, validity, and reliability. The findings suggest that managers do make a meaningful distinction between five aspects of hotel performance. Unexpected results, contributions, limitations, directions for future research, and managerial implications are all discussed.     

Evaluating and Categorizing Cruise Lines by ship attributes: A Comparison Between Cruisers and Experts

Electronic Word-of-Mouth (eWOM) is an important information source used by consumers to make travel decisions. However, eWOM from travel experts and everyday travelers can be inconsistent, potentially leading to blurred product evaluations and market positioning. This paper examines this issue in the context of the cruise industry with the goal of identifying differences in the evaluation of cruise brands by cruise experts and consumers, as well as the product factors that influence these judgements. The research used a data-driven empirical approach and secondary data from a leading cruise review site consisting of scaled ratings across 9 ship attributes and 24 brands by more than 150,000 cruisers and 174 experts. Data analysis using the TOPSIS method and regression and multigroup models shows that experts and cruisers evaluate cruise brands differently and are influenced by different ship attributes when forming evaluations. For example, value-add attributes (e.g., service, enrichment activities, fitness/recreation) significantly influence overall evaluations for cruisers, while core attributes (e.g., cabin, dining, entertainment) significantly influence overall evaluations for experts. Discussion of the empirical results highlights these differences in cruiser vs. expert perceptions as revealed online, as well as the need to update traditional cruise industry categorization to optimize brand positioning and better align product-marketing strategies for effective target marketing.     

The contributions of economics to hospitality literature: A content analysis of hospitality and tourism journals

This paper aimed to develop a concrete understanding of economics topics and methodologies that have been applied to hospitality research and to suggest areas for further research. Content analysis of 292 full-length articles was performed. The results showed that the contributions of economics to hospitality literature were largely empirical and microeconomics-related. Most of the research topics focused on market analysis, which involves demand and supply modelling and price determinants, followed by performance analysis, involving efficiency and productivity studies. Limited contributions of macroeconomic topics to hospitality were determined, highlighting the lack of studies on the impact of government or public policies on the hospitality industry. Moreover, the application of game theory to market structures was found to be limited, creating a vacuum in terms of understanding the competitive and cooperative behaviours of hospitality firms. As a contribution to the literature, the study provides suggestions for future research.     

Coaching and employee organizational citizenship behaviours: The role of procedural justice climate

This study investigates how the level of procedural justice climate (PJC) in a group may reduce or increase the impact of coaching behaviour of department managers on the organizational citizenship behaviours (OCBs) of their subordinates in the hospitality sector. The sample consists of 40 department managers and 176 employees of 12 five star hotels operating in Northern Cyprus. A multilevel analysis using hierarchical linear modelling (HLM) was utilized due to the nested nature of employees in their corresponding departments. Effective coaching is especially more important in departments where procedural justice climate is low. When the PJC is low, the role of effective coaching becomes imperative for OCBs of employees. In line with the substitutes for leadership theory, the higher levels of PJC serve as a substitute for coaching.     

The future of travel writing: Interactivity,personal branding and power

Changes in technology and media in the twenty-first-century have had significant implications for the travel writing profession. In the social media era, where information about travel is readily accessible for many audiences online, both travel writers and publishers are altering the way that they function to succeed in this new environment. This phenomenological qualitative study, based on interviews with 47 travel writers, explores their experiences in the digital age. Findings resulted in three new conceptual models illustrating the different experiences of contemporary travel writers: (1) The Interaction Model, (2) The Personal Branding Model, and (3) The Power Model. The models reflect the fact that the online environment has facilitated interactivity with readers and personal branding, created a change in power dynamics, and given some writers a sense of communitas with their peers. These experiences have implications for the profession and the depth of travel writing and writers' travelling experiences.     

Disentangling organizational commitment in hospitality industry: The roles of empowerment,enrichment, satisfaction and gender

This Paper identifies how the motivational strategies of empowerment and enrichment affect on the organizational commitment of hotel staff, and how the job satisfaction mediates in these relationships. We applied a Structural Equations Modeling to a sample of 257 front line hotel employees from Madrid, of which 144 were men and 113 were women. Our results provide evidence about several contributions: first, employees empowerment significantly grows job enrichment and organizational commitment; second, job enrichment increase workers’ satisfaction and commitment; third, job satisfaction enhances organizational commitment; fourth, job enrichment plays a mediating role between empowerment and both satisfaction and organizational commitment; fifth, satisfaction mediates between enrichment and commitment; finally, gender moderates the relationship between enrichment and commitment.