Editorial: research notes

Abstract

Although wilderness trips are typically co‐led, there is a deficit of research literature exploring the dynamics of co‐leadership in the field. This study was conducted to determine the skills and traits outdoor adventure trip leaders perceived to be important for their co‐leaders to possess on an extended outdoor trip. Utilizing Q‐methodology, a 36‐item instrument developed from the leadership literature was administered to 17 outdoor leaders. Three factors representing three distinct leadership beliefs were determined and are characterized by the titles: People‐Empowering Leaders, Wilderness‐Power Leaders, and Universal Leaders. Five trends in leader/co‐leader preferences are discussed. This study offers implications to practice in outdoor recreation for organizations and outdoor trip leaders.     

Women managers in tourism: Associations for building a sustainable world

Women are strongly represented in the tourism workforce, albeit mainly in low-level, precarious positions. In management or on board of directors, on the other hand, women are seriously underrepresented. Interviews with female leaders from management associations in Catalonia (Spain) allowed us to identify the associations' goals and roles, the barriers women have encountered in their pursuit of high-level corporate positions, and the challenges to female leadership that lie ahead. Female associations support the UN's Sustainable Development Goal 5, creating awareness of gender barriers, enhancing social conscience on gender equality in decision-making bodies, and expanding professional networks and access to resources. Our findings show that these associations empower women by means of different strategies acting as active agents of change that help transform both their members and society.     

Moderating effects of gender and organizational level between role stress and job satisfaction among hotel employees

This study investigates the moderating roles of gender and organization level in the relationship between role stress and job satisfaction for hotel employees. A survey instrument that included measures of job satisfaction, role stress (conflict and ambiguity) and demographic information was used to collect information from hotel employees in Republic of Korea. Data from 320 respondents, representing a 64% of response rate, were analyzed. Findings show that the effect of role stress on job satisfaction is significantly stronger for female employees and supervisory employees than male employees and non-supervisory employees. Research implications and suggestions for future research are provided.     

A contextual study of female-leader role stereotypes in the hotel sector

Guided by the role congruity theory (RCT), this paper examines the mismatch in female-leader role stereotypes and how this mismatch may lead to prejudicial evaluations against female leaders. It also tests how gender equality practices and leadership development programmes (LDPs) may mitigate prejudicial evaluations against female leaders. Following a quantitative approach, this study uses a paired sample t-test and linear approach (i.e. multiple regression) to model the relationships and test the hypotheses formulated. Drawing on a survey of 392 employees working in 4- and 5-star hotels in Jordan, the study shows that employees stereotype successful leaders to be more masculine than feminine while they attribute both feminine and masculine stereotypes to women. There is, thus, an element of congruity in female-leader role stereotypes which reduces prejudicial evaluations against female leaders. Moreover, the results indicate that gender equality practices and LDPs significantly enhance the emergence and effectiveness of women leaders. The importance of this study derives from extending the RCT through a contextual investigation in the hotel sector in Jordan. This was done by considering two additional constructs, i.e. gender equality practices and LDPs that mitigate prejudice against female leaders.     

Using a Model of Emotional Intelligence Domains to Indicate Transformational Leaders in the Hospitality Industry

ABSTRACT

In the workplace, teamwork, collaboration, and excellent interpersonal communication are traits of successful leaders. Transformational leaders, utilizing their emotional intelligence (EI) abilities, are successful in employing these effective leadership skills. Using the dimensions of transformational leadership and the domains of EI, a model was developed indicating the direct relationship between the two constructs. Additionally, a pilot study was conducted to demonstrate that students in hospitality undergraduate programs do not possess the level of EI needed to be successful transformational leaders. These findings demonstrated the need to incorporate EI instruction into orientation and training programs.     

Brand personality of Airbnb: application of user involvement and gender differences

ABSTRACT

In this study we utilized the concept of brand personality to determine how travelers perceived Airbnb as a lodging brand and investigated the effect of involvement level (low versus high) on view of brand personality. As a viable segmentation variable, this study also utilized the interaction effect to examine how gender affects consumers’ involvement level. Significant differences were observed between travelers with high and low involvement in terms of the dimensions of sincerity, excitement, competence, and ruggedness. In addition, we found the interaction effect to be significant, indicating that level of involvement is higher in female travelers than in male travelers. This research will provide meaningful marketing insights for target marketing and positioning based on consumer involvement and gender within the context of Airbnb.     

Exploring the linkages between managerial leadership,communication and teamwork in successful event delivery

Recent growth of events has triggered research into the determinants of successful event delivery. Communication is one of the determinants, and the importance of managerial leadership in enabling communication across an event's team is recognised. Empirical research on the attributes of event managers that make them good leaders from the perspective of an event's team is however limited. Through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with employees of an established events company in the UK, this study explores the role of managerial leadership in the success of an event, referring in particular to the enablers and inhibitors of effective communication. The study finds that leadership capacity of managers correlates with their personal and inter-personal competencies. On a personal level, poor motivational and interaction skills reduce the event's team performance. On an inter-personal level, insufficient recognition of the efforts applied by individual team members as well as the entire team serves as an inhibitor.     

‘Thank the ladies for the plates’: The incorporation of women into sport

The extent to which women service the leisure of others can be well illustrated by an analysis of sport. It is argued that gender relations in sport are mediated by male interests and serve to incorporate women for the institution's maintenance and reproduction. Through the ideology of motherhood and wifehood, the domestic labour done by women provides space for others to participate in sport and contributes directly to their sporting effectiveness. This is particularly so concerning women's immediate family members. Some parallels are made to Finch's (1983) work on women's incorporation into men's jobs. Outside the home environment, women's contribution to sport is subscribed not only by their domestic roles, but also by the definition of women as sexual and the vicariousness through which women's lives are frequently lived. The argument presented here is predominantly illustrated by a discussion of gender relations in New Zealand and Australia.     

If it weren‘t for my hobby,I'd have a life: dog sports,serious leisure,and boundary negotiations

In the social sciences, work, family and religion - but not leisure - are commonly thought to shape the meanings people give their lives. But increasingly leisure research reports that under modernism, leisure practice and cultural consumption are at least as essential. What happens when leisure and ‘real world’ institutions pose different, even conflicting expectations? We focus on ‘serious leisure’ as elaborated through Tomlinson's ‘culture of commitment’. Our case study is people who participate in serious leisure involving dogs. The data comes from 61 interviews plus field notes based on our own involvement in dog sports. We ask how as an alternative world often perceived by self and others as marginal, this passionate avocation interfaces with the ‘real world’ of work, family, religion, and other social institutions. We find that dog sports indeed represent a ‘culture of commitment’. For hobbyists, involvement shapes such life realms as how time is used, how money is spent, how kin are defined, and how profit is viewed. Sometimes it generates strong behavioural expectations for participants, expectations that clash with those of the ‘real world’. Examples include gender identity and religious and work obligations. When these clashes occur, respondents neither simply succumb to nor resist either set of demands. Rather, they negotiate between the two, reproducing and reshaping each simultaneously. Meanwhile, they also deal with the intrinsic tensions that a serious leisure pursuit brings.     

Exploring tour guiding styles: The perspective of tour leader roles

Although previous studies have investigated the tour leadership styles of tour leaders, no scale is available for evaluation. The purpose of this study was to develop a reliable and valid measurement for assessing tour guiding styles from the perspective of tour leaders' roles. Following in-depth interviews, content analysis, and a Q-sort method, we generated the initial items. Twelve tour guiding styles were extracted from an exploratory factor analysis on 243 tour leaders. A confirmatory factor analysis on 474 tour members was then performed to identify the validity of the 43-item tour guiding styles scale. This study extends current knowledge of the tour guiding styles of tour leaders and provides a foundation for building future theoretical concepts of related constructs. The scale provides a useful tool for tour leaders to measure their guiding styles. Furthermore, the results can serve as a reference for travel agencies in arranging tour leaders.     

Casino management: Exploring gender-based differences in perceptions of managerial work

This study provides an exploratory analysis of gender differences in perceptions of male and female managers during strategy implementation within the Nevada casino industry. Specifically, the study explores whether male and female managers differ with respect to the relative emphasis placed on a variety of factors related to successful strategy implementation. Considering women's preference for transformational leadership and an interactive management approach based on personal power, it was expected that women would emphasize different factors than men.     

Toward an integrated model of tourist expectation formation and gender difference

This study aims to build and test a theoretical model of tourist expectation formation and seeks to explore the gender differences regarding how tourists form their expectations toward a travel destination. Survey data were obtained from 774 outbound Chinese tourists to Macao, and structural equation modelling was used to test the model and proposed hypotheses. The results reveal that travel motivation, advertising, and word-of-mouth (WOM) recommendations influence travelers' cognitive image and cognitive image interacts with affective image to form individuals' expectations toward travel destinations. Notably, the impacts of travel motivation and advertising on cognitive image, and of cognitive image on tourist expectations were significantly stronger for males than females, while the effects of WOM on cognitive image and of affective image on tourist expectations were stronger for females than males. Both theoretical and practical implications of these important findings are discussed.     

Tourism’s lost leaders: Analysing gender and performance

Higher education is increasingly engaged with diversity initiatives, especially those focused on women in academic leadership, whilst there is an evolving literature across the humanities and the social, management and natural sciences, critiquing academia’s gendered hierarchies. In contrast, senior academics in the field of tourism management have largely eluded similar sustained analysis. This paper builds on recent gender-aware studies of tourism’s leading academics with three aims. Firstly, to widen evidence of gendering in tourism’s academic leadership by scrutinizing and contextualizing performance indicators, which make and mark its leaders and shape its knowledge canon. Secondly, since critique alone cannot lead to transformation, the paper seeks to ‘undo’ gender in tourism’s academy. Thirdly the paper presents interventions to accelerate academic gender equity.     

A triple whammy effect of employees' gender,job type,and service outcomes on consumer behavior

The extant literature reports inconsistent results regarding the effect of employee gender on customers' attitudes and behaviors. Furthermore, the previous research on congruency bias has mainly focused on female-dominant jobs. To address these issues, this study examined how customers' gender stereotypes affect their service evaluations and revisit intentions. Grounded in role congruity theory, congruency bias, and justification-suppression models, the results showed that employee gender and gender congruency with the norm for the job have differential impacts on customer evaluations. Furthermore, this study found asymmetric impacts of congruency bias on customer experiences. For example, customers showed lower satisfaction and revisit intention when female employees failed in a male-dominant job than when their male counterparts did. However, they showed equal levels of satisfaction and revisit intention when male and female employees failed in a female-dominant job. The results provide important insights into how to reduce customers' gender bias toward different gender-dominated jobs.     

Leadership dyads in the cruise industry: the impact of cultural congruency

Multiculturalism continues to permeate the management literature as an imperative issue in today's workplace. The cruise industry is highly diverse, with leaders often interacting with subordinates whose national origin is different from their own. Past research suggests that differences in national culture may significantly impact the process of leadership evaluation and subsequently how subordinates respond to their leaders. The purpose of this investigation was to determine if such a process takes place in the cruise industry. Using a diverse sample of cruise line managers (n=367), a comparison of congruent and incongruent leaders/subordinate dyads was conducted. Multivariate analysis of variance was used to determine how cultural congruence impacted perceived leadership style (consideration and initiating structure), trust, satisfaction and commitment to the leader. The results indicate that subordinates in congruent dyads evaluated their leaders significantly higher on consideration behaviors, and reported higher levels of trust and satisfaction with their leader, than those in the incongruent group. These findings suggest that national culture systematically impacts how subordinates within the studied sample evaluate, and subsequently feel about their leaders. The results are discussed and recommendations are made for leaders within the cruise environment.     

“(S)he’s so hearty”: Gender cues,stereotypes, and expectations of warmth in peer-to-peer accommodation services

The hospitality industry is witnessing continuous growth in the number of female travellers and female hosts available to accommodate travellers in their properties using peer-to-peer (P2P) service platforms. Cues that convey information about the host’s gender are therefore acquiring notable relevance. Tourism research, however, has not yet devoted attention to this phenomenon. To fill this gap, the present paper investigates whether and how gender cues conveyed on P2P accommodation platforms affect users’ expectations and booking intentions. Across three experimental studies, the paper demonstrates that such cues affect users’ expectations in a P2P accommodation context, but not in a hotel accommodation context. In particular, regardless of the hosts’ race, female cues, compared to male cues, appear more able to create expectations of warmth and this effect is evident for users who have a strong gender stereotyping tendency. Importantly, enhanced expectations of warmth exert a positive influence on users’ reservation intentions.     

Gendered construction of Macau casino: a social semiotic analysis of tourism brochures

This paper analyses the represented images of men and women in casino ads of Macau, examines the impact of gender power in the casino industry and discusses the social–cultural construction of masculinity and femininity in a culturally diverse context. A social semiotic analysis of a range of casino brochures and leaflets is presented. The analysis reveals that stereotypical portrayals of gender roles persist in Macau’s casino ads, which privilege the male tourist gaze and reproduce the gender power relations within the hetero-patriarchal system. Despite the trend of women’s involvement in public gambling, casino gambling continues to be upheld as a masculine activity in Macau. The study argues that the casino space is constructed through two aspects – the simultaneous masculinisation of gambling and feminisation of interactive service work, which reflect, respectively, the traditional expectations of the gambling culture and the demands of the modern service-intensive casino business.     

Event managers' leadership styles and attitudes towards resourcing volunteer training: Exploring variation and practice implications

Events rely extensively upon short-term labour and volunteers, although the training volunteers receive can influence service quality outcomes. Decisions governing the scope of training offered to volunteers are managerial decisions for those occupying leadership roles within event organisations, and event managers' leadership styles may influence decision-making around volunteer training. Utilising mixed methods, 19 Australian event managers were categorised according to an established leadership framework then interviewed to explore their attitudes towards training for event volunteers. Variance was evident in the event managers' attitudes towards volunteer training between transactional and transformational leaders. However, broad alignment was observed between the event managers' attitudes towards volunteer training and their innate leadership styles. Despite widespread endorsement of resourcing training for event volunteers, the event managers described being thwarted by resource limitations which ultimately shaped decision making around resourcing volunteer training. Implications for theory and practice are discussed alongside opportunities for future tourism and events research.     

Structural effects in national parkgoing

Abstract

Studies of outdoor recreation commonly mobilize “individual‐level” variables, such as personal characteristics (e.g., age, sex, socioeconomic status), personality, psychological needs, life experiences, and attitudes in testing for explanations of different participation styles. Seldom is attention directed to the explanatory importance for these studies of “system‐level” or contextual variables, such as structural and cultural patterns. Structural‐effects analysis is used in this exploratory study to test the importance of a system‐level variable (social‐class structure) for the relationship between two individual‐level variables, socioeconomic status and national parkgoing. Several status variables were found to be positively associated with the frequency of the respondents’ national parkgoing. But more importantly, these relationships were materially affected by the class structures of the respondents’ home communities. Working‐class persons in a predominately middle‐class population displayed significantly higher rates of parkgoing than their class counterparts in a predominately working‐class population. Conversely, the parkgoing rates of middle‐class persons were lowered by their residence in a predominately working‐class population. These findings suggest the utility of integrating system‐level (contextual) variables and individual‐level variables in explanatory models of recreational participation.     

Paradoxical leadership and hospitality employees’ service performance: The role of leader identification and need for cognitive closure

Based on the social identity theory, this study examined the relationship between paradoxical leadership and employees’ service performance in the hospitality industry. Data were collected from a multisource, time-lagged survey of 72 leaders and 556 employees in eight full-service hotels in China. Using hierarchical linear modeling, paradoxical leadership was found to be positively related to employees’ leader identification, which consequently enhanced their service performance. Furthermore, the level of an employee’s need for cognitive closure moderated the relationship between paradoxical leadership and leader identification such that paradoxical leadership exerted a stronger positive influence on leader identification for those employees with a lower need for cognitive closure. These findings have implications for both paradoxical leadership and hospitality management practices.