HR Practices,Customer-Focused Outcomes,and OCBO: The POS-Engagement Mediation Chain

Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal - The mechanisms through which HR practices impact employee-level and organizational-level outcomes continue to intrigue HR academicians and...     

Promoting Vegetarianism through Moralization and Knowledge Calibration

This research extends the theories of moralization and knowledge calibration to vegetarianism. In two studies involving interviews with vegetarians, and meat-eaters; we investigated consumer attitudes toward vegetarianism. Our text analysis results revealed that emotionally calibrated consumers are ‘moral vegetarians’ who find meat repulsive, and make ethical food choices. In contrast, cognitively calibrated consumers are ‘health vegetarians’ who scan the nutrition information, avoid meat due to health restrictions, and embrace vegetarianism for healthy life. Finally, we provided insights into how faux meat companies can promote their products and transform consumer behavior toward vegetarianism by advertising ethical and environmentally friendly foods, and healthy and anti-obesity foods to moral and health vegetarians, respectively.     

Contingent Employment Relationships Between Tour Guides and Tour Operators in Ecuador: Human Resource Management Practices and Attitudinal Outcomes

This study examines a unique contingent employment relationship—that between tour guides and tour operators in Ecuador. Linkages among tour operators’ HR practices, interactions between operations managers and tour guides, and the tour guides’ attitudes toward both the tour operator and the ultimate tourist-client are investigated. Tour guides are found to exhibit dual commitments to both operators and tourist-clients. Affective commitment to the tour operators was found to partially mediate the relationship between organizational entry HR practices, compensation related HR practices, operations manager interactions, and tour guides’ commitment to the tourist-client, suggesting that tour guides’ perceptions about the tour operator may affect their ultimate customer service delivery. Satisfaction with tips was more directly related to commitment to the tourist-client, as was the interaction of pay administration satisfaction and tip satisfaction, supporting the notion that contingent pay beyond base pay provided by the tour operator and its delivery may impact tour guides’ motivation to provide quality service to the end client. Practical implications for the tour operators, and tourism ministries are offered.     

Discretionary and transactional human resource practices and employee outcomes: The role of perceived organizational support

Utilizing perceived organizational support (POS) as the mechanism linking HR practices to employee behaviors in the workplace, we examine a broad set of HR practices in order to understand the relative importance of each HR practice (i.e., those that explain incremental variance over other practices) in influencing employee behaviors. We differentiate between discretionary and transactional HR practices to test the discretionary investment requisite of POS theory. The results show that of the eight discretionary practices, only participation and decision making directly influenced the extra‐role behaviors that employees exhibit, and only training and development directly impacted the customer‐oriented behaviors. Furthermore, one of the transactional HR practices was found to have a direct effect on organizational citizenship behavior. Our findings indicate that the performance management process, promotional opportunities, participation, and involvement in decision making affect how employees behave toward the customer and the extra‐role behaviors they exhibit. Furthermore, this occurs through the view employees develop of the organization as a place to work. That is, these four HR practices demonstrate to employees that they are valued, and, in turn, this feeling of being appreciated impacts their commitment to delivering high‐quality service to the customer and going beyond their job responsibilities. Implications for research and practice are discussed. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.