Exploring the organisational culture construct for small and medium enterprises in the ecotourism of emerging economies

Abstract

Considerable research is being conducted to examine the culture of the resort operators to ensure that they are adhering to good practices for protecting the environment. Undoubtedly, it is essential for the effective and effi cient operation of the tourism industry that the ecotourism businesses engage in the wise usage and properly run management of the natural environment. However, little attention has been given to the development and the validation of the instruments used to conceptualise organisational cultures in the context of ecotourism. The present study fi lls this gap by validating the scale items and examining the dimensionality, reliability and factor structures used to measure organisational cultures of small and medium enterprise resort operators in the ecotourism areas of emerging economies. Three factors have emerged for organisational values and four factors for organisational practices as a result of this study. The results show the unique features of the organisational culture model based on the specifi cations of ecotourism and the culture of Malaysian small and medium enterprises. The direction for future improvement strategies is presented at the end of the paper.