Role Ambiguity: a Problem or a Challenge Facing Contemporary Hospitality Industry. The Critical Role of Employees’ Creativity

Abstract

Background . Delivering exceptional service experience and creating customer satisfaction and loyalty seems to be crucial for survival of a hotel organization and success in today’s highly competitive market. Gaining competitive advantage requires extreme responsiveness and sensitivity from hotel employees towards guests and treating them in a very individual manner. This may make rigid service scripts prevent maintaining this flexibility, which often leads to serious problems connected with role ambiguity experienced by employees. Research aims . This study attempts to seek an answer to the question: how to minimize the role ambiguity experienced by hotel staff. Therefore, the relationship between hotel employees’ creativity and role ambiguity is analyzed. Additionally, selected conditions that promote employee’s creative performance are also investigated. Methodology . In order to achieve the study aim, the literature review, including empirical findings of previous studies, and empirical research based on a survey method were employed. The study was conducted among all hotel employees having direct face-to-face and voice-to-voice interactions with hotel guests, working in two hotels located in the Pomeranian Voivodeship, precisely in Tricity, as the tourist destination of Northern Poland. Key findings . The results showed a negative and significant correlation between employee creativity and role ambiguity. It may confirm that in the face of dynamically changing customer needs and preferences, employees’ creativity when serving customers may lead to reducing employees’ uncertainty how to perform effectively to provide outstanding service. The findings also revealed that both employees’ intellect/imagination (as a personality variable) and skill variety (as a job characteristic) should be taken into account to increase creativity in the workplace, as both of them positively related to hotel employees’ creativity in this study. Despite the fact that the study findings should not be generalized, the results provide some important information for substantive discussion and a context for a wider range of further studies. Discussion and managerial implications were also provided and directions for future research were formulated.