Understanding the FLE-based organizational knowledge creation process in hospitality firms

Abstract

This study explores how front-line employees' (FLE) knowledge is stepwise transformed into a hotel's organizational knowledge. It combines insights from organizational knowledge creation theory with empirical evidence from three Chinese five-star hotels. Qualitative data were collected through semi-structured interviews and reading archives, and analyzed using thematic analysis. We develop a novel framework comprising three types of FLEs' knowledge activities–knowledge demonstration (KD), knowledge justification (KJ), and knowledge re-contextualization (KRC)–which can routinely trigger the hotel's bottom-up organizational knowledge creation process. We also explain how FLEs' KD/KJ/KRC activities facilitate the hotel's organizational knowledge creation practices by examining changes in the new knowledge's scope of application and the participant structure of knowledge-related interactions induced by these activities. This study contributes to knowledge management research in hospitality by proposing a new perspective that encompasses FLEs' knowledge activities and the concomitant knowledge transformation that occurs in hotels.