Workstress response perceptions among potential employees: The influence of ethics and trust

Abstract

The ethical principles that potential tourism/hospitality employees bring to this industry have, only in the last decade or so, begun to receive research scrutiny. Fundamental ethical beliefs, it is suggested, are likely to have wideranging implications in regard to issues such as management style and workstress problem‐solving, particularly in the face of perceived indifference or injustice among prospective employers and supervisors. Ethical beliefs accompanying prospective employees are likely to be attended by expectations regarding the validity and efficacy of particular workstress problem‐solving strategies perceived to be displayed by tourism industry management. This study has examined four basic ethical principles that are at the core of optimal employee functioning: efficiency, reliability, Initiative and hardwork; the paper has also examined a range of perceived tourism industry management workstress response strategies among a sample of potential tourism industry employees, particularly as those perceptions may be mediated by basic workplace ethical beliefs. Major perceived workstress problem‐solving responses by tourism industry management were found to involve the enhancement of workplace trust, workplace communication, and global management change within the workplace. More highly rated ethical ideals involved showing initiative and responsibility, whereas lower rated ideals were efficiency and hardwork. It was also revealed that ideal ethical ratings for initiative, responsibility and efficiency were higher than perceived ethical expectations among tourism industry management; potential tourism industry employees rated hardwork lower than they believed tourism industry management would so do. The response of trust emerged as the most valued of the workstress alleviation responses, and was found to be associated with most of the ethical principles. The global management change response was also found to be associated with similar ethical principles, though to a lesser degree; the communication workstress response was also found to be a prominent management workstress response expectation, though was not revealed to be predictive of the four workplace ethical principles. Implications of these findings for human resource management operations within the tourism/hospitality industry, and for further research directions, are presented.