Hospitality Workplace Research Articles

Exploring Ethical Incidents In The Taiwanese Hotel Industry

ABSTRACT Purpose: This study attempts to explore and identify critical ethical incidents encountered by senior managers employed in international hotels in Taiwan. Design/methodology/approach: An in-depth interview was conducted to collect data from 22 senior managers. By using the critical incident technique (CIT) to analyze the interview data, 161 critical ethical incidents were identified and discussed. Findings: The analytical results show that the identified ethical incidents can be divided into 3 main categories, 7 sub-categories, and 13 underlying factors. The main and sub-categories include: (1) personal issues: personal integrity, executive leadership, and customer equity; (2) organizational issues: corporate integrity, organizational climate, and cross-cultural management; (3) external issues: customer integrity. Practical implications: Currently in Taiwanese hotels, ethics are not generally emphasized by management. The results of this research can contribute to hospitality ethics research and provide suggestions for ethics education and employee training in the hospitality industry. Originality/value: This study investigates critical ethical issues that exist in the hospitality workplace, with a focus on critical ethical concerns confronted by employees and managers in the hotel industry.

PRAXIS : The determining element of innovation behavior in the hospitality industry

Abstract Innovation has emerged as an essential component of organizational success in the 21st century. Nonetheless, empirical research around innovation in the hospitality industry remains limited; especially in relation to small island tourist destinations like Cyprus. Responding to this emerging need, the study investigates the role of human capital – managerial employees (n = 425) – as it relates to innovation initiatives in the hospitality workplace. Three hypotheses are postulated and analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling, a multivariate statistical analysis technique, to broaden conceptual horizons regarding the relationship between perceived organizational innovation culture and support, and the informed innovation-specific actions of employees, as well as their resultant behavior. The results suggest that praxis, which is defined as action informed by theory and experiences, is a vital element of innovation behavior in the hospitality industry. The resultant findings and implications are of interest to both academic and professional stakeholders in hospitality.

Generational Diversity in the Workplace: A Systematic Review in the Hospitality Context

This article marks the first systematic review that focuses on generational diversity in the hospitality workplace in the period from 2000 to 2016. A comprehensive search was conducted in the five dominant databases, namely, Scopus, SAGE, Emeralds, Science Direct, and EBSCOhost’s Hospitality and Tourism Complete, resulting in 49 articles for systematic content analysis. This article maps out the existing landscape of generational studies within a hospitality context before providing five areas of recommendations for future studies to fully capture the intricacy of the generational phenomenon. This study serves as a funnel for academics and practitioners within the hospitality field as it gears their attention and research directions toward the crucial, yet underexamined, context of generational studies.

Still pounding on the glass ceiling: A study of female leaders in hospitality, travel, and tourism management

ABSTRACTToday, U.S. females represent the majority in both the hospitality and tourism management classroom and the work environment. However, the proverbial “glass ceiling” continues to exist, and evidence of career advancement obstacles remain salient in the hospitality, travel, and tourism management workplace. The purpose of this study was to investigate the experiences of successful female industry leaders in the hospitality, travel, and tourism industry, as well as their perceptions as to how they were able to overcome gender barriers and disparities. Findings offer participant reported “top issues” facing female leaders in the workplace, as well as strategies for overcoming these issues.

Workplace sexual harassment: exploring the experience of tour leaders in an Asian context

Sexual harassment is a prominent issue in the workplace; it presents a particular challenge with regard to this sensitive area in the Asian context due to the Asian cultural value. Tour leaders are one of the main components of the tourism industry workforce and are expensive to train in terms of both time/experience accumulation and financial investment. The potential risk of sexual harassment in the hospitality and tourism workplace remains unknown. The purpose of this study was to investigate tour leaders’ experiences of sexual harassment at work and their awareness of the organizational polices/regulations relating to sexual harassment in the workplace. A survey was conducted on the tour leaders in Taiwan and results of the study suggested that gender sexual harassment and seductive harassment behaviour were found to occur more frequently than sexual bribery, sexual coercion and sexual assault. Asian tours leaders tend to adopt extremely passive coping strategies in dealing with sexual harassment incidents. More than half of the tour leaders in the current study were ‘unsure’ whether their affiliated travel agencies had a sexual harassment policy.

The role of coworker support in the relationship between moral efficacy and voice behavior: The case of hospitality students in Ecuador

ABSTRACTThis article explores the relationships among employee moral efficacy, coworker emotional support, coworker instrumental support, and employee voice behavior regarding abusive supervision in the hospitality industry in Ecuador: a high power distance culture. The results indicate that employees’ moral efficacy predicted their voice behavior with regards to abusive supervision and that coworker emotional support strengthened this relation. However, an interaction effect between moral efficacy and coworker instrumental support on voice behavior was not found. This study provides a theoretical extension of the voice literature by introducing the roles of moral efficacy and coworker support, and has practical implications for the hospitality workplace.

Extraversion and its Importance in the Hospitality Workplace. Analysing the Selected Job Outcomes

The aim of this study is to investigate both the importance of personality traits of employees working in hotel contact positions and their potential relations with employees’ attitudes towards work. The research problem is to approach the following question: is there any relationship between extraversion and employees’ job satisfaction, particularly in terms of hotel customers. To achieve the study aim, literature review, including empirical findings of recent studies, and empirical research based on a survey method have been used. The main results of the study have confirmed that hotel employees with higher extraversion experience have a higher level of job satisfaction, also when it refers to customers. Although the study results cannot be generalized, they nevertheless shed light on the importance of the good person-job fit. Therefore, a better understanding of the role of personality in the context of hotel posts may be useful in the hiring decisions, especially in the customer contact positions in hotels. In this study the implications for managers are demonstrated, and directions for future research formulated.

Y-ers, X-ers and Boomers: Investigating the multigenerational (mis)perceptions in the hospitality workplace

Today’s hospitality workforce is more diverse than ever with the symbiotic co-existence of three different generations; Generation Y, Generation X and Baby Boomers. This co-existence poses numerous challenges for an industry that strives to achieve inter-generational comfort, thus avoiding conflict, an impediment to the effectiveness of even its most sophisticated organizations. Adopting a quantitative methodology, this article explores the occupational similarities and differences of the three prevailing generations, currently active in the diverse hospitality workplace, as well as investigating how each generation cohort is perceived by its own members in comparison to members of other generations. Findings, which provide invaluable insights of interest to hospitality stakeholders, confirm the vast perceptual inter-generational differences within a plethora of work-related issues.

Diversity management: The treatment of HIV-positive employees

Socio-demographic dimensions such as age, gender, sexual orientation, race and ethnicity are commonly included in diversity studies. With a view to helping Asian hospitality managers to manage HIV-positive employees in their workplaces through diversity management (DM) theory, this research extends the boundaries of previous diversity studies by considering Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infection as a diverse characteristic. Both quantitative and qualitative primary data were collected from purposively selected Asian hospitality managers through postal questionnaire and follow-up telephone interviews. Transformed raw data were analysed using summary statistics and template analysis. Asian hospitality managers agreed that DM would be appropriate in the management of HIV-positive employees and that it could generate substantial benefits for employees and employers. However, they believe that the successful adoption and implementation of DM is not easy; it requires training and, ideally, the recruitment of experienced directors. Nevertheless, Asian hospitality managers are confident that implementing DM to manage HIV-positive employees can enhance tolerance, improve understanding and promote equality. The purposive sampling technique and the small number of respondents have impacted the external validity of the study. However, this exploratory study initiates an equality discussion to include HIV-positive employees in DM discourse beyond antidiscrimination legislation. It also supplements the sparse literature addressing HIV-positive employees in the Asian hospitality workplace. Asian hospitality managers are advised to understand and employ DM to treat HIV-positive employees fairly to overcome hospitality workplace marginalisation, discrimination and stigmatisation.

Delineating the Gray Areas in Hospitality Workplace Ethics: Perceptions of International Interns

In this research students completing hospitality internships evaluated 16 behaviours seen in the workplace on a regular basis as to whether they perceived the behaviours as ethical or not. Overall results suggest ethics is a multidimensional construct that can be tied to established theoretical foundations. Findings support the impact of cultural background and gender in the assessment of ethical behaviour. No evidence was found to support differences in the assessment of ethical behaviour based upon whether students were identified with generation X or generation Y. Study results offer implications for education, training, communication, and future research.

Hospitality workplace problems and poor training: a close relationship

PurposeThis paper seeks to examine common hospitality problems with the aim of identifying relationships between them, and the central issue.Design/methodology/approachSelf‐completed questionnaires were used to collect data from hospitality students and employees, and analyses of variance used to identify relationships between the problems, and isolate the central issue.FindingsThe paper finds that poor training is associated with workplace problems, and improving training is likely to reduce problems such as under‐staffing and theft.Research limitations/implicationsThe collection of data on exact lengths of employment would have facilitated a more rigorous analysis of the causes and effects of staff turnover and is recommended for future studies of training and turnover.Practical implicationsInvestment in training is recommended even when turnover is high, as training reduces workplace problems.Originality/valueThis study focuses on the relationships between problems, rather than investigating them in isolation, facilitating an holistic approach to solving staff turnover.

Skills and training for the hospitality sector: a review of issues

The role of skills and skills development through training in the contemporary economy is a matter of considerable academic and political debate. Public policy in many countries focuses on the development, through training, of what are seen as a high skills employment and business environment (Brown et al, 2001). At the same time, most developed or high skills economies also depend to a significant extent on an alternative economy based on what are loosely and pejoratively described as ‘low skills’ jobs. Little critical analysis has been undertaken with respect to what such descriptors actually mean. This article addresses one sector of the ‘low skills’ economy, hospitality. This article considers skills issues in relation to the hospitality sector. It draws upon the work of Noon & Blyton (1995) in applying their approach to the classification and analysis of skills within hospitality. The article also draws on Ashton & Green's (1996) critique of vocational education as a basis for understanding some of the problems inherent in skills development in hospitality. The article addresses the skills debate in hospitality in four key theme areas: the nature of work and skills in hospitality; de-skilling within the hospitality workplace; the technical/generic skills debate within hospitality; skills and the education/training process in hospitality.

Profiling for the High-Performance Workplace

This research examined the complexity of the hospitality workplace and the need for managers to become successful in developing their roles as manager/leaders as they progress through the organization. The use of profiling at the onset and throughout a manager's career as a means of selecting qualified managers into appropriate positions is explored. A case study of one such company that provides profiling to organizations is presented as an example of the philosophy of profiling and how it is utilized.

Striking a Balance

SUMMARY This chapter reviews previous literature related to men and women in the hospitality workforce and summarizes the challenges they have confronted as they strive to develop careers while maintaining family commitments. Current trends such as globalization, diversity, and technology are described and their impact on the hospitality workplace assessed. Specific actions that progressive hospitality organizations have taken as they address the need for a more responsive and flexible workplace are presented. Finally, suggestions are proposed for how educators and practitioners might work together to assist employees in increasing their quality of life and in achieving family and work balance. It seems likely that fundamental shifts in the basic assumptions affecting employee policies are necessary before organizational attitudes and practices will result in greater work and family balance for service employees.

Becoming an employer of choice: assessing commitment in the hospitality workplace

Reports on research, the overall objective of which was to develop a basic understanding of job satisfaction and commitment of employees of a particular hospitality organization. Describes a survey of 7,504 hourly and salaried employees at 94 lodging properties which aimed to identify factors relating to employee satisfaction and commitment.

Violent crime in the US hospitality workplace: facing up to the problem

Suggests that violent crime has become an increasing problem in the USA. What academic work has been done on the issue of security, has tended to focus on the guest as opposed to the employee. Yet, recent statistics have revealed that the hospitality industry is among the most dangerous to work for in terms of workplace violence. Identifies the various types of workplace violence, and examines relevant US government data that identify dangerous occupations and places of work. Then outlines the changing regulatory and legal environment facing employers, and presents a number of practical steps that can be taken to make the workplace more secure.

Course Design for Multicultural Management

Because the hospitality workplace is culturally diverse, a course in multicultural management is a substantial contribution to a human-resources program