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This paper aims to provide a critical reflection on diversity and inclusion research from the hospitality and tourism literature.

Through conducting a critical reflection, this paper used a thematic analysis focused on integrating the scholarly literature that has developed separately: one focusing on the human resources perspective and another concentrating on customer behavior. This critical reflection bridges the gap between these two perspectives.

The authors develop and offer a research agenda for future research drawing from three areas ripe for future research: human resources management, diversity resistance and marketing. They focus on theory-driven research that has practical applications to make hospitality and tourism more inclusive for both the workforce and consumers.

Meaningful research must be translated into practice, and by addressing these research gaps, organizations can gain insights into diverse worker and customer experiences and create more effective diversity initiatives.

The current literature often lacks an integrated approach that bridges the gap between the two reviewed perspectives: the human resources management and marketing perspectives. A holistic understanding of diversity and inclusion is vital, as it recognizes the interconnectedness between employees and customers within the context of the hospitality and tourism sector is important for several reasons.

Many hospitality organizations see the benefits of engaging in corporate social responsibility (CSR), which can take many forms. This study aims to examine one relatively unique form of CSR: hiring individuals experiencing houselessness. This research aimed to investigate the impact of hiring individuals experiencing houselessness on customers’ behavioral intentions, attitudes toward an organization and perceptions of CSR actions.

Across two experiments, this study investigated the impact of employing individuals experiencing houselessness on customers’ perceptions of the employee and organization using organizational legitimacy theory.

Results demonstrate that employees known to be houseless elicited more positive employee and organizational perceptions from the customers, mediated by CSR perceptions. In addition, the gender of the employees or the quality of the organization did not impact these findings.

Hospitality and tourism organizations should consider using available resources or tax benefits to make a deliberate effort to employ those experiencing houselessness.

Using organizational legitimacy theory, this study examines CSR perceptions as a potential explanatory mechanism between houselessness and customers’ reactions.

The purpose of this study is to critically reflect on visually impaired customers’ technology assistance needs and the perceptions of existing technologies’ performance in the contexts of hospitality and tourism.

Following a qualitative approach, this study used in-depth semistructured interviews with 19 participants with visual impairments.

Positive and negative sides of technology-assisted experiences in the hotel, restaurant, and travel domains were summarized, and room for improvement was discussed to enhance the quality of life and travel experience of visually impaired customers.

Findings from this study offer actionable implications and future directions to technicians and managers to make hospitality and travel experiences more inclusive.

This timely reflection addresses a critical situation by offering original ideas and calling for more discussion of under-represented groups with visual impairments.

Different from the previous organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) literature, this study aims to propose an OCB-O (organizational citizenship behavior toward organizations) and OCB-I (organizational citizenship behavior toward individual coworkers) driven mechanism for the formation of OCB-C (organizational citizenship behavior toward customers). Based on the social exchange and agency theories, the authors propose that perceived leadership support and work autonomy contribute to both OCB-I and OCB-O, which contributes to proactive and reactive customer service attitude as well as OCB-C.

A three-wave survey was conducted in five-star hotels in Mainland China, and a sample of 410 hotel frontline employees was used to test the model.

Findings of the study suggested that perceived leadership support positively led to OCB-O and OCB-I while work autonomy led to OCB-I, demonstrating the importance of employees’ perceived leadership support on motivating employees to perform OCB-I and OCB-O. OCB-I and OCB-O directly improved OCB-C, confirming the proposed spillover effect from OCB-I and OCB-O to OCB-C. OCB-I supported both proactive and reactive customer service attitudes, revealing OCB-I as more effective than OCB-O on influencing employees’ service attitudes. Furthermore, OCB-I, OCB-O and proactive customer service attitude lead to OCB-C.

This study suggests that it is important for leaders to show care and support to employees and design jobs with a certain level of flexibility, so that employees are motivated to go the extra mile to do a good job. When employees make helping others a habit, they will provide more genuine care to customers and do a better job in serving customers.

This study supports the spillover mechanism of OCB-I and OCB-O on OCB-C. Specifically, the spillover mechanism starts from a workplace-driven model with employees’ perceived leadership support and work autonomy to enhance OCB-O as well as OCB-I. Then, spillover effects stem directly from OCB-I and OCB-O to OCB-C and indirectly to proactive customer service attitude.

The purpose of this study is to deepen our understanding of the well-being of transient organizations/groups and to use this to develop a novel conceptual framework of gig worker well-being during times of crisis.

A qualitative approach was adopted combining in-depth semi-structured interviews and daily diaries. Twenty-two workers working in the sharing economy were recruited. Thematic analysis was conducted for the diary and interview data.

The findings illustrate a complex picture of sharing economy workers’ four dimensions of well-being, including physical, subjective, psychological and social well-being. A number of the COVID-19 pandemic contexts, such as more time, restriction, economic recession and uncertainty, were seen to influence these workers’ well-being in different ways including both positive and negative impacts. The precarious nature of gig work within the sharing economy was also found influential, which includes flexibility, uncertainty, temporality and diversity. Furthermore, the specific contexts of the hospitality, tourism and event industry (such as labor-intensive, low esteem, self-value and purpose in life) had also impacted gig workers physical and psychological well-being in various ways.

This study complements the gig workers’ view of the sharing economy by investigating their well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, this study reveals the complex and various influences hospitality, tourism and events industry contexts made, amplified by the pandemic. Methodologically, the daily diary approach applied in this research has captured gig workers’ instant feelings and thoughts, which enriches the current understanding of gig workers’ well-being.

From the findings and the newly developed conceptual framework, practical implications are proposed focusing on how the tourism, hospitality and event industries should look after their gig workers’ well-being in the COVID-ized environment. From the physical well-being perspective, businesses should consider partnering with gym operators to provide corporate packages or discounted membership to their gig workers. From psychological well-being perspective, a recognition system integrating gig workers would be useful to strengthen gig workers’ perception of value in their jobs. In addition, technology can be used to introduce more resources to their gig workers, particularly when distancing.

A conceptual framework is developed, which captures the influence of both “internal” and “external” determinants of gig worker well-being during times of crisis. This research contributes to theory by developing a framework of well-being in the context of the sharing economy, as well as explicitly addressing how the uncertainty and precariousness of sharing economy work and the hospitality, tourism and event industry contexts relate to well-being. This model is likely to have applicability beyond COVID-19 as the pandemic made clear many existing challenges – rather than just simply creating new ones.

Career adaptability is emerging as an important research area in today's uncertain, volatile world of work created by the COVID-19 pandemic. The present study focuses on career adaptability research post-COVID-19 by scientifically capturing the literature evolution, hotspots and future trends using bibliometric analysis.

The Scopus database, due to its vast and quality literature, was used to search the papers from the period 2020 to 2023. Bibliometric data were extracted and analyzed from the relevant literature. For further scientific mapping, VOSviewer and Biblioshiny software tools were used.

Findings of the analysis suggest a positive research trend related to career adaptability research post-Covid. Keyword analysis revealed noteworthy clusters and important themes. Bibliometric visual networks regarding authors, sources, citations, future themes, etc. are also presented from the 441 analyzed publications with comprehensive interpretation.

The literature for carrying out the bibliometric analysis was confined to the Scopus database. Other databases in combination with different software can be used for future niche research. From the analysis, future research avenues and practical interventions are presented which have significant implications for future researchers, career counselors and managers.

The study summarizes the recent literature on career adaptability in the aftermath of the pandemic and makes a novel contribution to the existing literature. A reliable study has been provided by the authors using the scientific bibliometric technique. The study highlights emerging research trends post the pandemic. The results are concluded with further suggestions which can guide future research related to the topic.

Integrating relationship marketing and management research, the author explores internal selling (i.e., a salesperson’s internally focused efforts intended to identify, solicit, and use internal sales resources to support external selling activities) as a unique source of salespeople role stress and examine its contingent outcomes. The conceptual model suggests that internal selling as a job demand and stressor leads to increased salespeople role stress. However, a number of situational (i.e., selling organization market orientation, service climate, and seller–buyer relationship) and individual factors (i.e., networking ability and psychological capital of the salespeople) serve as job and personal resources to moderate the internal selling–outcome relationships, such that when such resources are adequate, internal selling will reduce role stress and increase sales performance. The author also examines situational (i.e., customer solutions offering and formalization of the selling organization) and individual (i.e., salespeople power and social status) antecedents of internal selling. The model provides useful insights and practical guidance for selling organizations to recognize mechanisms associated with internal selling in their organizations, and to intentionally design within organization support systems to enhance salespeople well being and enable them to participate effectively in the relational process of selling. The chapter stresses the need to develop context-specific stress models for different occupations and job roles.

This study aims to understand New Zealand sheep farmers’ readiness toward sustainability transition by assessing their intentions of transition and adoption of sustainability tools, with information collection considered to mediate the intention–adoption relationship.

Based on the data collected from a survey of New Zealand sheep farmers in 2021, the empirical analysis was developed to investigate farmers’ perceptions of and attitudes toward readiness to move toward a sustainability transition. Structural equation modeling associated with principal component analysis was used to empirically test the theory of planned behavior constructs.

The results show that pressure from the public and the sheep industry, and the perceived controls of transition drive the intention of sustainability transition; farmers with higher intention of sustainability transition are found to be more likely to adopt sustainability tools. However, there is an attitude–behavior gap, wherein positive attitudes toward sustainability transition may not lead to a higher likelihood of adopting sustainability tools. There is no evidence of the mediating role of information collection on the intention–adoption relationship, while a positive effect was found in information collection on the adoption of sustainability tools.

The empirical evidence indicates that policymakers need to help increase the awareness of sustainable production and help farmers overcome barriers to achieving sustainable production by finding ways to turn intentions into adoption.

Being the first attempt to empirically assess farmers’ readiness toward sustainability transition, the study fills the gap of limited understanding of the link between sustainability transition intention and sustainable tools adoption in sustainability transition.