Guest editorial

Citation

Deery, M. and Jago, L. (2019), "Guest editorial", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 31 No. 10, pp. 3821-3822. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-10-2019-009

Talent management in the hospitality industry

Welcome to IJCHM’s special issue on Talent Management in the Hospitality Industry. I would like to specially thank to our guest editors Professor Margaret Deery and Professor Leo Jago for putting together this very strong, important and timely special issue. The articles included in this special issue should be well received by scholars, students and practicing managers in our field.

Fevzi Okumus

Editor-in-Chief

Introduction

Talent Management (TM) is an area of exploration that is constantly revealing new interpretations. It is defined in a number of ways and within the hospitality industry, which is a labour-intensive industry. The effective managing of staff is fundamental to success. In this special issue, we explore definitions, analyse previous research in the area, offer new methods and examine the impact of TM within various segments in the hospitality industry and across generations.

This special issue begins with a provocative discussion paper by Baum which challenges established practice both within the hospitality industry, in terms of its workplace environment and in the way hospitality management schools prepare young people for the industry. Baum’s challenges are further examined in the article by Williamson and Harris who provide an historical perspective, finding that neither the hotel union nor employers effectively address TM challenges in this sector. Baum’s paper also provides a framework for the issues examined in the papers that follow, beginning with three articles that explore definitional dilemmas. Giousmpasoglou et al., frame the nature of TM in hotels and advance knowledge of talent retention strategies. They argue that talent refers to those who “go above and beyond” and that talent retention strategies in luxury hotels include a friendly, family-oriented and open access culture, teamwork, compensation, succession planning and training and development.

The contribution by Jooss et al., examines TM at the corporate level, finding that despite formal global policies being in place, considerable divergence in practice can be found across organisational levels, therefore leading to confusion in the managing of talent. The conceptual paper by Muskat et al., provides another perspective by examining the meaning of TM within the context of entrepreneurship. This paper systematically synthesises the extant literature while linking key concepts within TM, entrepreneurship, hospitality and human resource management to develop a model of the talented hospitality entrepreneur. A conceptual model is developed to define the individual antecedents of talented hospitality entrepreneurs and their outcomes for success.

A second tranche of papers address TM issues through a number of innovative methodologies. For instance, Xu and Cao use psychometric meta-analytical methods and meta-structural equation modelling (meta-SEM) methods to synthesise the relationships between work-to-nonwork conflict (WNC) and nonwork-to-work conflict (NWC) along with their antecedents and outcomes. The paper by Shulga and Busser uses substantive domain TM discourse analysis to identify 12 general and 5 hospitality-related topics. The resulting research framework depicts how global trends, organisational factors, employee-specific factors and organisational-management tactics affect organisational, personal, societal and customer outcomes. Methodological domain analysis revealed business TM research to be in the mature stage, while hospitality TM research is in the embryonic stage of development. Narrative inquiry is the approach used by Kichuk et al., in their research which explores the experiences of employees excluded from a talent pool. It examines the career development that is provided for those left out of the talent pool.

D’Annunzio-Green and Allan draw on the key tenets of self-determination theory to explore the possibility of deploying TM as an inherently motivational process within the hospitality industry. Although the current TM process is skewed towards performance outcomes, these authors suggest that compelling evidence indicates variation in attempts to address employees’ motivational needs mediated by highly influential managerial attitudes and behaviours. Based on this, they suggest that there is ample scope for embedding TM as an inherently motivational process. The theme of motivation is continued in the paper by Murillo and King who argue that traditional TM practices that tend to focus on the transactional benefits of the job/career can be strengthened by leveraging the power of the hospitality brand to engage employees through the internal motivation that originates in brand fit. This internal motivation not only improves employees’ brand performance, a proven path to competitive advantage, but also acts as a buffer helping employees manage the stress of hospitality jobs. Finally, DiPietro et al., use a grounded theory approach within the restaurant sector to show that people take pride in working for the restaurants in their sample of independent, family-owned properties, and the culture within the restaurants inspires higher levels of self-esteem. This environment helps employees and managers achieve higher work performance and satisfy overall lifestyle needs.

There is a growing body of literature that explores the management of generations X, Y and Z and this special issue contributes to the research in this area. The paper by Golubovskaya et al., is a fine example of this research and identifies youth as a distinct workforce entity, suggesting that hospitality jobs represent a critical developmental context for young people, resulting in a series of critical implications for TM practice and theorising. The study by Self et al., uses programs at MIT to examine how talent is defined and assessed by hospitality HR professionals and compare HR professionals’ perceptions of Gen Z to Millennials. The results show integrity and strong work ethic are top descriptors to define talent, and prior performance and soft skills are top items assessed when hiring talent. The participants view Gen Z as desiring a greater work-life balance, being tech savvy, interested in social responsibility, more accepting of differences and wanting higher salaries compared to Millennials. Gupta’s article assesses Gen Y employees’ perceptions in relation to other key constructs, while Tolkach and Tung’s findings highlight a network of worldwide mobility from hospitality and tourism graduates of five institutions. Their findings also suggest five different types of mobility trajectories (i.e., stateside, intra-regional, continental, inter-regional and global) and career patterns (i.e., rooted, prospector, seeker, two-homes and wanderer).

This special issue on TM raises a number of critical areas for contemplation and for further research. So, for example, does TM in hospitality languish behind other sectors? Is there more work to do here or has the area for inquiry been completed? If there is more to do, which are the key issues that need further exploration? We thank the authors for their contributions and their research in pushing the boundaries in this important component of human resource management.