Research from the University of Central Florida’s Rosen College of Hospitality Management

Citation

Okumus, F. (2008), "Research from the University of Central Florida’s Rosen College of Hospitality Management", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 20 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijchm.2008.04120faa.001

Research from the University of Central Florida’s Rosen College of Hospitality Management

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Volume 20, Issue 6

Dr Richard Teare, the former Editor of IJCHM, visited the Rosen College on March 19, 2007 to deliver a workshop on publishing papers in Emerald journals. In the process of organizing his visit to the Rosen College, Richard asked whether we would like to edit a special issue in IJCHM. Several faculty members and PhD students were very interested in this opportunity and I agreed to be the guest editor of this issue. During his visit, Richard asked me whether I would be willing to take over IJCHM as the new editor to which I gladly agreed.

After agreeing with the change in editorship, we still decided to proceed with our special issue plan believing that it would encourage and support our graduate students and junior faculty members. Our goal was to publish a special issue that would be a good showcase of various research projects and topics from the Rosen College. This special issue has been prepared in three stages. First, all graduate students and faculty members were invited to submit abstracts and papers to this special issue. Joint submissions from PhD students and junior faculty members were particularly encouraged. I provided detailed feedback about how each submitted abstract/paper could be developed as a full paper. In the second stage, each submitted paper was sent out to at least two faculty members from the Rosen College. All papers greatly benefited from this internal peer review. In the final stage, each paper was sent out to two or three members of the IJCHM Editorial Advisory Board for the double blind review process. Final decisions were made after two or three rounds of double blind reviews for each paper.

Initially, there were about 15 abstracts/papers submitted for this special issue. After the double blind review process, six full research papers and two research-in-brief (RIB) papers have been accepted for this special issue. This special issue presents empirical findings on diverse and important topics about management practices from hotels, restaurants, theme parks, convention centers and hospitals. Topics include work values among three generations of hospitality managers, training needs of multi-unit restaurant managers, customer equity in convention centers, hospitality in hospitals, referral patterns of local residents, animal rights, golf and club entry level management competencies, and the weighted average cost of capital.

The first two articles focus on human resources management practices in hospitality organizations. In the first article, Po-Ju Chen and Youngsoo Choi present their research findings about the structure of work values and the perceived differences among three generations of managers in the hospitality industry. They claim that different recruitment and retention strategies may be needed among various sectors of the hospitality industry according to generational value shifts. The next article by Manuel Rivera, Robin DiPietro, Kevin Murphy and Christopher Muller examines differences in perceived needs of training among multi-unit managers in a large casual dining restaurant organization. This paper offers interesting insights into how casual dining restaurant multi-unit managers have evolved from “task master” to “people developer” in their organizational roles.

Marketing themes are featured in three articles. The article by Kimberly Severt and Radesh Palakurth presents empirical findings about how a convention center can provide value to its customers. Based on in-depth interviews with meeting planners, the authors found that value equity is the most important factor in the customer to business exchange. The authors proposed a customer equity framework for the convention industry which should be well received by our readers. Andrew Walls, Amir Shani and Paul Rompf investigated the referral patterns of local residents who are frequently requested by visitors to the community to provide information and/or direct venue referrals for travel-related services. They found that recommendations from locals were highly sought by visitors, regardless of the occupation of the perceived local expert. Their findings suggest that hospitality businesses should focus a portion of their marketing strategies towards the community in order to attain/drive positive word-of-mouth referrals. Denver Severt, Taryn Aiello, Shannon Elswick and Cheryl Cyr examine hospitality in a hospital. They employed an exploratory case study and collected data via observational visits and key informant interviews. Based on their findings, the authors suggest that through development of hospitality centric programs, hospitality organizations and hospitals can identify service errors of omission or commission resulting in higher levels of service excellence.

In a conceptual paper, Amir Shani and Abraham Pizam discuss the issues of animal rights in the hospitality and tourism industry. They note that our industry has been heavily criticized for its inconsiderate and even cruel use of animals for entertainment purposes. However, the authors of this paper claim that there are clear indications of a growing tendency to adopt approaches that emphasize animal welfare and even animal rights. They suggest that animal attractions should adopt an approach that combines entertainment, education and welfare concerns. Specific guidelines for each component and recommendations are provided by these authors.

Finally, there are two RIB papers in this issue. In the first RIB paper, Jill Fjelstul and Dana Tesone investigate competency expectations for entry level supervisory employees in the golf and club management industry. According to their research findings, competencies identified for entry level golf and club management positions were similar to those required for current effectiveness of club managers already in practice and comparable to the more recognized hospitality industries of restaurants and hotels. Their findings offer new approaches to recruitment and development of entry level managerial candidates. In the second RIB paper, Hyung-il Jung proposes a framework to help practitioners analyze and evaluate their performance more accurately and easily from the perspective of value adding concept. The author suggests specific application of financial ratios to separately evaluate the performance of operations and top management by proposing the use of WACC as a benchmark.

Overall, 15 people from the Rosen College, two academics from other universities and two industry practitioners contributed to this special issue. For some of the contributing authors to this special issue, this is either their first article or one of the first ones that they have ever published. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the authors who contributed to this special issue. Many sincere thanks also for the faculty members and the IJCHM Editorial Advisory Board members who reviewed papers for this special issue.

Fevzi OkumusEditor-in-Chief