Editorial

Citation

Okumus, F. (2013), "Editorial", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 25 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijchm.2013.04125faa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Volume 25, Issue 6

The sixth issue of IJCHM in 2013 includes eight research articles. In the first article, Lisa Slevitch, Kimberly Mathe, Elena Karpova and Sheila Scott-Halsell address issues of performance optimization through accounting for asymmetric responses of customer satisfaction to different types of product or service attributes: core, facilitating and “green” (eco-friendly). The authors empirically explored how these attributes affect customer satisfaction and account for interactions among them in order to identify an optimal combination that would maximize customer satisfaction in the hotel industry. Their study results confirm the non-linear nature of customer satisfaction response and indicate that “green” attributes impact customer satisfaction similarly to facilitating attributes but differently from the core type of attributes in the context of hotel industry. The research findings should be helpful to resolve the problem of performance optimization and allow the creation of hotel offerings that yield maximum levels of customer satisfaction and optimal resource allocation. In the second article Sonia Bharwani and Vinnie Jauhari explore the competencies required by frontline employees to transition from simply being “service providers” to taking on the mantle of “experience providers”. This article proposes a new construct of ‘hospitality intelligence’ (HI) encompassing mainly emotional intelligence (comprising interpersonal intelligence and intrapersonal intelligence), cultural intelligence and hospitality experiential intelligence dimensions. Hospitality practitioners should find this hospitality intelligence construct useful in recruiting and training frontline employees, while educators can use the study findings in designing curricula and pedagogical interventions for developing the right skill set for hospitality industry.

In the third article, Vincent Magnini, Sunghyup Hyun, BeomCheol Kim, and Muzaffer Uysal used a sentence completion experiment among American and Korean hotel workers to examine whether a worker’s degree of individualism/collectivism influences her/his organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), comfort with empowerment, and leader-member exchange (LMX) in the workplace. The study findings indicate that hospitality workers in a collective nation are more apt to possess a collective mindset in their work environments than those in an individualistic nation. Moreover, hospitality workers in a collective nation seem to demonstrate more OCB, possess lower comfort levels with empowerment, and possess higher levels of LMX than hospitality workers in an individualistic nation. The results imply the need to consider country culture when interpreting and managing OCB, employee empowerment, and LMX tendencies in hospitality settings. In the fourth article, Jalayer Khalilzadeh, Giacomo Del Chiappa, Jafar Jafari, and Hamid Zargham Borujeni propose a new method of job satisfaction score estimation by considering affective and cognitive aspects simultaneously. The authors collected data via a questionnaire in four up-scale hotels. The weighted abridged job descriptive index (WAJDI) proposed in the study as a modified version of the job descriptive index that can overcome the main limitations of the abridged job descriptive index (AJDI) and the perceived job satisfaction (PJS) methods when measuring job satisfaction in the hospitality industry.

In the next article, Alice Hon and Lin Lu examine the relationship between the interactional justice of supervisors and the job performance of subordinates in an expatriate context. The authors collected data from 232 service employees and their expatriate supervisors in multinational hotels in China. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis was conducted to test the proposed model. Their study results support the positive effect of interactional justice on job performance as well as the mediating effect of upward help intention. The research findings of this study suggest that managers in the service industry should be sensitive in treating their subordinates as it will lead to positive interpersonal relationship, which in turn, will stimulate job performance. Osman M. Karatepe proposes a model that examines whether job embeddedness mediates the effects of high-performance work practices and work social support on turnover intentions. Data were collected from 174 full-time frontline employees in the four- and five-star hotels with a time lag of two weeks in Iran. The study findings suggest that job embeddedness fully mediates the effects of high-performance work practices and work social support on turnover intentions. Specifically, frontline employees with high-performance work practices and work social support appear to be more embedded in their jobs, and therefore, are unlikely to display intentions to leave the organization.

The following article by Sang Mi Jeon, Vincent P. Magnini, Insin Kim, and Sunghyup Hyun examine five drivers of service quality and perceived winning in the gaming behavior. Their study results indicate that various dimensions of perceived service quality (including tangibles, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy) in casinos as well as casino patrons’ perceived winning have considerable influence on their satisfaction. Brand affect and game spending are found to be influenced by the patron satisfaction with table games. In the final article, Nan Hua, Qu Xiao and Elizabeth Yost explore the financial characteristics associated with outperformance of US public restaurant firms in challenging economic times. This study utilized a Logit model and considered the relevant financial variables in annual deviation forms to explore an empirical model that explains financial outperformance in troubled economic times for the restaurant industry. Study results indicate that larger market share, asset turnover, and profit margin, combined with lower leverage, BM, earnings variance, and size, in addition to franchise utilization, appear to produce collectively a fine balance for success in difficult economic times. This study provides systematic evidence on linking financial characteristics and outperformance of restaurant firms in difficult economic times.

We hope that our readers find all eight articles published in this issue timely, relevant and useful.

Fevzi OkumusEditor-in Chief