Search results

This study aims to examine the effect of hotels’ star ratings and customer ratings on online hotel prices from both supply- and demand-side perspectives.

To compile the supply-side data, a Web crawler was designed and implemented to read online prices and characteristics of available hotels from Trivago. Demand-side data were compiled from surveys conducted using the Amazon Mechanical Turk portal. Data were analyzed with an array of advanced machine learning regression models.

The results show that while a star rating is the most important predictor of price from both supply- and demand-side perspectives, customer rating influences the price much more significantly on the demand-side. Customers showed a tendency to overestimate the room price of three- and four-star hotels and underestimate the price of five-star hotels. Customers placed a heavier weight on customer ratings when estimating prices particularly when the average rating was above 7.5 (out of 10). The study also confirms the strong effect of price adjustment for customers when they were exposed to the prices of other similar hotels. Finally, the study examines the impact of demographics on the perceived hotel value. Age, ethnicity, education and income are shown to be the most significant demographic characteristics.

The results are valuable from a research perspective because they demonstrate how to price rooms more effectively based on their perceived value from consumers’ perspectives. From a practical standpoint, the findings provide useful managerial tools for pricing in competitive environments.

Crises influence individuals’ career development. The COVID-19 crisis has global impacts in financial, health and social aspects and service industries are at the forefront of the pervasive impacts. This study investigated how college students’ perceptions of COVID-19 interplayed with self-efficacy on their academic plans and further identified major differences between students in service-oriented and nonservice-oriented majors.

A self-administered online survey was conducted with 299 undergraduates at a large Midwestern university during COVID-19. Regression analyses, including conditional analyses, examined the study hypotheses using SPSS.

The results showed that, in general, students’ self-efficacy reduced their intentions to change their academic majors. The joint effects of self-efficacy and perception of COVID-19 diverged among students in nonservice-oriented majors but converged among students in service-oriented majors (e.g. hospitality and tourism). These students in the service fields showed more commitment to their current majors even as their concerns about the social implications of COVID-19 increased.

This study suggests that academic institutions should try to improve students’ self-efficacy to maintain their career commitments during crisis times. Furthermore, service organizations should highlight the importance of social aspects as recovery from COVID-19 begins as a tool to recruit college graduates.

The literature on career decisions of students in service industries is quite limited. This study enriches the body of career decisions research in the context of service management by highlighting how service sectors are influenced by COVID-19.

The purpose of this paper is to start a conversation on achieving a shared understanding among hospitality service co-creation participants. Adopting a stakeholder and service eco-systems approach, attention is drawn to the necessity for all service experience participants to have a shared understanding of the service experience and their role within it, for a sustained competitive advantage to be realized. Informed by community of practice (CoP) thinking, a road map of research questions is advanced encouraging insight into a macro level phenomenon that, traditionally, is only ever considered at the micro service encounter level.

A thorough multidisciplinary review of the literature was undertaken, providing an opportunity to present a viewpoint on the strategic implications of providing a sustainable competitive advantage via the hospitality service experience.

To achieve a shared understanding across the Hospitality Service Experience Eco-System, potential tensions among stakeholders are highlighted. Accounting for such barriers, institutional arrangements, combining organizational CoPs that are bridged by designated boundary objects, is advanced. Given the novel approach of applying a traditionally organizational phenomenon at a macro multi-stakeholder level, several research questions are proposed to inform thinking about this neglected perspective.

Acknowledging the innovation, agility and resources required to maintain a competitive service experience, the paper emphasizes the importance of adopting a macro perspective to effective service management. The hope is to stimulate academic interest to inform understanding as to how to build this capability as well as enhance practitioner interest in promoting stakeholders’ CoP for the benefit of the entire Hospitality Service Experience Eco-System.

Examines monetary rewards in businesses that combine technical and functional aspects of service. Focusing on the restaurant industry, develops a framework that explains tipping as a reward for the two service dimensions. The technical elements of service are rewarded by dollar tip and the functional elements of service are rewarded by percent tip. An overlap between technical and functional elements results in a conflict between dollar tip and percent tip and, it is suggested, result in a magnitude effect. The framework was tested empirically in a sample of restaurants. The findings indicated that customers' evaluation of the service interaction can be summarized by four main components. Multiple regressions provide initial support to the framework, tying the technical elements to dollar tip and functional elements to percent tip.

Based on the human resources (HR) role framework (Conner and Ulrich, 1996), the purpose of this paper is to empirically explore why HR practitioners differ in their strategic partner role positioning. The present study suggests and tests a descriptive model regarding occupational and organizational characteristics associated with strategic HR role positioning.

In all, 100 questionnaires were collected from Israeli HR practitioners. Hierarchical regressions were used to test the association between occupational and organizational characteristics and the strategic role perception among HR practitioners.

Although the findings only partially supported the suggested model, significant associations between occupational and organizational characteristics and HR strategic positioning were found. HR practitioners in volatile organizational environments adopt a strategic role perception. Moreover, years of experience are also associated with an HR strategic role perception. Specifically, the major predictors of attaining a strategic partner role amongst HR practitioners are location of organizational activities mainly in the metropolitan area, and involvement in major organizational changes.

The sample had a positive bias of respondents. Questionnaires were delivered mainly to highly educated HR practitioners in notably professional HR departments. Data were based on self-reported one-time questionnaires.

The research has implications for the processes of academic education and professional training of HR practitioners and also their recruitment in organizations.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, recent studies aimed at exploring sources of variance in the strategic role perception amongst HR practitioners are rather scarce. This research helps to address this gap, while also broadening the literature regarding HR communities in the Middle East.

The current work aims to introduce the concept of conflict perception and construct a scale that measures individual differences in perceptions about conflicts along religious, national and material dimensions. The concept and the measure are developed in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

The research design combines three methodological elements: 14 focus groups in Israel and the West Bank, which represent diversity in place of residence, religion, age and political background; an expert panel review; and a survey of 411 student respondents that was conducted between September 29 and October 9, 2013, among university students in Israel and Palestine.

The findings show that conflict perception is an individual’s subjective view regarding the essence of the conflict and its central issues, the identities of the parties involved and their motivations, which may include material, ideological or symbolic motives, or any combination thereof. A novel scale consisting of five statements that can measure conflict perception that was developed, validated and implemented via a survey sample showed that Palestinians in the West Bank and in Israel have a religious perception of the conflict, whereas Jews have a national perception of the conflict.

First, the paper introduces a new concept that sheds additional light on the micro foundations of peoples’ attitudes in conflict situations. Second, it develops and validates a measurement tool for conflict perception that may be usable, with necessary adjustments, in other conflicts. Third, it demonstrates that parties to the conflict do not necessarily share similar perceptions about the conflict, a finding with far-reaching consequences for conflict resolution at both the scholarly and policy levels.

On 1 April 1978, the Israeli peace movement burst into world consciousness when an estimated 25,000 Israelis demonstrated in Tel Aviv to urge the administration of Prime Minister Menachem Begin to continue peace negotiations with Egypt. A grassroots group called Peace Now is credited with organizing and leading that demonstration. Today, the “peace camp” refers to left‐wing political parties and organizations that hold dovish positions on the Arab‐Israeli conflict and the Palestinian issue. While some figures in the Labor Party view themselves as the peace movement's natural leader, political parties further to the left like the Citizens Rights Movement (CRM) and Mapam are more dovish. In the last 10 years, many grassroots peace organizations have, like Peace Now, formed outside the political party system, with the goal of influencing public opinion and eventually having an impact on policy makers. Peace Now is still the largest, most visible and influential of those organizations.

The need to provide immediate housing solutions for hundreds of thousands of people in the early 1990's faced the Israeli construction industry with an unprecedented challenge: to multiply overnight its output and drastically cut construction time. It also created a unique opportunity to observe a national‐level experiment of great magnitude aimed at meeting that challenge. The present paper reports on a study that examined how construction companies managed to cut housing construction time to half of what had been accepted earlier as a normal pace. This was achieved by implementing an approach that concurrently and integratively treats environment, technology and management determinants, creating a synergetic effect. The present paper introduces and demonstrates the integrative approach to schedule compression, and highlights the role of the environment.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyse the formation of CoPs (communities of practice) in three call centres of cellular communication operating companies in Israel.

This study is based on a qualitative methodology including observations, interviews and textual analysis.

In all three call centres, customer service representatives (CSRs) turned to each other in order to produce situated knowledge that combined compliance with organisational procedures alongside subversion so as to increase individual availability while compromising professional goals. These CoPs were formed during training, on‐the‐job learning, and off‐the‐job informal social activities. The resentment expressed in these CoPs was found to be related to standard HRM policies (low pay, stringent control, lack of career prospects) as well as to cultural contradictions involving efficiency and service quality, which CSRs had to handle and absorb.

The research provides ethnographic evidence regarding the formation of subversive CoPs in call centres but, as with all case study research, the findings cannot be reliably generalised to other companies. Similarly, the case generates grounded theory that needs to be tested in other organisational contexts.

The study raises the issue of how CoPs can become both enablers and barriers to knowledge flow in the organisation. To increase the potential of such CoPs to improve rather than inhibit service performance in call centres, practical implications are suggested in terms of HRM practices (e.g. strategic segmentation, the modification of monitoring), and in openly confronting cultural contradictions.

The article offers an ethnographic analysis of CoPs in call centres, focusing on their formation in the context of HRM practices and cultural contradictions, and highlighting their potential to constitute subversive workgroup cultures, rather than their conventionally perceived functional role in the organisation. As an inductive research using covert methods the article offers fresh insights in relation to CoPs and counter cultures.

This paper examines a premarital genetics program focusing on congenital deafness, conducted in Israel with a Bedouin minority group characterized by consanguinity, a religious ban on abortion, and high prevalence of genetic diseases. Building on interviews with counselors and counselees as well as observations of the interactions between them, the analysis describes the professional, communal, public and private arenas of negotiation that surround the process of genetic counseling.