Search results

This paper aims to examine employees’ evaluative repertoires of tourism and hospitality jobs and segments them based on a set of job attribute preferences. Understanding the social–cultural underpinnings of employees’ job preferences is vital if employers are to overcome the challenging task of finding and retaining talented employees in the tourism and hospitality industry.

A discrete-choice experiment with waiters, barkeepers, cooks and front-desk employees working in the Tyrolean tourism industry was conducted. Employees were categorized into distinct segments using a hierarchical Bayesian analysis and a cluster analysis.

Results show that flexible working hours and the ability to balance professional and private aspirations are the most important job attributes for employees. Overall, the evaluative repertoires of the “green” and “domestic (family)” conventions are most prevalent.

This study contributes to literature on talent management by providing insights into employees’ evaluations of jobs and their evaluative repertoires embedded in the broader social–cultural context.

Industry representatives and employers can adapt their recruiting and retention strategies based on employees’ job preferences.

Adapting job attributes according to employees’ evaluative repertoires helps to ensure the long-term sustainability of the industry workforce.

Applying the Economics of Convention (EC) perspective, combining organizational job attributes and socially embedded evaluative repertoires provides a new approach to analysing and understanding employees’ job preferences.

The present study aims to propose a novel employee-centric framework for the study of employer brand attractiveness. This framework disentangles the role of employer attributes, employee benefits and employee perceived value in the study of employer brands to better develop policies for talent attraction. Additionally, this study formulates a research agenda to help advance an employee-centric view of the employer’s brand management by following the tradition of customer-centric research and identifying benefits and forms of value that are yet unexplored.

This paper performs a systematic and critical review of the literature on employer brand attraction from the lens of means-end chains to examine how the notions of “employer attributes”, “employee benefits” and “perceived value” have been addressed in past studies and what relations have been established among these three concepts.

The results unveil the existing conflation among attributes, benefits and value in the conceptualization of employer brand attractiveness. By proposing an employee-centric framework following the tenets of current consumer-centric paradigms, this paper disentangles the notions of attributes, benefits and value in the creation of attractive employer brands; establishes a hierarchical relationship among them; and suggests studying the multiple paths of relationships between attributes and benefits. These conditions should help organizations understand how to create successful strategies to ultimately ensure that they are selected as employers of choice.

Further research is needed to clarify the domains in which the already studied empirical relations hold. This could be achieved by conducting a laddering process based on a means–end chain approach. Additionally, the impact of this framework on the construction of effective value propositions and employee market segmentation should be further explored.

This paper has revisited the construct of employer brand from a means–ends approach to propose an employee-centric view guiding employer brand strategies. As competition for the best employees sharpens, understanding how employer brand traits are valued in the eyes of different segments of employees and applicants may help organizations to develop more effective strategies to attract the best talent.

This study aims to investigate how the employees' attributes, capabilities, behavioral control and behavioral intentions affect their intention to become a supply chain manager (SCM). The study also investigates how employees' capabilities mediate the relationship between attributes and intention to become SCM.

The purposive sampling frame is employed to collect the data, and multiple statistical tools and techniques are used for analyzing the data.

The findings reveal that attributes are the most crucial factor for the capabilities of employees to become successful SCM. Employees' behavioral intention and capabilities have a significant impact on intention, whereas perceived behavioral control has a significant negative impact on it. Also, the result finds that capabilities partially mediate the relationship between attributes and intention to become an SCM.

The study extends the application of employees' intention to become a supply chain manager. The idea collected is based on Malaysia; thus, further study should be extended to assess the impact of employees' attributes, capabilities and behavioral control to become SCM as well as economic performance in other countries.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first empirical analysis on the relationship between employees' attributes, capabilities, behavioral control and intention to become SCM in the context of Malaysia. The findings will help the top management to select the right people as SCM and improve their attributes, capabilities and behavior so that they become an effective SCM.

Based on attribute research in marketing, importance-performance analysis (IPA) provides a useful analogy to examine employer branding concepts. The purpose of this paper is to use IPA to evaluate employees’ perceptions of important employer value proposition (EVP) attributes and their corresponding psychological contract fulfillment scores. IPA is applied to 40 EVP attributes and their corresponding EVP dimensions – “Economic Value”, “Development Value”, “Social Value”, “Work Value” and “Employer Reputation.” Further, the paper examines the difference between highly engaged and less engaged employees in their relationship to importance and fulfillment of the five EVP dimensions.

Data were drawn from information technology-business process management employees (n=520) in India through a questionnaire survey. The IPA matrix was used to plot the importance and fulfillment scores. Independent samples t-test was used to assess the difference between high and low engagement scores.

The results indicate that several EVP attributes fall within the “Concentrate Here” quadrant that requires more focus. With respect to EVP dimensions, social value needs focus; economic value received “Low Priority”; and work value and employer reputation are identified as “Potential Overkill.” The findings also suggest that, organizations should engage employees across all dimensions, by both prioritizing and fulfilling their obligations promptly.

The study highlights the need for HR practitioners and academicians to draw insights from attribute research in marketing to effectively devise the employer branding strategy of individual organizations.

This paper is the first of its kind to apply IPA to EVP attributes, which contributes to the growing literature on employer branding.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the emergence of employee leadership attributes and, further, examine its impact on employee work-related attitudes in terms of the competitive context of higher education institutions.

A data from a survey of 245 academic employees in Malaysian public universities were tested and analyzed on the 12 proposed hypotheses.

The results reveal that the emergence of employee leadership attributes, independently, has a significantly positive effect on work-related attitudes. Specifically, executive leadership has a significantly positive effect on organizational commitment, career satisfaction and job satisfaction, while innovative leadership has a significantly positive effect on organizational commitment and career satisfaction. In contrast, adaptive and effective leadership is associated when explaining organizational commitment, career satisfaction and job satisfaction, while innovative leadership is associated when explaining job satisfaction.

Academic scholars/leaders in higher education should realize that the emergence of employee leadership attributes has a positive effect on work-related attitudes, such as organizational commitment, career satisfaction and job satisfaction.

The paper extends the knowledge regarding complexity leadership theory which explains the emergence of employee leadership attributes naturally and, further, provides empirical evidence.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the importance of specific, quality-related employees’ attributes to the enhancement of product quality in food companies. The main goal is to examine the synergistic relationships between specific employees’ attributes, which have been related in literature to ISO 9000 successful implementation, to continuous improvement, operational performance and product quality.

The analysis includes an initial exploratory factor analysis, followed by confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling, in order to investigate the relations between the constructs of the proposed model.

The findings reveal that although the examined quality-related “employees’ attributes” do not directly contribute to “product quality”, they influence both “continuous improvement” and “operational performance” of food firms. The results also confirm the impact of both “continuous improvement” and “operational performance” on “product quality” and also that “continuous improvement” helps explain “operational performance”.

The domain in which the model has been validated, the restricted use of moderators in the model and lack of empirical validation of the model in non-food sector companies, based on various respondents from each company, are a number of limitations associated with this study which suggest future research proposals.

The findings of this study can motivate managers of food companies to focus on certain quality-related employees’ attributes in order to boost continuous improvement of ISO 9001 systems and operational performance of their companies, leading to product quality enhancement.

This study finds particular relevance in emphasizing that although specific quality-related employees’ attributes, as these are detected in literature, have a significant contribution towards continuous improvement and operational performance, they are not the only critical factor leading to product quality. More complex relationships need to be considered by integrating other constructs as major antecedents of food product quality.

Drawing from experiential theory and decision-making theory, this article aims to posit that workplace aesthetics acts as a driver for job choice when included with an employment offer. Whilst organisational literature has recognised that office experiential cues in general, and aesthetics in particular, affect employee performance and well-being, employer attractiveness scales have not yet incorporated office aesthetics as a component of job-offer choice.

A choice-based conjoint (CBC) experiment was conducted to estimate the weighted utilities of three aesthetic and three non-aesthetic employer attributes. Subsequently, the attributes' importance in the job choice decision was estimated.

The results indicate that aesthetic attributes in the workplace can be equally important in the decision-making process as non-aesthetic attributes and that aesthetic attributes deliver as much utility as non-aesthetic attributes in driving job choice.

These conclusions are relevant for Human Resource (HR) managers engaged in crafting job offers, who should consider that employees may improve their assessment of a job offer as a result of superior organisational aesthetics demonstrated during the recruitment process as well as in contexts where employees would be expected to combine remote and office-based work.

The present study represents a novel approach to understanding job applicants' preferences for aesthetic elements in the workplace. The results suggest that the workplace experience is relativistic and that considering applicants' latent preferences is crucial when designing efficient job offers.

The purpose of this paper is to achieve three objectives: to investigate perceived quality of work life (QWL) need attributes among frontline employees in the lodging industry, to assess the asymmetric relationships between QWL attributes and job satisfaction (JS) and to prioritize QWL attributes for the effective management of JS.

Data were analyzed using exploratory factor analysis, impact range-performance analysis and impact-asymmetry analysis.

Each QWL attribute showed significant and various asymmetric or linear impacts on JS or job dissatisfaction (JDS).

Study results provided critical information for hotel managers to prioritize several attributes, such as safe work place, fair pay, empowerment and effective training, to enhance JS and reduce JDS for frontline personnel.

This study sheds light for identifying the underlying structure of QWL and further investigate the asymmetric relationship between QWL attributes and JS/JDS using need satisfaction, self-determination and three-factor theory in the lodging industry.

This paper seeks to use the Kano model to gain a deeper understanding of attributes of effective frontline employees dealing with customer complainants in personal interactions. Previous research revealed that excitement factors deteriorate to basic factors over time. This research aims to investigate whether the same phenomenon holds true for attributes of service employees.

Data were collected using Kano questionnaires from 272 respondents with complaining experience in the UK and Saudi Arabia, these being two countries at different stages of service sector development.

The analysis of the Kano questionnaires for the UK reveals that complaining customers take the contact employee's ability to listen carefully for granted. The Kano results for Saudi Arabia clearly indicate that complaining customers are (still) easier to delight than their UK counterparts.

Even though the study has a sample size similar to several existing Kano studies, future research studies could still use larger probability samples that represent the broader (complaining) consumer population in the selected countries.

If companies know what complaining customers expect, frontline employees may be trained to adapt their behaviour to their customers' underlying expectations. For this purpose, the paper gives several suggestions to managers to improve active complaint handling and management.

The study adds to the understanding of effective complaint handling. The findings are the first to show that employee factors that are performance factors in a highly developed service economy can still delight customers in a less developed service economy.

Emphasis on quality and reducing costs has led many health-care organizations to reconfigure their management, process, and quality control infrastructures. Many are lean, a management philosophy with roots in manufacturing industries that emphasizes elimination of waste. Successful lean implementation requires systemic change and strong leadership. Despite the importance of leadership to successful lean implementation, few researchers have probed the question of ideal leadership attributes to achieve lean thinking in health care. The purpose of this paper is to provide insight into applicable attributes for lean leaders in health care.

The authors systematically reviewed the literature on principles of leadership and, using Dombrowski and Mielke’s (2013) conceptual model of lean leadership, developed a parallel theoretical model for lean leadership in health care.

This work contributes to the development of a new framework for describing leadership attributes within lean management of health care.

The summary of attributes can provide a model for health-care leaders to apply lean in their organizations.