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The purpose of this paper is to use Twitter analysis to explore diner perceptions of four types of Asian restaurants (Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Thai).

Using 86,015 tweets referring to Asian restaurants, this research used text mining and sentiment analysis to find meaningful patterns, popular words and emotional states in opinions.

Twitter users held mingled perceptions of different types of Asian restaurants. Sentiment analysis and ANOVA showed that the average sentiment scores for Chinese restaurants was significantly lower than the other three Asian restaurants. While most positive tweets referred to food quality, many negative tweets suggested problems associated with service quality or food culture.

This research provides a methodology that future researchers can use in applying social media analytics to explore major issues and extract sentiment information from text messages.

Limited research has been conducted applying social media analysis in hospitality research. This study fills a gap by using social media analytics with Twitter data to examine the Twitter users’ thoughts and emotions for four different types of Asian restaurants.

The hospitality industry has one of the most diversified workforces. This study aims to examine the effect of employees’ perceptions toward diversity management on the company’s financial performance. The current study also examines the moderating effect of board members’ diversity level on the association between employees’ perceptions and financial outcomes.

From online reviews, the authors identified multi-faucets of diversity management and measured employees’ perceptions of diversity management. Using panel data analysis, the relationships among employees’ perceptions, board members’ diversity level and companies’ financial performance were studied.

This study found that employees’ perceptions of diversity management positively influence the company’s financial performance and the relationship was positively moderated by board members’ diversity level.

Findings show that hospitality employees perceive nine diversity and inclusion categories (age, organizational climate, culture, disability, education, gender, physical differences, policy and practice and race) that companies need to consider when developing and implementing diversity management. Moreover, practitioners need to eliminate the gap between board members and employees when applying diversity management.

Drawing upon service–profit chain theory, this study extends hospitality literature regarding diversity management by demonstrating how employees perceive working environments created by diversity management affects the organizational financial outcome. Moreover, this study emphasizes the exemplary role of board members as policy and practice makers, to provide employees with the legitimacy and responsibilities of diversity management.

This paper aims to examine the influence of role stressors on service-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) mediated by depersonalization, with a moderator of social capital.

A self-administered online survey was completed by 265 current hotel frontline employees in the USA.

The study reveals that role ambiguity has a detrimental impact on service-oriented OCB. The results show that depersonalization is found to be a critical mediator that modifies the implications of both role ambiguity and role conflict for service-oriented OCB. Furthermore, the negative effect of role conflict on depersonalization is buffered by social capital.

Hotel firms that would like to encourage employees to exert proactive behaviors in their jobs might benefit from developing an effective way to reduce role stressors in their jobs. However, given that such role stressors are inevitable in the workplace, hotel firms should place more emphasis on enhancing social capital as an effective way to manage role stressors in the workplace.

This study advances previous studies on role stressors and service-oriented OCB by addressing how and why role stressors influence employees’ service-oriented OCB. This study incorporates advanced job demand-resource theory by identifying social capital as a critical job resource to buffer the detrimental impact of role conflict on depersonalization in the hotel context.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between innovation and authenticity by developing a conceptual framework that illuminates the key constructs.

The paper adopts a common perspective – the customer – for both innovation and authenticity. A conceptual framework identifying the roles of centrality and distinctiveness in the innovation–authenticity relationship is developed and justified based upon prior research regarding brand extensions and authenticity.

The innovation–authenticity relationship can be visualized and managed using two constructs: centrality and distinctiveness. Centrality is proposed to have a positive relationship, whereas distinctiveness is proposed to have a non-linear (inverted-U) relationship.

The paper contributes a new conceptualization of the innovation–authenticity–loyalty relationship. It applies C–D Mapping in a completely new way to provide managerially relevant visualization of customers’ perceptions of a new innovation vis-à-vis the parent brand to guide strategic decision making. The paper also suggests areas for further research to improve our understanding of successful innovation–authenticity alignment.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate a research model of employee empowerment along with its contextual determinants (i.e. leader-member exchange (LMX) and schedule flexibility) and primary consequence (i.e. service performance) for restaurant workers in New Zealand and South Korea. The study further examines a moderating role of national differences derived from the power distance theory for the hypothesized paths between empowerment and its determinants and consequences.

This study utilized traditional paper-and-pencil surveys for data collection. A final sample of 303 service employees from restaurants in New Zealand (n=152) and South Korea (n=151) was used to test research hypotheses by structural equation modeling using LISREL (version 8.80).

The study concludes with two core findings supporting research hypotheses. First, as hypothesized, employees who consider their schedule flexible with high LMX quality with their immediate supervisor are more likely to feel empowered, and empowered workers are more likely to perform well in customer services. Furthermore, the results show that the impact of schedule flexibility and LMX on empowerment and the impact of empowerment on service performance are more salient among South Korean employees than their New Zealand counterpart.

Based on job characteristics, work adjustment, and social exchange theories, this study develops and tests a research model of employee empowerment including service context-relevant determinants, i.e., schedule flexibility and LMX, as well as a crucial work outcome, i.e., service performance, using two different national samples. The findings of this study contribute to the body of knowledge in understanding the organizational dynamic of employee empowerment in the service industry, suggesting that managers incorporate relevant contextual practices to promote empowerment, which ultimately enhances employees’ service performance. It is also recommended that such practices are carefully implemented, taking into consideration the cultural background of the workforce.

Drawing on social penetration theory (SPT) and social exchange theory, this study examines whether and why customer empathy for frontline employees (FLEs) and employee self-disclosure influence customer citizenship behavior (CCB).

This study’s hypotheses were tested using two studies (study 1 had an experimental design, and study 2 had a survey design) with restaurant customers.

The results indicate that when customers have a higher level of customer empathy for FLE, the likelihood that customers will exhibit CCB increases. Employee self-disclosure provides a greater advantage in fostering CCB. A mediating effect of rapport in the relationship between customer empathy for FLE, employee self-disclosure and CCB is also found, while no interaction effect of customer empathy for FLE and employee self-disclosure on CCB is supported.

Maintaining a focus on the interpersonal nature of interactions between customers and employees in co-creating values, this research advances the CCB literature by newly identifying customer empathy for FLEs and employee self-disclosure as predictors of CCB that have not yet been tapped. The underlying mechanism via rapport is also explained using the value co-creation perspective.

Recently, the hotel industry has increased its adoption of environmental management practices. Because the research on hotel environmental management often overlooks organizational factors, this study aims to investigate the effects of an environmental management strategy (EMS) on organizational citizenship behavior and tested the mediating roles of organizational trust and commitment in explaining those effects.

An online survey of US hotel employees yielded 373 complete responses. Data were analyzed with structural equation modeling.

EMS positively affected organizational trust and commitment, which ultimately influenced organizational citizenship behavior. Furthermore, organizational trust and commitment fully mediated the relationship between EMS and organizational citizenship behavior.

The results establish the foundation for applying EMS in organizational operations. The findings can benefit managers, as they show how hotel firms’ prosocial practices can enhance employees’ positive behaviors.

Despite the importance of employee attitudes and behaviors, little is known about the mechanism by which employees perceive the influence of an EMS on organizational citizenship behaviors. Therefore, the study examined organizational trust and commitment as mediators of the relationship between EMS and organizational citizenship behavior.