Search results

Aims to profile the ethical decision‐making foundations and referents which influence ethical decision making for small hotel operations in the USA. Reviews the precepts of egoism, benevolence and principle used as criteria in decision making and the main referent sources of individual, local and cosmopolitan used when applying these precepts. Research consisted of 1,500 operators in nine different regions and a response rate of 40 percent. The questionnaire consisted of the Ethical Climate Questionnaire plus demographic variables such as: gender, experience, education level, property type and position classification. Findings included: managers/owners mostly operate from an egoism perspective and an individual referent. Develops a model to explain these ethical precepts and referents.

Centres on measuring lodging operator compliance with regard to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The intent was to measure current level of physical compliance with the ADA; future plans in meeting or exceeding ADA requirements; and barriers which impeded complete compliance. The participants in this study were selected from a list of hotels and motels contained in the 1994 version of the Hotel and Travel Index. The lodging operations were represented by full service, limited service and economy properties which varied from 25 to 615 guest rooms per property, restaurant, and meeting facilities. The findings of this study suggested that total compliance has not been achieved in certain areas, vagueness of the legislation is not necessarily a barrier in compliance, and financial constraints are a barrier in non‐compliance. Implies that lodging operators must properly position their products and services, otherwise the disabled travellers’ needs will not be totally met, and that lodging operators need to continue their civic respon‐ sibility for meeting the needs of the disabled travellers’ needs.

The purpose of this paper is to ascertain the level of socially responsible behavior of the top ten hotel companies.

This study used content analysis method to identify and describe social responsibility (SR) patterns in web sites, annual reports and corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports for the top ten hotel companies as listed in Hotels magazine.

The findings reveal that 80 percent of the hotel companies analyzed reported socially responsible activities relating to some form of charitable donations. A diversity policy was reported by 60 percent of the hotel companies, while 40 percent provided some mention of SR in their vision or mission statements. Some companies were highly focused on providing a balanced approach to SR while other hotel companies were less focused in their efforts. The areas of SR that seemed to be lacking with regards to reporting were environmental, and vision and values.

Future studies should collect data from hospitality organizations and potential shareholders via interviews and surveys.

With rising consumer awareness regarding corporate responsibility (CR), it is important for the industry to begin profiling their efforts at SR as part of their overall corporate and business strategies.

This is one of the first research papers looking at CSR in the hospitality industry. It provides some practical implications about reporting of socially responsible activities for hospitality organizations.

This chapter examines the role of stress and emotional well-being as critical antecedents of important outcomes in the military context. In it, we provide a framework for understanding the sources of stress among military personnel. Using this model, we review the risk factors associated with combat and deployment cycles in addition to protective factors, such as personality characteristics and social support, which mitigate the effects of stress on emotional well-being and performance. Finally, we evaluate efforts by military organizations to enhance the emotional well-being of service members through training programs designed to build resiliency.

The purpose of the article is to present and test a model regarding important factors that may help reduce unethical behavior (i.e. misselling) of salespeople in the financial services industry.

To test the hypotheses, telemarketers from the life insurance industry in South Korea were surveyed (n=204).

Using structural equation modeling, the results indicate that: ethics training is positively related to salesperson ethical attitude; ethical climate is positively related to salesperson ethical attitude; selling pressure is unrelated to ethical attitude; competitive intensity is positively related to salesperson ethical attitude; competitive intensity is unrelated to misselling; and misselling is inversely related to salesperson ethical attitude, positively associated with product complexity, and positively related to product variety.

Future empirical work could: investigate different variables from those utilized in this study; consider inter‐country and gender differences; use alternate sources of data to examine stability of the findings; and employ samples of firms in other industries and other marketing channels. Limitations include a limited number of study variables, use of solely the telemarketing channel for life insurance, a preponderance of female respondents, and potential for socially desirable responses.

Management should seek to maintain a high ethical attitude among sales agents to help foster a reduction in unethical behavior. Sales personnel should receive extensive ethics training to help enhance their ethical attitude in the job. Salespeople should also seek to establish and maintain long‐term relationships with their customers and to pursue long‐term profitability. Sales managers should seek to educate consumers about the various types of financial products, their respective strengths and weaknesses, and the appropriate conditions under which they should be purchased.

The potential for financial services industry salespeople to behave unethically has received extensive research attention. A key area, though, which has been virtually ignored is antecedents of misselling of financial services. The article seeks to address partially this gap in the literature.

Purpose – We build a theoretical lens that draws on an emerging theory of positive work relationships to examine whether constructive emotional expressions in work relationships influence changes in individuals' affective commitment to their organization.

Design/methodology/approach – Using longitudinal data collected from full-time employees, we employed a latent-difference-score (LDS) approach to examine whether changes in emotional carrying capacity could account for changes in organizational commitment.

Findings – The findings support this hypothesis and suggest a new perspective on the ways in which a change in relationship capacity may create changes in people's commitment to an organization.

Research limitations – The main limitation concerns the use of self-report, albeit time-lagged, data.

Practical implications – Developing higher levels of employee affective commitment is a key challenge for many organizations. Our study can help managers in recognizing the importance of building a relational space in which employees are able to express emotions frequently and openly, as well as engaging with other employees in listening to their emotional experiences and responding in a constructive manner.

Originality/value – This study contributes to an emergent body of literature that adopts a positive psychology lens to the study of employee experiences at work, by investigating the capacity to express emotions in general and its influence on people's affective commitment to the organization.

This paper aims to illustrate how business ethics research is progressing in the tourism and hospitality (T/H) industries and suggest a research agenda.

This study applies bibliometric analysis to articles related to business ethics topics in the T/H fields published between 1995 and 2014 in six, nine and five leading hospitality-, tourism- and business ethics-oriented journals, respectively.

This study provides a broad view on business ethics research in the T/H fields based on leading authors, institutions, themes and methods used over the past two decades.

This study assesses the progress of business ethics research in the hospitality and tourism fields. Only articles published in select, prominent Social Sciences Citation Index journals were analyzed.

This analysis focuses on published articles related to business ethics in the T/H fields. As such, it facilitates researchers, academic scholars and professionals in contributing to the field more effectively and advancing scientific progress in the literature. It aids practitioners by evaluating the extent to which scholars have investigated key issues in the field.

This study is the first to utilize bibliometric analysis to assess business ethics research focusing on T/H activities published in leading tourism, hospitality and business ethics journals.

Because salespeople operating under an outcome‐based control system are likely to be motivated by self‐interest, sales quotas are believed to drive salespeople to perform unethical behavior, particularly if this behavior is deemed necessary to achieve quota. Accordingly, this article examines the relationship between perceived quota difficulty and moral judgment. Two factors potentially moderating this relationship, ethical climate and consequences for not making quota, are also considered, as well as the influence of market attractiveness and self‐efficacy on quota difficulty. The analysis indicates a significant relationship between quota difficulty and moral judgment when salespeople foresee negative consequences for failing to achieve quota. Further, self‐efficacy and market attractiveness affected perceived quota difficulty. Implications of the study are offered.

This study investigates service excellence and hospitality perceptions in a hospital setting for an exploratory study of the familiarity of hospital administration with the topic of hospitality and service excellence. It is unique from other hospitality and service research in that it considers hospitality and service excellence as separate concepts, and specifically considers hospitality, such as service excellence, as a philosophy that may be transcend its traditional industries of origin. Part of the premise of this study explores how hospitality in a healthcare setting extends past service excellence in offering a service to a patient to create a comfortable and welcoming environment to combat patient anxiety and stress. This exploratory research provides a necessary foundation for more extensive empirical testing of the premise.

Using a qualitative case study, this research measured top management's perceptions of service excellence and hospitality within one community-based hospital located in Orlando, Florida. Three conclusions were revealed: (1) a mixed commitment by top management to concepts of service excellence and hospitality, (2) the terms “service excellence” and “hospitality” were generally discussed as though they were equivalent, and (3) significant external and internal barriers to the delivery of service excellence and hospitality in the hospital setting were identified.

The study has implications for healthcare organizations seeking to implement practices of hospitality and service management to improve overall healthcare service delivery. Additionally, the study of hospitality outside of its traditional industry boundaries may result in the generation of new improvement options/opportunities for traditional managers of hospitality businesses and organizational researchers. The study can be used as a foundation for the formulation of additional studies in the area of service excellence and hospitality applied to other layers in an organization irrespective of industry setting.