Search results

This study aims to develop a measurement scale for employee aesthetic labor (AL) in hospitality from the perspectives of frontline employees of international tourist hotels and airlines.

The authors utilized both qualitative and quantitative methods to develop the AL scale. Participants were frontline employees of international tourist hotels and airlines in Taiwan. The authors’ analysis incorporated both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses to examine the results.

A four-factor, 21-item hospitality AL scale with satisfactory validity and reliability was created. The four AL factors are appropriate voice and response, pleasant appearance, corporate aesthetic image delivery and polite and elegant demeanor.

The developed AL scale can serve as a useful tool for the hospitality industry in terms of employee recruitment and training to align with the corporation's aesthetic image and reduce the potential burden of AL on employees.

Based on dramaturgical theory, this study focuses on the AL practices that are performed during service encounters with customers. It is potentially the first AL scale to be constructed using rigorous scale development procedures.

This study examines the impact of customer value creation on hotel performance. Customer value is seen as a multi-phase and multi-party process that combines hotel and tourist perspectives while also integrating the participation of frontline employees. The study also investigates financial performance (FP) and customer-based performance (CBP).

Data were collected from Morocco through multiple-informant design surveys to explore three perspectives related to three actors involved in the process, that is, the managers, the employees and the tourists. The hypotheses were tested with SmartPLS4.

The findings reveal that customer value positively and significantly impacts not only the FP of hotels but also the CBP. The results highlight a sequential relationship in which each actor drives the subsequent phase to definitively enhance the hotel's performance. The results further show significant mediation effects in the customer value sequence. Moreover, the results show a significant and positive effect of CBP on FP.

Theoretical and managerial implications of the research are discussed and future important researches are drawn from the study limitations.

Managers must be aware that frontline employees and guests are crucial for creating customer value, which enables to improve their performance. The results highlight that hotels should motivate and involve frontline employees in value propositions (VP) development. Furthermore, the guests are the final arbiters of value who drive hotels' performance. Moreover, for additional FP, managers are required both to deliver superior value and create loyal customers.

This study mostly confirms previous findings and highlights a sequential relationship among three phases involving three actors of customer value. However, it reveals more reasonable and robust results in the mediation effect of the value offering (VO) between the VP and the perceived value-in-use (PVI). This study is also the first to provide evidence on the mediation effect of the PVI between the VO and the CBP.

In this study, the authors develop a path model and investigate the effect of pandemic-oriented customer mistreatment on service sabotage through the lens of self-presentation theory. Moreover, the authors question the role of service climate as a moderator of the relationship between service sabotage and service performance.

Data were collected via a survey of 165 F&B frontline employees in restaurants in Iran. The hypotheses are examined using confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modeling and ordinary least squares regression.

The findings reveal that POCM has a substantial and positive effect on service sabotage, and service climate mitigates the effect of service sabotage on service performance.

The study introduces and conceptually defines the term POCM. Furthermore, the authors apply the self-presentation theory as the overarching theory to explain underlying conditions in customer mistreatment and service sabotage. Moreover, although prior literature has described the saboteur–customer relationship as a one-line interaction, this study contributes to employee sabotage as a multi-linear transaction.

In this study, the authors identify new perspectives on the dark side of hospitality services in crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors argue that pandemic-induced changes are essential not simply because they change customers’ moods and lower their patience threshold, but they further provoke ostentatious behaviors in saboteur–customer relations. These findings shed new light on the literature and provide managerial implications for enhancing hospitality performance.

This study aims to examine the relationship between high commitment human resource management (HCHRM) practices and employee well-being in the food service industry, with a focus on the mediating roles of job demands and psychological conditions.

A survey was conducted among 296 frontline employees in the food service industry, and the data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) in AMOS ver26.

The results showed that HCHRM practices do not directly affect employee well-being. However, psychological conditions play a crucial role in mediating the relationship between HCHRM practices and employee well-being. Specifically, the psychological conditions of meaningfulness and availability significantly predicted work engagement and mediated the relationship between HCHRM practices and employee well-being. On the other hand, job demands did not mediate the relationship between HCHRM practices and employee well-being.

Although the study addressed common method variance, the cross-sectional nature of the data limits the ability to infer causal relationships among variables. Future studies could adopt a longitudinal research design to investigate the causal relationships among variables. In addition, the study recommends that managers in the food service industry adopt HCHRM practices and provide necessary psychological conditions to promote employee well-being.

This study extends the current literature on HCHRM and employee well-being in the food service industry by providing new insights into the mediating role of psychological conditions. The findings suggest that HCHRM practices can indirectly promote employee well-being through the enhancement of psychological conditions. These insights could help managers in the food service industry to design effective HRM strategies that foster employee well-being and reduce turnover.

Drawing on social information processing theory (SIP), this paper examines whether and how humble leadership affects employees' service improvisation (ESI) in the hospitality industry. Further, the study investigates the mediating role of psychological safety and the moderating role of creative self-efficacy (CSE).

To test the proposed relationships, the study adopts a cross-sectional design, administering questionnaires to 456 frontline staff in Egypt’s hospitality industry across three main sectors: restaurants, hotels and travel agencies. SPSS 27 and AMOS 22 were used for statistical analysis.

The study reveals a positive relationship between humble leadership and ESI, partially mediated by psychological safety. Furthermore, CSE not only strengthens the relationship between psychological safety and ESI but also enhances the indirect effect of humble leadership on ESI via psychological safety.

The study offers valuable insights for practitioners in the hospitality industry. To boost ESI, organizations can incorporate humble leadership attributes into their leadership development programs. Fostering a psychologically safe workplace would facilitate the positive impact of humble leadership on ESI. Recognizing CSE as a pivotal moderator underscores the importance of strategically selecting and developing employees with high CSE. These insights aim to cultivate a more service-oriented and effective workforce in the hospitality industry.

This study significantly contributes to leadership research in the hospitality industry by uncovering a previously unexplored link between humble leadership and ESI. Exploring psychological safety as a mediator and CSE as a moderator enhances our comprehension of how and when humble leadership influences ESI.

This paper aims to explore the role of frontline employees (FLEs) as mediators in transformative service processes within services targeting vulnerable users.

This paper is based on a case study of the development and implementation of a dementia village, and the data consist of documents, in-depth interviews and field observations.

The analysis identifies FLEs as mediators in six different roles. These roles highlight how FLEs perform as mediators, acting in between and for vulnerable users and thus supporting their well-being. Specifically, the roles explicate the mediating role of FLEs in the design and planning of transformative changes and in daily work practices.

The different mediating roles of FLEs presented here should inform care providers and managers of how employees can become assets for supporting vulnerable users’ well-being during the design and planning stages of transformative change and through daily service work.

This paper offers novel insights into the multifaceted roles of FLEs in transformative services. The findings add to the current debate on mediation in transformative services and contribute to the literature by extending and refining the established conceptual and empirical understandings of the role of transformative service mediators in consumers’ well-being.

This research aims to study the effects of mindfulness and self-compassion in addressing COVID-19 phobia issues. To date, not a single study has examined the influence of these constructs on COVID-19 phobia amongst frontline employees (FLEs) in the services sector. In this context, the present study examined the association between FLE’s trait mindfulness and COVID-19 phobia and the mediating effect of self-compassion on this relationship.

Data were collected using 335 FLEs working in the Indian services sector, and the analysis was undertaken using the PROCESS macro of Hayes (2018).

FLE's trait mindfulness was found to influence COVID-19 phobia negatively, and the mediation role of self-compassion was also noted. Findings for the COVID-19 phobia composite and its four facets are discussed.

Corporate leaders could encourage mindfulness and self-compassion training helping in buffering the negative issues associated with COVID-19 phobia among FLEs.

It is one of the few studies conducted in the South-Asian context that highlights how mindfulness can help enhance self-compassion among frontline service sector employees while guiding them to overcome COVID-19 phobia. This could be the first study to examine the mediating effects of self-compassion in the relationships between mindfulness and COVID-19 phobia.

This study examines how leaders’ narcissistic rivalry (LNR) affects the in-role performance (IRP) and proactive customer service performance (PCSP) of employees in the hospitality industry. Specifically, this study investigates the mediating role of psychological distress and the moderating role of locus of control (LOC) in the aforementioned relationships.

This study administered a multi-wave, multi-source questionnaire survey with 323 employees working in 11 full-service hotels in China. Statistical analyses were performed using the PROCESS macro in SPSS 26 software and structural equation modeling using Mplus 8.3 software.

The authors' results suggest that LNR can negatively affect hospitality employees’ IRP and PCSP and that these relationships are mediated by psychological distress. Additionally, the impact of LNR on psychological distress can be lessened by internal LOC.

This study contributes to the literature on leader narcissism by investigating how LNR affects IRP and PCSP among hospitality employees. Drawing on conservation of resources theory, this study also identifies a novel mediating mechanism (psychological distress) connecting LNR to hospitality employees’ service outcomes. Furthermore, this study reveals the moderating role of LOC in the relationship between LNR and psychological distress.

This study aims to investigate the influential factors driving customer-oriented constructive deviance (COCD) within the context of the tourism and hospitality industry. Specifically, the authors explore the role of moral emotions as mediators and moral disengagement as a moderator.

In Study 1, the participant pool consisted of 259 frontline service employees hailing from a diverse selection of 54 four- and five-star hotels. Study 2 took an alternative approach, using a scenario-based experiment with 212 participants.

The results reported that organizational injustice toward customers is positively related to other-condemning emotions and leads to COCD. The results also reported that perceived customer citizenship behavior (CCB) positively relates to other-praising emotions, resulting in constructive deviance from customer-oriented. Moreover, these findings support moral emotions and moral disengagement interactions.

This paper shows that an organization’s injustice of external parties, such as customers, may provide important information that employees use to shape their moral emotions (e.g. other condemning emotions) and behavior toward the organization (e.g. COCD). Furthermore, this study confirms that perceived customer citizenship behavior contributes to COCD through other-praising emotions.

In the era of the service economy, the personalized needs of customers are increasing rapidly. It often occurs that front-line employees bend organizational rules to help customers. The study sought to explore the influence mechanism of servant leadership on specific dimensions of customer-oriented deviance from the manager’s perspective, examine the mediating role of psychological security, and the moderating role of error management climate in the process.

We conducted an online survey study in China from April 10 to 29, 2023. We use online survey questionnaire technique and random sampling method for data collection. The authors collected 385 questionnaires from China and tested the model by SPSS 26.0 and AMOS 24.0.

The results show that servant leadership significantly promotes employees' deviant customer-oriented behaviors, psychological security plays a mediating role between servant leadership and deviant customer-oriented behaviors, and error management climate has a positive moderating effect between servant leadership and deviant customer-oriented behaviors.

This study explores the influence mechanism of servant leadership on deviant customer-oriented behaviors. The results of this study not only enrich the theoretical research on the formation mechanism of deviant customer-oriented behaviors but also provide a reference for leaders to correctly view and effectively manage employees' deviant customer-oriented behaviors.