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Empowerment in hospitality organizations: Customer orientation and organizational support
International Journal of Hospitality Management 30 (2011) 422–428
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International Journal of Hospitality Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijhosman
Empowerment in hospitality organizations: Customer orientation and organizational support Heejung Ro ∗ , Po-Ju Chen 1 Rosen College of Hospitality Management, University of Central Florida, 9907 Universal BLVD, Orlando, FL 32819, United States
a r t i c l e
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Keywords: Empowerment Customer orientation Training Reward Service standards communication
a b s t r a c t Although empowering employees has often been prescribed as an efficient strategy for hospitality organizations, the strategy alone cannot ensure success. Individual and organizational factors should be considered to increase employees’ perception of empowerment. This study examines the impact of employees’ customer orientation and organizational factors on the employee empowerment perceptions. Our findings, based on a survey of 203 guest contact employees, suggest that organizations should hire customer oriented people, guide them with service training, provide a reward system, and facilitate service standards communication in order to increase perceived empowerment. Implications of these findings for hospitality service managers are discussed. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Employee empowerment is described as enabling or authorizing employees to make decisions to solve guest issues by themselves (Conger and Kanugo, 1988; Jha and Nair, 2008). Empowerment is especially advocated for heterogeneous services where guest contact employees need to adapt their behaviors to the demands of each and every service encounter (Chebat and Kollias, 2000; Ueno, 2008). Although many hospitality organizations have come to expect employee empowerment to result in improved service quality and guest satisfaction, its effectiveness may be limited if the factors required to cultivate and nurture it do not exist. Two factors that should be considered are: individual and organizational factors (Koberg et al., 1999). Previous research suggests that some employees may perform better than others because they are more willing, able, or talented (Berry et al., 1988; Chebat and Kollias, 2000). Thus, empowerment must be accompanied by a careful recruitment effort to select “empowerable” employees who can be inculcated with the skills and attitude conducive to exercising an acceptable and responsible decision making (Hales and Klidas, 1998). Researchers also suggest that employees’ perceptions of the work environment are a necessary consideration in the empowerment process (Robbins et al., 2002). Some researchers suggest that service organizations should invest in service skills training
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 407 903 8075; fax: +1 407 903 8105. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (H. Ro), [email protected] (P.-J. Chen). 1 Tel.: +1 407 903 8029; fax: +1 407 903 8105. 0278-4319/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ijhm.2010.09.003
to enhance the ability of employees to meet the complex service demands of customers (Schlesinger and Heskett, 1991; Varca, 2004). Other researchers emphasize the importance of rewards in order to influence employees’ behavior (Hartline and Ferrell, 1996; Gkorezis and Petridou, 2008). In addition, service standards of internal service quality should be communicated and understood by all members of the organization, including line employees, so that employees are more confident to act autonomously (Lytle et al., 1988; Yoon et al., 2007). These previous studies suggest that employees will not necessarily feel empowered without appropriate perceptions of service training, rewards, and service standards communication in the organization. Although empowering guest contact employees has often been prescribed as an efficient strategy for hospitality organizations, individual and organizational factors should be considered to gain more insight into employees’ perception of empowerment. A few studies examined either people factors or organizational factors, but rarely both. We believe that understanding these two factors is important to provide useful insights into employee empowerment. This study examines the impact of employee customer orientation and organizational supporting factors on perceived empowerment. We specifically focus on customer orientation, training, rewards, and service standard communication. The findings of this study can add to the literature of employee empowerment by addressing the effects of employees’ individual customer orientation tendency and organizational supporting system on perceived empowerment through an empirical examination. The results also offer managerial insights into acquiring and developing customer oriented guest contact employees who may best provide quality guest service via empowerment in a service oriented organization.
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2. Literature review 2.1. Empowerment A classical view of the industrialization of service suggests that humanistic process in service delivery renders the service sector forever inefficient (Levitt, 1976). Yet, service researchers argue back that the humanistic element can be the power of service excellence, so called employee empowerment (Zemke and Schaaf, 1989; Bowen and Lawler, 1992; Teng and Barrows, 2009). Employee empowerment involves managers giving more freedom of choice in decisions and power to frontline staff that allows further opportunities, authority, and responsibility in the workplace (Brymer, 1991). Empowering employees contributes to the organizational effectiveness and guest satisfaction by creating more job satisfaction and self-esteem for employees (Bowen and Lawler, 1992) and engaging in discretionary behavior aiming at meeting or exceeding guests’ expectations in service encounters (Klidas et al., 2007). The empowered behaviors can be manifested by bending the rules to please customers (Shimko, 1994), providing guests with prompt responses to service requests and quicker solutions to service failures (Lewis and Clacher, 2001), using creativity to please guests even beyond what is expected (Lashley, 1997; Zhang and Bartol, 2010), and exercising discretion in their dealings with guests (Kelly et al., 1996; Bone and Mowen, 2010). Yet, empowerment may not be appropriate for every service organization and the inconsistency of service quality still remains as one of the main criticisms (Bowen and Lawler, 1992; Lashley, 1995). Forrester (2000) argues that the main reason why organizational empowerment initiatives often fall short is that they take a “one-size fits all empowerment approach” that fails to differentiate between employees’ capabilities and desires. Thus, researchers posit that empowerment is a matter of degree rather than absolute, indicating that managers need to make judgments regarding whom to empower and to what extent (Ford and Fottler, 1995). There are two streams of research on the conceptualization of empowerment, structural and psychological (Jha and Nair, 2008). The structural empowerment approach focuses on the delegation of decision making power from higher to lower levels in the organizational hierarchy (Heller, 2003) as well as a dyadic relationship between empowering leadership and subordinate employees (Ahearnen et al., 2005; Zhang and Bartol, 2010). The psychological empowerment approach conceptualizes empowerment as an experienced psychological state or set of cognition (Conger and Kanugo, 1988; Zhang and Bartol, 2010). Thus, empowerment has been viewed as a motivational construct described as an intrinsic need for self-determination or a belief in personal self-efficacy (Conger and Kanugo, 1988). Due to its complex nature, many researchers proposed a multi-faceted structure of empowerment construct (Menon, 2001; Spreitzer, 1995; Thomas and Velthouse, 1990). Especially, Thomas and Velthouse (1990) extended Conger and Kaungo’s psychological empowerment approach by specifying a set of assessments such as: meaningfulness, competence, choice and impact. Drawing on Conger and Kanugo (1988) and Thomas and Velthouse (1990), Spreitzer (1995) defined empowerment as a psychological state and motivational construct manifested in four cognitions: Meaning, Competence, Self-Determination, and Impact. The Meaning dimension refers to the values of a work goal or purpose, judged in relation to an individual’s own ideals or standards. The Competence dimension refers to an employee’s belief in his/her capability to perform activities with skill. The Self-Determination dimension refers to an individual’s autonomy in the initiation and continuation of work behaviors and processes. Finally, the Impact
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dimension refers to the degree to which an individual can influence strategic, administrative, or operating outcomes at work. This study focuses on employees’ psychological empowerment by using Spreitzer’s conceptualization. The employees’ perception of empowerment or psychological empowerment has been examined from various aspects including employee demographics, organizational size, and industry type, but findings tend to be inconclusive (Dimitriades and Kufidu, 2004; Honegger and Appelbaum, 1998). Other researchers found that empowerment affects the employees’ behavior and attitudinal dispositions such as adaptability, self-efficacy, job satisfaction, role conflict, and organizational commitment (Chebat and Kollias, 2000; Lee et al., 2006). While the consequences of empowerment are well acknowledged, its antecedents to increase perception of empowerment are not investigated extensively. Individual and organizational factors should be considered to gain more insight into employees’ perception of empowerment (Koberg et al., 1999; Amenumey and Lockwood, 2008). Based on relevant previous research, we have identified an individual factor-customer orientation and three organizational supporting factors-training, rewards, and service standards communication, as important factors that can make a significant impact on guest contact employees’ perceived empowerment. In the following sections, we will discuss employee customer orientation, service training, service rewards, and service standards communication. 2.2. Customer orientation Ahearnen et al. (2005) emphasized the importance of employee personality attributes on perceived psychological empowerment. Henning-Thurau (2004) states, “service employees’ level of customer orientation is a key driver for customers’ satisfaction with the service firm . . . employing customer-oriented service personnel, although not guaranteeing economic success, does represent a crucial step toward it (p. 472).” Customer orientation is defined as a surface-level personality-trait of an employee’s predisposition to meet customer needs in the job context (Brown et al., 2002; Donavan et al., 2004; Liu and Chen, 2006). Some employees may perform better than others because they are more talented and have a predisposition to go beyond the call of duty by providing more than what is required by their roles and job description (Chebat and Kollias, 2000). Previous studies have shown that customer orientated employees yield better job performance, and exhibit higher organizational citizenship behavior (Babakus et al., 2009; Dienhart and Gregoire, 1993; Donavan et al., 2004; Kusluvan, 2003). Empowerment advocates suggest that empowerment must be accompanied by careful employee recruitment to select “empowerable” employees (Bowen and Lawler, 1992; Hales and Klidas, 1998). Peccei and Rosenthal (2000) found that psychological empowerment positively associates with customer orientation in their study of retail setting. Therefore, employees’ individual tendency of customer orientation is likely to influence their perception of empowerment. Based on previous research, we propose the following hypothesis: H1. Customer orientation will have a significant positive effect on perceived empowerment. 2.3. Service training Human resource professionals and researchers have long recognized the importance of human relations skills in employees who come in direct contact with customers (Schneider and Bowen, 1993; Morris, 1996). In fact, a study by Bitner et al. (1990) showed that more than 40% of unsatisfactory service encounters result
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from employees’ inability or unwillingness to respond to service failures. Building employees’ knowledge, skills and expertise is a competence that can only be acquired from formal training and education (Forrester, 2000). Therefore, leading service organizations value investment in people, and specifically invest in service training including inter-personal and problem-solving skills, so the ability of employees to meet the complex service demands of customers can be enhanced (Schlesinger and Heskett, 1991; Lytle et al., 1988). Service training is positively associated with job satisfaction and organizational commitment (Lee et al., 2006) yet its effect on perceived empowerment is rarely examined. However, researchers suggest that service training is essential to the success of empowerment (Chebat and Kollias, 2000; Ueno, 2008). Therefore, we hypothesize the following: H2. Service training will have a significant positive effect on perceived empowerment. 2.4. Service rewards Researchers suggest that service employees’ behaviors result from conspicuous and specific compensation reward practices and programs (Hartline and Ferrell, 1996). Employees’ reward perceptions are based on justice principles and improve service employees’ organizational commitment and job satisfaction (Bowen et al., 1999). Rewarding and recognizing excellent service is highly related to service providers’ productivity such as reduced absenteeism (Kaufman, 1992), service recovery (Babakus et al., 2003), and customer satisfaction (Johnson, 1996). An appropriate reward system is important for motivating frontline employees to deal with customers’ requests and complaints while the service-oriented behavior is influenced by clear, specific reward programs, such as promotion and bonus (Hartline and Ferrell, 1996). Researchers suggest that empowering employees results in extra responsibility which needs to be rewarded; otherwise, employees tend to interpret empowerment as an extra duty which increases their workload (Erstad, 1997; Rafiq and Ahmed, 1998). Recently, Chenevert and Tremblay (2009) found that the use of an extensive empowerment strategy reduces voluntary turnover when accompanied by a compensation program that rewards performance. Based on the previous research, we hypothesize the following: H3. Service rewards system will have a significant positive effect on perceived empowerment. 2.5. Service standards communication Service standards of internal service quality are an important antecedent to customer satisfaction (Berry et al., 1991). Service standards provide a framework to guide the actions of employees by indicating what is expected of them, what they can/cannot do, and what behaviors/actions will be rewarded or punished. Also, service standards reduce ambiguity and doubts over initiating actions (Amenumey and Lockwood, 2008). Conformance to service standards is more likely to be met if service standards are communicated and understood by all members of the organization, including line employees. Thus, open communication between frontline employees and managers is important for achieving service quality. Kanter (1989) encourages organizations wanting to create an empowered workforce to “make more information more available to more people at more levels through more devices.” The diffusion of information between the various levels of each organization enforces the feeling of employees’ autonomy, responsibility, and involvement (Nonaka, 1998; Robbins et al., 2002). Therefore, we hypothesize the following:
H4. Service standards communication will have a significant positive effect on perceived empowerment. 3. Method 3.1. Sample and data collection A convenience sample of 205 guest contact employees working at a large theme park voluntarily completed a pencil-and-paper based questionnaire. All respondents were from foreign countries and granted temporary working status. Two questionnaires were excluded due to excessive missing information resulting in 203 usable questionnaires. The sample was predominantly comprised of females (71.2%) with 91.2% of participants possessing college degrees. The participants’ mean age was 23.6 years (20–33) and the average industry experience was 2.46 years (min 1 and max 9 years). For ethnicity, 53.9% of the respondents were Caucasian; 25.4% were Hispanic; 10.4% were Asian; 2.1% were African; and 7.2% were other. The average hospitality work experience was 3.3 years. All of them worked in guest contact (front line) positions such as front desk, server, cashier, and host. 3.2. Measures Perceived empowerment was assessed by 12 items developed by Spreitzer (1995). For customer orientation assessment, 13 items from Brown et al. (2002) were used. Service training, rewards, and service standards communication were assessed using multiple items developed by Lytle et al. (1988). Service training was measured via three items: (1) every employee receives personal skills training that enhances his/her ability to deliver high quality service, (2) we spend much time and effort in simulated training activities that help us provide higher levels of service when actually encountering the customer, and (3) during training sessions we work through exercises to identify and improve attitudes toward customers. Service rewards was measured via two items: (1) management provides excellent incentives and rewards at all levels for service quality, not just productivity and (2) this organization noticeably celebrates excellent service. Service standards communication was assessed via three items: (1) every employee understands all of the service standards that have been instituted by all departments, (2) we have a developed chain of objectives linking together every branch in support of the corporate vision, and (3) service performance measures are communicated openly with all employees regardless of position or function. All items were measured using a 7-point scale (1 = strongly disagree and 7 = strongly agree). 4. Results First, the empowerment items were subjected to an exploratory factor analysis. A principal component analysis with Varimax rotation yielded three factors which were named Impact, Meaning, and Competence. Unlike the Spreitzer (1995) study, three selfdetermination items were cross loaded on other dimensions with low communality. Thus, these three items were excluded from further analysis. The remaining nine items and their factor loadings are shown in Table 1. The eigenvalues for the factors were 4.6 for Impact, 1.7 for Meaning and 1.2 for Competence. A three-factor solution accounted for approximately 84.46% of the variance and the internal reliability values for the three empowerment dimensions were adequate (Cronbach alpha of .91, .92 and .89 for Impact, Meaning and Competence, respectively). Also, the KMO measure of sampling adequacy (.864) and Bartlett’s test of sphericity (p = .000) indicate that factor analysis is appropriate.
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Table 1 Factor analysis of empowerment. Empowerment dimensions Impact I have a great deal of control over what happens in my department I have significant influence over what happens in my department My impact on what happens in my department is large My job activities are personally meaningful to me The work I do is meaningful to me The work I do is very important to me I am self-assured about my capabilities to perform my work activities I am confident about my ability to do my job I have mastered the skills necessary for my job
Meaning
Competence
.924 .900 .839 .885 .872 .859 .911 .867 .863
Eigenvalue Variance explained Cronbach’s alpha
4.63 51.47% .911
1.70 18.90% .917
1.27 14.09% .893
Extraction method: principal component analysis. Rotation method: Varimax with Kaiser normalization.
Table 2 Descriptive statistics.
Customer orientation Service training Service rewards Service standards communication
Mean
Standard dev.
Cronbach’s alpha
5.425 4.896 4.970 4.727
1.074 1.361 1.375 1.268
.929 .854 .748 .826
The descriptive statistics of three organizational factor variables and customer orientation are shown in Table 2. The construct reliability of service training, service rewards, service standards communication and customer orientation were assessed and ranged from .75 to .93. Correlations among variables are shown in Table 3. The three dimensions of empowerment (Meaning, Competence, and Impact) were simultaneously examined by the customer orientation, service training, rewards, and service standards communication. All four independent variables, customer orien-
tation (Wilks’ = .725, p < .01), training (Wilks’ = .958, p < .05), rewards (Wilks’ = .966, p < .10), and service standard communication (Wilks’ = .956, p < .05), had significant effects across three empowerment dimension variables. Details of the effects of the independent variables from Multivariate GLM analysis are provided in Table 4. Multiple regression analysis was then performed on the three dimensions of empowerment (Meaning, Competence, and Impact) separately with independent variables of customer orientation, training, rewards, and service standards communication. As hypothesized, we expect that customer orientation, service training, service rewards, and service standards communication will positively influence employees’ perceived empowerment. The regression results are reported in Table 5. As indicated by the regression coefficients shown in Table 5, customer orientation had a positive effect on two dimensions of empowerment, Competence and Meaning. In other words, higher levels of individual employees’ customer orientation resulted in higher perceptions of confidence in their job performance and more meaningfulness of their jobs. However, customer orientation was
Table 3 Correlations.
Customer orientation Service training Service rewards Service standards communication E meaning E competence E impact
Customer orientation
Service training
Service rewards
1 .492(**) .417(**) .496(**)
.492(**) 1 .727(**) .681(**)
.417(**) .727(**) 1 .629(**)
.484(**) .596(**) .401(**)
.497(**) .348(**) .566(**)
.488(**) .288(**) .513(**)
Service standards comm.
E meaning
.496(**) .681(**) .629(**)
E competence
.484(**) .497(**) .488(**) .497(**)
1 .497(**) .356(**) .536(**)
1 .407(**) .496(**)
E impact
.596(**) .348(**) .288(**) .356(**)
.401(**) .566(**) .513(**) .536(**)
.407(**) 1 .338(**)
.496(**) .338(**) 1
**Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
Table 4 Multivariate analysis of customer orientation, training, rewards, service standards communication and empowerment. Multivariate results Wilks’
Customer orientation Service training Service rewards Service standards communication * ** ***
p < .10. p < .05. p < .01.
.725 .958 .966 .956
F
24.31*** 2.79** 2.28* 2.94**
Univariate results 2
.275 .042 .034 .044
E meaning
E competence
E impact
F
F
F
2
14.94*** 1.54 5.32** 3.71*
.071 .008 .027 .019
66.01*** .25 .01 .36
.254 .001 .000 .002
2.56 8.03*** 2.68 6.96***
.013 .040 .014 .035
2
2
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Table 5 Regression analysis for customer orientation, training, rewards, service standards communication and empowerment. E meaning Std. B. Customer orientation Service training Service rewards Service standard communication Adjusted R-square F-value * ** ***
E competence Std. B.
E impact Std. B.
.263*** .116 .200** .161*
.553*** .048 -.007 .051
.107 .263*** .140* .218***
.350 27.688***
.350 27.386***
.368 30.029***
p < .10. p < .05. p < .01.
not significantly linked to the Impact dimension of empowerment. Thus, H1 is partially supported. For the empowerment Impact dimension, all three organizational factors (training, rewards, and service standards communication) had a positive effect. For the empowerment Competence dimension, only customer orientation had a positive effect. For the empowerment Meaning dimension, customer orientation, rewards, and service standards communication had a positive effect. Thus, H2–H4 are partially supported. 5. Discussion Previous research contended that the front-line employee plays a crucial role in the effectiveness of empowerment in the hospitality industry (Lashley, 1999; Jha and Nair, 2008). It is easily assumable that service oriented organizations encourage employee empowerment. Yet, it was not clear whether the employee’s own characteristics increase employee empowerment or not. Also, there was a lack of research as to which organizational supporting factors can contribute to employee empowerment. Our findings suggest that service management should consider employees’ customer orientation characteristics in order to implement a successful empowerment program. Moreover, service organizations should have appropriate organizational supporting systems including service training, service rewards, and service communication to increase employee empowerment. Employee’s customer orientation is an important antecedent of their perceived empowerment. In other words, the more employees describe themselves as customer oriented, the more they felt confident about their job performance and meaningfulness of their jobs. The theme park industry is considered to have an “entertainment” element in the business and employees are expected to create service experiences for guests (Anh and Kleiner, 2005). Hiring the right people who naturally enjoy customer interactions is particularly important due to the emotional content of the work in the theme park industry (Aragon and Kleiner, 2003). Theme park guest contact employees’ work, such as, using creativity to please guests in order to exceed their expectations and exercising discretion in their dealings with guests, can be performed better when customer oriented employees are selected for the job. Although, customer orientation did not necessarily increase the sense of their impact on the organization, organizational supporting factors, such as, training, rewards, and service standards communication did increase the perception of their influence in the workplace. In other words, when the employees perceive that they receive good service training, benefit from a reward system for good service/job performance, and understand service standards (i.e., internal service quality expectations are well communicated), employees view it as they are making a greater impact in the workplace.
Newly hired theme park employees receive an orientation that provides new comers with company culture, policies, service standards and guidelines, and initial job training. For example, the new employees at Disney attend Disney University and learn that work is a theater and employees are actors who perform the show (Aragon and Kleiner, 2003). Good service training guides and enhances employees’ service skills to provide excellent services. In addition, clear and open communication of service standards helps employees understand the level of service expectations for the particular company and know what rules to break when it is necessary to provide extraordinary services. Also, recognizing and rewarding excellent service performance can not only motivate rewarded employees but also send a strong message to other employees to provide exceptional services. These organizational efforts can help employees understand the significance of each employee’s work in the organization. Finally, both service standard communication and service rewards increase employee perception of the empowerment impact dimension. As employees perceived being well aware of service standards and motivated by the service rewards system, they viewed their job as more meaningful and important. Theme park service organizations are often large corporations with a large number of employees and an individual employee may not easily realize how their work contributes to the organization. Good service standards communication and rewards system can provide employees with a sense of importance of the work that they are performing.
6. Implications The human resources strategy wheel (Zeithaml and Bitner, 2000) suggests for service organizations to (1) hire the right people, (2) develop people to deliver service quality, (3) provide the needed support system, and (4) retain the best people. These general strategies provide good guidelines to human resource managers in the theme park companies that employ tens of thousands of people in a variety of positions (Anh and Kleiner, 2005; Hickman and Mayer, 2003). However, empirical investigation of the organizational practices on employees’ empowerment perception has been scant. Our results indicate that both individual and organizational factors should be considered to increase psychological empowerment. This study attempts to make several contributions to the knowledge and study of employee empowerment. Researchers indicated that much of what has been written about the success of employee empowerment has been celebratory rather than critical and based on a limited number of recurring case studies (Hales and Klidas, 1998). Although empowerment literature in hospitality research proposed conceptual frameworks (e.g., Lashley, 1996; Ford and Fottler, 1995) which have been discussed extensively, they tended to focus on its benefits and consequences. By empirically examining specific antecedents of perceived empowerment, this study identified several critical factors in both individual and organizational aspects. While selecting and training employees has been well acknowledged as important factors, providing rewards and communicating service standards clearly were less focused on. This study suggests employee perception of empowerment is an intricate process with multiple influencing factors. Also, by examining perceived empowerment as a multi-dimensional construct, this study reveals relationships between antecedents and specific empowerment dimensions. This study has several practical implications for hospitality organizations. First, hiring employees with customer oriented personality is important for service organizations to cultivate an empowerment culture. Employees must have the right personality and love the jobs they do to provide extraordinary guest
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service. Since employee turnover is very costly for the companies, the theme parks human resource managers must focus on hiring right people who fit the companies’ culture and needs (Anh and Kleiner, 2005). Thus, we suggest hospitality human resources focus on assessing an individual’s customer orientation during the interview process. Next, service managers should also concentrate on building an organizational empowerment supporting system. Service training should focus on enhancing employees’ confidence in the decision making process to deliver high quality service for customers as well as their perceived control and influence at work. In addition, it is important for service organizations to communicate service standards and acknowledge exemplary employee actions by providing appropriate rewards. Without systematic organizational support, employees may not feel they are actually empowered to make decisions and may therefore lack confidence in their actions. Although appropriate recruitment and training are necessary for empowering employees successfully, there will be an increase in the cost of selection and training (Bowen and Lawler, 1992). Also, it should be noted that high empowerment does not necessarily represent high service quality, while low empowerment does not inevitably correspond to low service quality. Different degrees of empowerment could each have merit as there are positive and negative outcomes of empowerment (Ueno, 2008). 7. Limitations and future research First, this study employed a convenient sample of guest contact employees from foreign countries, working at a large theme park in a temporary capacity. They tended to have higher education and the majority of participants were female. Convenient samples of these sample characteristics will limit generalization of the study to other guest contact employees and other types of hospitality organizations (such as hotels, restaurants, and airlines) and industry. Future study may consider a cross cultural aspect and the different industry characteristics (e.g., standardization versus customization oriented operation style) in empowerment perceptions. Next, this study focused on guest contact employees only (without including managers)by taking a psychological empowerment approach. Whereas the structural empowerment approach considers the power issues or political aspects of empowerment in the organizational hierarchy (Klidas et al., 2007; Heller, 2003). Future studies can examine the organizational structural issues relating to empowerment such as, a dyadic relationship between empowering leadership and subordinate employees and other related questions. For example, does empowerment result in fewer managers?, new positions such as empowerment supervisor?, new policies and procedures related to empowerment?, more employee development programs?, including empowerment training, etc. Third, our study did not find one empowerment dimension, self-determination. Several previous studies also had difficulty finding all four dimensions of Spritzer’s empowerment scale (e.g., Amenumey and Lockwood, 2008; Hancer, 2005). Although the multi-dimensional nature of psychological or perceived empowerment has been well acknowledged, its dimensionality may need further investigation. This may be due to the characteristics of the participants in this study. Temporary workers from foreign countries may have difficulty perceiving job control and autonomy. Yet many hospitality organizations are employing temporary workers from either domestic or foreign workforce sources. Future study may explore possible challenges in managing and empowering foreign workforce. Also, service rewards can be further examined by considering types: intrinsic (e.g., trust, recognition) and extrinsic (e.g., financial rewards, job security) rewards (Gkorezis and Petridou, 2008).
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International Journal of Hospitality Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijhosman
Empowerment in hospitality organizations: Customer orientation and organizational support Heejung Ro ∗ , Po-Ju Chen 1 Rosen College of Hospitality Management, University of Central Florida, 9907 Universal BLVD, Orlando, FL 32819, United States
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Keywords: Empowerment Customer orientation Training Reward Service standards communication
a b s t r a c t Although empowering employees has often been prescribed as an efficient strategy for hospitality organizations, the strategy alone cannot ensure success. Individual and organizational factors should be considered to increase employees’ perception of empowerment. This study examines the impact of employees’ customer orientation and organizational factors on the employee empowerment perceptions. Our findings, based on a survey of 203 guest contact employees, suggest that organizations should hire customer oriented people, guide them with service training, provide a reward system, and facilitate service standards communication in order to increase perceived empowerment. Implications of these findings for hospitality service managers are discussed. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Employee empowerment is described as enabling or authorizing employees to make decisions to solve guest issues by themselves (Conger and Kanugo, 1988; Jha and Nair, 2008). Empowerment is especially advocated for heterogeneous services where guest contact employees need to adapt their behaviors to the demands of each and every service encounter (Chebat and Kollias, 2000; Ueno, 2008). Although many hospitality organizations have come to expect employee empowerment to result in improved service quality and guest satisfaction, its effectiveness may be limited if the factors required to cultivate and nurture it do not exist. Two factors that should be considered are: individual and organizational factors (Koberg et al., 1999). Previous research suggests that some employees may perform better than others because they are more willing, able, or talented (Berry et al., 1988; Chebat and Kollias, 2000). Thus, empowerment must be accompanied by a careful recruitment effort to select “empowerable” employees who can be inculcated with the skills and attitude conducive to exercising an acceptable and responsible decision making (Hales and Klidas, 1998). Researchers also suggest that employees’ perceptions of the work environment are a necessary consideration in the empowerment process (Robbins et al., 2002). Some researchers suggest that service organizations should invest in service skills training
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 407 903 8075; fax: +1 407 903 8105. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (H. Ro), [email protected] (P.-J. Chen). 1 Tel.: +1 407 903 8029; fax: +1 407 903 8105. 0278-4319/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ijhm.2010.09.003
to enhance the ability of employees to meet the complex service demands of customers (Schlesinger and Heskett, 1991; Varca, 2004). Other researchers emphasize the importance of rewards in order to influence employees’ behavior (Hartline and Ferrell, 1996; Gkorezis and Petridou, 2008). In addition, service standards of internal service quality should be communicated and understood by all members of the organization, including line employees, so that employees are more confident to act autonomously (Lytle et al., 1988; Yoon et al., 2007). These previous studies suggest that employees will not necessarily feel empowered without appropriate perceptions of service training, rewards, and service standards communication in the organization. Although empowering guest contact employees has often been prescribed as an efficient strategy for hospitality organizations, individual and organizational factors should be considered to gain more insight into employees’ perception of empowerment. A few studies examined either people factors or organizational factors, but rarely both. We believe that understanding these two factors is important to provide useful insights into employee empowerment. This study examines the impact of employee customer orientation and organizational supporting factors on perceived empowerment. We specifically focus on customer orientation, training, rewards, and service standard communication. The findings of this study can add to the literature of employee empowerment by addressing the effects of employees’ individual customer orientation tendency and organizational supporting system on perceived empowerment through an empirical examination. The results also offer managerial insights into acquiring and developing customer oriented guest contact employees who may best provide quality guest service via empowerment in a service oriented organization.
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2. Literature review 2.1. Empowerment A classical view of the industrialization of service suggests that humanistic process in service delivery renders the service sector forever inefficient (Levitt, 1976). Yet, service researchers argue back that the humanistic element can be the power of service excellence, so called employee empowerment (Zemke and Schaaf, 1989; Bowen and Lawler, 1992; Teng and Barrows, 2009). Employee empowerment involves managers giving more freedom of choice in decisions and power to frontline staff that allows further opportunities, authority, and responsibility in the workplace (Brymer, 1991). Empowering employees contributes to the organizational effectiveness and guest satisfaction by creating more job satisfaction and self-esteem for employees (Bowen and Lawler, 1992) and engaging in discretionary behavior aiming at meeting or exceeding guests’ expectations in service encounters (Klidas et al., 2007). The empowered behaviors can be manifested by bending the rules to please customers (Shimko, 1994), providing guests with prompt responses to service requests and quicker solutions to service failures (Lewis and Clacher, 2001), using creativity to please guests even beyond what is expected (Lashley, 1997; Zhang and Bartol, 2010), and exercising discretion in their dealings with guests (Kelly et al., 1996; Bone and Mowen, 2010). Yet, empowerment may not be appropriate for every service organization and the inconsistency of service quality still remains as one of the main criticisms (Bowen and Lawler, 1992; Lashley, 1995). Forrester (2000) argues that the main reason why organizational empowerment initiatives often fall short is that they take a “one-size fits all empowerment approach” that fails to differentiate between employees’ capabilities and desires. Thus, researchers posit that empowerment is a matter of degree rather than absolute, indicating that managers need to make judgments regarding whom to empower and to what extent (Ford and Fottler, 1995). There are two streams of research on the conceptualization of empowerment, structural and psychological (Jha and Nair, 2008). The structural empowerment approach focuses on the delegation of decision making power from higher to lower levels in the organizational hierarchy (Heller, 2003) as well as a dyadic relationship between empowering leadership and subordinate employees (Ahearnen et al., 2005; Zhang and Bartol, 2010). The psychological empowerment approach conceptualizes empowerment as an experienced psychological state or set of cognition (Conger and Kanugo, 1988; Zhang and Bartol, 2010). Thus, empowerment has been viewed as a motivational construct described as an intrinsic need for self-determination or a belief in personal self-efficacy (Conger and Kanugo, 1988). Due to its complex nature, many researchers proposed a multi-faceted structure of empowerment construct (Menon, 2001; Spreitzer, 1995; Thomas and Velthouse, 1990). Especially, Thomas and Velthouse (1990) extended Conger and Kaungo’s psychological empowerment approach by specifying a set of assessments such as: meaningfulness, competence, choice and impact. Drawing on Conger and Kanugo (1988) and Thomas and Velthouse (1990), Spreitzer (1995) defined empowerment as a psychological state and motivational construct manifested in four cognitions: Meaning, Competence, Self-Determination, and Impact. The Meaning dimension refers to the values of a work goal or purpose, judged in relation to an individual’s own ideals or standards. The Competence dimension refers to an employee’s belief in his/her capability to perform activities with skill. The Self-Determination dimension refers to an individual’s autonomy in the initiation and continuation of work behaviors and processes. Finally, the Impact
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dimension refers to the degree to which an individual can influence strategic, administrative, or operating outcomes at work. This study focuses on employees’ psychological empowerment by using Spreitzer’s conceptualization. The employees’ perception of empowerment or psychological empowerment has been examined from various aspects including employee demographics, organizational size, and industry type, but findings tend to be inconclusive (Dimitriades and Kufidu, 2004; Honegger and Appelbaum, 1998). Other researchers found that empowerment affects the employees’ behavior and attitudinal dispositions such as adaptability, self-efficacy, job satisfaction, role conflict, and organizational commitment (Chebat and Kollias, 2000; Lee et al., 2006). While the consequences of empowerment are well acknowledged, its antecedents to increase perception of empowerment are not investigated extensively. Individual and organizational factors should be considered to gain more insight into employees’ perception of empowerment (Koberg et al., 1999; Amenumey and Lockwood, 2008). Based on relevant previous research, we have identified an individual factor-customer orientation and three organizational supporting factors-training, rewards, and service standards communication, as important factors that can make a significant impact on guest contact employees’ perceived empowerment. In the following sections, we will discuss employee customer orientation, service training, service rewards, and service standards communication. 2.2. Customer orientation Ahearnen et al. (2005) emphasized the importance of employee personality attributes on perceived psychological empowerment. Henning-Thurau (2004) states, “service employees’ level of customer orientation is a key driver for customers’ satisfaction with the service firm . . . employing customer-oriented service personnel, although not guaranteeing economic success, does represent a crucial step toward it (p. 472).” Customer orientation is defined as a surface-level personality-trait of an employee’s predisposition to meet customer needs in the job context (Brown et al., 2002; Donavan et al., 2004; Liu and Chen, 2006). Some employees may perform better than others because they are more talented and have a predisposition to go beyond the call of duty by providing more than what is required by their roles and job description (Chebat and Kollias, 2000). Previous studies have shown that customer orientated employees yield better job performance, and exhibit higher organizational citizenship behavior (Babakus et al., 2009; Dienhart and Gregoire, 1993; Donavan et al., 2004; Kusluvan, 2003). Empowerment advocates suggest that empowerment must be accompanied by careful employee recruitment to select “empowerable” employees (Bowen and Lawler, 1992; Hales and Klidas, 1998). Peccei and Rosenthal (2000) found that psychological empowerment positively associates with customer orientation in their study of retail setting. Therefore, employees’ individual tendency of customer orientation is likely to influence their perception of empowerment. Based on previous research, we propose the following hypothesis: H1. Customer orientation will have a significant positive effect on perceived empowerment. 2.3. Service training Human resource professionals and researchers have long recognized the importance of human relations skills in employees who come in direct contact with customers (Schneider and Bowen, 1993; Morris, 1996). In fact, a study by Bitner et al. (1990) showed that more than 40% of unsatisfactory service encounters result
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from employees’ inability or unwillingness to respond to service failures. Building employees’ knowledge, skills and expertise is a competence that can only be acquired from formal training and education (Forrester, 2000). Therefore, leading service organizations value investment in people, and specifically invest in service training including inter-personal and problem-solving skills, so the ability of employees to meet the complex service demands of customers can be enhanced (Schlesinger and Heskett, 1991; Lytle et al., 1988). Service training is positively associated with job satisfaction and organizational commitment (Lee et al., 2006) yet its effect on perceived empowerment is rarely examined. However, researchers suggest that service training is essential to the success of empowerment (Chebat and Kollias, 2000; Ueno, 2008). Therefore, we hypothesize the following: H2. Service training will have a significant positive effect on perceived empowerment. 2.4. Service rewards Researchers suggest that service employees’ behaviors result from conspicuous and specific compensation reward practices and programs (Hartline and Ferrell, 1996). Employees’ reward perceptions are based on justice principles and improve service employees’ organizational commitment and job satisfaction (Bowen et al., 1999). Rewarding and recognizing excellent service is highly related to service providers’ productivity such as reduced absenteeism (Kaufman, 1992), service recovery (Babakus et al., 2003), and customer satisfaction (Johnson, 1996). An appropriate reward system is important for motivating frontline employees to deal with customers’ requests and complaints while the service-oriented behavior is influenced by clear, specific reward programs, such as promotion and bonus (Hartline and Ferrell, 1996). Researchers suggest that empowering employees results in extra responsibility which needs to be rewarded; otherwise, employees tend to interpret empowerment as an extra duty which increases their workload (Erstad, 1997; Rafiq and Ahmed, 1998). Recently, Chenevert and Tremblay (2009) found that the use of an extensive empowerment strategy reduces voluntary turnover when accompanied by a compensation program that rewards performance. Based on the previous research, we hypothesize the following: H3. Service rewards system will have a significant positive effect on perceived empowerment. 2.5. Service standards communication Service standards of internal service quality are an important antecedent to customer satisfaction (Berry et al., 1991). Service standards provide a framework to guide the actions of employees by indicating what is expected of them, what they can/cannot do, and what behaviors/actions will be rewarded or punished. Also, service standards reduce ambiguity and doubts over initiating actions (Amenumey and Lockwood, 2008). Conformance to service standards is more likely to be met if service standards are communicated and understood by all members of the organization, including line employees. Thus, open communication between frontline employees and managers is important for achieving service quality. Kanter (1989) encourages organizations wanting to create an empowered workforce to “make more information more available to more people at more levels through more devices.” The diffusion of information between the various levels of each organization enforces the feeling of employees’ autonomy, responsibility, and involvement (Nonaka, 1998; Robbins et al., 2002). Therefore, we hypothesize the following:
H4. Service standards communication will have a significant positive effect on perceived empowerment. 3. Method 3.1. Sample and data collection A convenience sample of 205 guest contact employees working at a large theme park voluntarily completed a pencil-and-paper based questionnaire. All respondents were from foreign countries and granted temporary working status. Two questionnaires were excluded due to excessive missing information resulting in 203 usable questionnaires. The sample was predominantly comprised of females (71.2%) with 91.2% of participants possessing college degrees. The participants’ mean age was 23.6 years (20–33) and the average industry experience was 2.46 years (min 1 and max 9 years). For ethnicity, 53.9% of the respondents were Caucasian; 25.4% were Hispanic; 10.4% were Asian; 2.1% were African; and 7.2% were other. The average hospitality work experience was 3.3 years. All of them worked in guest contact (front line) positions such as front desk, server, cashier, and host. 3.2. Measures Perceived empowerment was assessed by 12 items developed by Spreitzer (1995). For customer orientation assessment, 13 items from Brown et al. (2002) were used. Service training, rewards, and service standards communication were assessed using multiple items developed by Lytle et al. (1988). Service training was measured via three items: (1) every employee receives personal skills training that enhances his/her ability to deliver high quality service, (2) we spend much time and effort in simulated training activities that help us provide higher levels of service when actually encountering the customer, and (3) during training sessions we work through exercises to identify and improve attitudes toward customers. Service rewards was measured via two items: (1) management provides excellent incentives and rewards at all levels for service quality, not just productivity and (2) this organization noticeably celebrates excellent service. Service standards communication was assessed via three items: (1) every employee understands all of the service standards that have been instituted by all departments, (2) we have a developed chain of objectives linking together every branch in support of the corporate vision, and (3) service performance measures are communicated openly with all employees regardless of position or function. All items were measured using a 7-point scale (1 = strongly disagree and 7 = strongly agree). 4. Results First, the empowerment items were subjected to an exploratory factor analysis. A principal component analysis with Varimax rotation yielded three factors which were named Impact, Meaning, and Competence. Unlike the Spreitzer (1995) study, three selfdetermination items were cross loaded on other dimensions with low communality. Thus, these three items were excluded from further analysis. The remaining nine items and their factor loadings are shown in Table 1. The eigenvalues for the factors were 4.6 for Impact, 1.7 for Meaning and 1.2 for Competence. A three-factor solution accounted for approximately 84.46% of the variance and the internal reliability values for the three empowerment dimensions were adequate (Cronbach alpha of .91, .92 and .89 for Impact, Meaning and Competence, respectively). Also, the KMO measure of sampling adequacy (.864) and Bartlett’s test of sphericity (p = .000) indicate that factor analysis is appropriate.
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Table 1 Factor analysis of empowerment. Empowerment dimensions Impact I have a great deal of control over what happens in my department I have significant influence over what happens in my department My impact on what happens in my department is large My job activities are personally meaningful to me The work I do is meaningful to me The work I do is very important to me I am self-assured about my capabilities to perform my work activities I am confident about my ability to do my job I have mastered the skills necessary for my job
Meaning
Competence
.924 .900 .839 .885 .872 .859 .911 .867 .863
Eigenvalue Variance explained Cronbach’s alpha
4.63 51.47% .911
1.70 18.90% .917
1.27 14.09% .893
Extraction method: principal component analysis. Rotation method: Varimax with Kaiser normalization.
Table 2 Descriptive statistics.
Customer orientation Service training Service rewards Service standards communication
Mean
Standard dev.
Cronbach’s alpha
5.425 4.896 4.970 4.727
1.074 1.361 1.375 1.268
.929 .854 .748 .826
The descriptive statistics of three organizational factor variables and customer orientation are shown in Table 2. The construct reliability of service training, service rewards, service standards communication and customer orientation were assessed and ranged from .75 to .93. Correlations among variables are shown in Table 3. The three dimensions of empowerment (Meaning, Competence, and Impact) were simultaneously examined by the customer orientation, service training, rewards, and service standards communication. All four independent variables, customer orien-
tation (Wilks’ = .725, p < .01), training (Wilks’ = .958, p < .05), rewards (Wilks’ = .966, p < .10), and service standard communication (Wilks’ = .956, p < .05), had significant effects across three empowerment dimension variables. Details of the effects of the independent variables from Multivariate GLM analysis are provided in Table 4. Multiple regression analysis was then performed on the three dimensions of empowerment (Meaning, Competence, and Impact) separately with independent variables of customer orientation, training, rewards, and service standards communication. As hypothesized, we expect that customer orientation, service training, service rewards, and service standards communication will positively influence employees’ perceived empowerment. The regression results are reported in Table 5. As indicated by the regression coefficients shown in Table 5, customer orientation had a positive effect on two dimensions of empowerment, Competence and Meaning. In other words, higher levels of individual employees’ customer orientation resulted in higher perceptions of confidence in their job performance and more meaningfulness of their jobs. However, customer orientation was
Table 3 Correlations.
Customer orientation Service training Service rewards Service standards communication E meaning E competence E impact
Customer orientation
Service training
Service rewards
1 .492(**) .417(**) .496(**)
.492(**) 1 .727(**) .681(**)
.417(**) .727(**) 1 .629(**)
.484(**) .596(**) .401(**)
.497(**) .348(**) .566(**)
.488(**) .288(**) .513(**)
Service standards comm.
E meaning
.496(**) .681(**) .629(**)
E competence
.484(**) .497(**) .488(**) .497(**)
1 .497(**) .356(**) .536(**)
1 .407(**) .496(**)
E impact
.596(**) .348(**) .288(**) .356(**)
.401(**) .566(**) .513(**) .536(**)
.407(**) 1 .338(**)
.496(**) .338(**) 1
**Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
Table 4 Multivariate analysis of customer orientation, training, rewards, service standards communication and empowerment. Multivariate results Wilks’
Customer orientation Service training Service rewards Service standards communication * ** ***
p < .10. p < .05. p < .01.
.725 .958 .966 .956
F
24.31*** 2.79** 2.28* 2.94**
Univariate results 2
.275 .042 .034 .044
E meaning
E competence
E impact
F
F
F
2
14.94*** 1.54 5.32** 3.71*
.071 .008 .027 .019
66.01*** .25 .01 .36
.254 .001 .000 .002
2.56 8.03*** 2.68 6.96***
.013 .040 .014 .035
2
2
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Table 5 Regression analysis for customer orientation, training, rewards, service standards communication and empowerment. E meaning Std. B. Customer orientation Service training Service rewards Service standard communication Adjusted R-square F-value * ** ***
E competence Std. B.
E impact Std. B.
.263*** .116 .200** .161*
.553*** .048 -.007 .051
.107 .263*** .140* .218***
.350 27.688***
.350 27.386***
.368 30.029***
p < .10. p < .05. p < .01.
not significantly linked to the Impact dimension of empowerment. Thus, H1 is partially supported. For the empowerment Impact dimension, all three organizational factors (training, rewards, and service standards communication) had a positive effect. For the empowerment Competence dimension, only customer orientation had a positive effect. For the empowerment Meaning dimension, customer orientation, rewards, and service standards communication had a positive effect. Thus, H2–H4 are partially supported. 5. Discussion Previous research contended that the front-line employee plays a crucial role in the effectiveness of empowerment in the hospitality industry (Lashley, 1999; Jha and Nair, 2008). It is easily assumable that service oriented organizations encourage employee empowerment. Yet, it was not clear whether the employee’s own characteristics increase employee empowerment or not. Also, there was a lack of research as to which organizational supporting factors can contribute to employee empowerment. Our findings suggest that service management should consider employees’ customer orientation characteristics in order to implement a successful empowerment program. Moreover, service organizations should have appropriate organizational supporting systems including service training, service rewards, and service communication to increase employee empowerment. Employee’s customer orientation is an important antecedent of their perceived empowerment. In other words, the more employees describe themselves as customer oriented, the more they felt confident about their job performance and meaningfulness of their jobs. The theme park industry is considered to have an “entertainment” element in the business and employees are expected to create service experiences for guests (Anh and Kleiner, 2005). Hiring the right people who naturally enjoy customer interactions is particularly important due to the emotional content of the work in the theme park industry (Aragon and Kleiner, 2003). Theme park guest contact employees’ work, such as, using creativity to please guests in order to exceed their expectations and exercising discretion in their dealings with guests, can be performed better when customer oriented employees are selected for the job. Although, customer orientation did not necessarily increase the sense of their impact on the organization, organizational supporting factors, such as, training, rewards, and service standards communication did increase the perception of their influence in the workplace. In other words, when the employees perceive that they receive good service training, benefit from a reward system for good service/job performance, and understand service standards (i.e., internal service quality expectations are well communicated), employees view it as they are making a greater impact in the workplace.
Newly hired theme park employees receive an orientation that provides new comers with company culture, policies, service standards and guidelines, and initial job training. For example, the new employees at Disney attend Disney University and learn that work is a theater and employees are actors who perform the show (Aragon and Kleiner, 2003). Good service training guides and enhances employees’ service skills to provide excellent services. In addition, clear and open communication of service standards helps employees understand the level of service expectations for the particular company and know what rules to break when it is necessary to provide extraordinary services. Also, recognizing and rewarding excellent service performance can not only motivate rewarded employees but also send a strong message to other employees to provide exceptional services. These organizational efforts can help employees understand the significance of each employee’s work in the organization. Finally, both service standard communication and service rewards increase employee perception of the empowerment impact dimension. As employees perceived being well aware of service standards and motivated by the service rewards system, they viewed their job as more meaningful and important. Theme park service organizations are often large corporations with a large number of employees and an individual employee may not easily realize how their work contributes to the organization. Good service standards communication and rewards system can provide employees with a sense of importance of the work that they are performing.
6. Implications The human resources strategy wheel (Zeithaml and Bitner, 2000) suggests for service organizations to (1) hire the right people, (2) develop people to deliver service quality, (3) provide the needed support system, and (4) retain the best people. These general strategies provide good guidelines to human resource managers in the theme park companies that employ tens of thousands of people in a variety of positions (Anh and Kleiner, 2005; Hickman and Mayer, 2003). However, empirical investigation of the organizational practices on employees’ empowerment perception has been scant. Our results indicate that both individual and organizational factors should be considered to increase psychological empowerment. This study attempts to make several contributions to the knowledge and study of employee empowerment. Researchers indicated that much of what has been written about the success of employee empowerment has been celebratory rather than critical and based on a limited number of recurring case studies (Hales and Klidas, 1998). Although empowerment literature in hospitality research proposed conceptual frameworks (e.g., Lashley, 1996; Ford and Fottler, 1995) which have been discussed extensively, they tended to focus on its benefits and consequences. By empirically examining specific antecedents of perceived empowerment, this study identified several critical factors in both individual and organizational aspects. While selecting and training employees has been well acknowledged as important factors, providing rewards and communicating service standards clearly were less focused on. This study suggests employee perception of empowerment is an intricate process with multiple influencing factors. Also, by examining perceived empowerment as a multi-dimensional construct, this study reveals relationships between antecedents and specific empowerment dimensions. This study has several practical implications for hospitality organizations. First, hiring employees with customer oriented personality is important for service organizations to cultivate an empowerment culture. Employees must have the right personality and love the jobs they do to provide extraordinary guest
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service. Since employee turnover is very costly for the companies, the theme parks human resource managers must focus on hiring right people who fit the companies’ culture and needs (Anh and Kleiner, 2005). Thus, we suggest hospitality human resources focus on assessing an individual’s customer orientation during the interview process. Next, service managers should also concentrate on building an organizational empowerment supporting system. Service training should focus on enhancing employees’ confidence in the decision making process to deliver high quality service for customers as well as their perceived control and influence at work. In addition, it is important for service organizations to communicate service standards and acknowledge exemplary employee actions by providing appropriate rewards. Without systematic organizational support, employees may not feel they are actually empowered to make decisions and may therefore lack confidence in their actions. Although appropriate recruitment and training are necessary for empowering employees successfully, there will be an increase in the cost of selection and training (Bowen and Lawler, 1992). Also, it should be noted that high empowerment does not necessarily represent high service quality, while low empowerment does not inevitably correspond to low service quality. Different degrees of empowerment could each have merit as there are positive and negative outcomes of empowerment (Ueno, 2008). 7. Limitations and future research First, this study employed a convenient sample of guest contact employees from foreign countries, working at a large theme park in a temporary capacity. They tended to have higher education and the majority of participants were female. Convenient samples of these sample characteristics will limit generalization of the study to other guest contact employees and other types of hospitality organizations (such as hotels, restaurants, and airlines) and industry. Future study may consider a cross cultural aspect and the different industry characteristics (e.g., standardization versus customization oriented operation style) in empowerment perceptions. Next, this study focused on guest contact employees only (without including managers)by taking a psychological empowerment approach. Whereas the structural empowerment approach considers the power issues or political aspects of empowerment in the organizational hierarchy (Klidas et al., 2007; Heller, 2003). Future studies can examine the organizational structural issues relating to empowerment such as, a dyadic relationship between empowering leadership and subordinate employees and other related questions. For example, does empowerment result in fewer managers?, new positions such as empowerment supervisor?, new policies and procedures related to empowerment?, more employee development programs?, including empowerment training, etc. Third, our study did not find one empowerment dimension, self-determination. Several previous studies also had difficulty finding all four dimensions of Spritzer’s empowerment scale (e.g., Amenumey and Lockwood, 2008; Hancer, 2005). Although the multi-dimensional nature of psychological or perceived empowerment has been well acknowledged, its dimensionality may need further investigation. This may be due to the characteristics of the participants in this study. Temporary workers from foreign countries may have difficulty perceiving job control and autonomy. Yet many hospitality organizations are employing temporary workers from either domestic or foreign workforce sources. Future study may explore possible challenges in managing and empowering foreign workforce. Also, service rewards can be further examined by considering types: intrinsic (e.g., trust, recognition) and extrinsic (e.g., financial rewards, job security) rewards (Gkorezis and Petridou, 2008).
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