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Working onboard – Job perception, organizational commitment and job satisfaction in the cruise sector
Tourism Management 33 (2012) 592e597
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Tourism Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tourman
Working onboard e Job perception, organizational commitment and job satisfaction in the cruise sectorq Svein Larsen a, b, *, Einar Marnburg b, Torvald Øgaard b a b
University of Bergen, School of Psychology, Dept. of Psychosocial Science, Norway University of Stavanger, Norwegian School of Hotel Management, Norway
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history: Received 25 September 2010 Accepted 27 June 2011
This paper focuses on the perceived work environment and its influence on organizational commitment and job satisfaction in the cruise sector. Two focus group interviews were conducted in addition to one survey among the crew in an upmarket cruise line. The focus groups elicited responses concerning crew experiences of working onboard. Based on this information, a questionnaire was constructed to measure job perceptions among crew members. The results indicate that all of the experience domains were related to job commitment and job satisfaction, but that the strongest effects were found to be perceived “Respect”, the “Social atmosphere”, and “Food and living quarters”. Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Cruise line crew Job perception Organizational commitment Job satisfaction Crew experiences
1. Introduction Although the cruise sector is a fast-growing segment of the international tourism industry (Gibson, 2006; Hung & Petrick, 2010; Murray, 2005), it has received relatively little research attention (Hosany & Whitham, 2009; Lee-Ross, 2006). Loper (2005) highlights a number of important challenges facing the cruise segment. These include: (1) The changing demographics of cruise passengers, (2) the question of how to attract customers, and (3) how to maintain customer loyalty (Dowling & Cowan, 2002; Gibson, 2006; Petrick, Li, & Park, 2007). Another problem is the sustainability issue (Dowling & Cowan, 2002; Johnson, 2002; Klein, 2008), including pollution (Klein, 2005, 2008), safety and hygiene (Klein, 2005, 2008), and various problems of the marginal economic impact of the industry on destinations (Klein, 2005, 2008; Seidl, Guiliano, & Pratt, 2007; Wilkinson, 1999). The sustainability issue also incorporates some economic implications, for example that cruise passengers in the future will be expected to pay more “ecotaxes”, at least in some areas. Still, from the point of view of the passenger, more immediate issues such as food poisoning (e.g. Larsen, Brun, Øgaard, & Selstad, 2007; Swaan, Ouwerkerk, & Roest, 2010) and other salient issues of risk and worry (Larsen, Brun, & Øgaard, 2009) may also prove to be important for choice of cruise line and itinerary. q Some preliminary data presented at the CAUTHE conference, Hobart, Australia, February 8e11, 2010. * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ47 55588628; fax: þ47 55589897. E-mail address: [email protected] (S. Larsen). 0261-5177/$ e see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.tourman.2011.06.014
In addition to such external challenges linked to the market (environment and economical impact), the cruise sector also faces several internal exertions at an operative level. Such problems include the relatively complicated areas of staffing (Gibson, 2006) and handling of management issues in everyday multicultural environments (Tsoukatos & Rand, 2007) of cruise ships (Testa, 2004). This is pivotal in maintaining high service quality, in reducing costs by a decreased demand for recruiting new personnel, and through savings made by decreasing the demand for initial training of newly-recruited crew members. For any operation in the cruise sector, the staffing question represents at least a two-fold challenge. On the one hand, it concerns recruiting and selecting staff (Larsen & Rapp, 1993), for example chefs, sommeliers, waiters, and other highly qualified frontline personnel, who may get better paying jobs in good restaurants at home. On the other hand, this problem pertains to the issue of keeping such crews happy so that they stay onboard for more than one contract. It is well known in the service literature that happy service staff tend to produce happy guests (e.g. Nebeker et al., 2001; Brown & Lam, 2008; Yee, Yeung, & Cheng, 2008), and in turn happy guests are more willing to return to the same service provider. In fact, Harter, Schmidt, Asplund, Killham, and Agrawal (2010) documented a causal relationship between employees’ work perceptions and the bottom line of organizations Therefore, crew members’ perceptions of their work environment and the relationship of these factors to organizational commitment and job satisfaction are areas of fundamental importance for cruise lines (Larsen & Folgerø, 1993; Larsen & Rapp, 1993; Testa, 2001, 2004; Testa & Mueller, 2009).
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1.1. Aspects of working onboard In pinpointing the concept of the “tourist gaze”, Urry (1998) brought some of the problems of management in the hospitality and tourism industries to the forefront within the framework of a more general sociological approach. Urry maintained that in the tourism industry, labor itself is part of the service product, which logically makes the service worker part of the service. This implies that various domains of the service workers’ individualities, such as the way they speak, their appearances, and their personalities become matters of management interest e management is expected to interfere, intervene and control these aspects of a service worker’s personal behavior. This sort of understanding is in line with Hochschild’s (1983) analysis. She underlined that service work is emotional labor inasmuch as the customer procures the service workers’ personal demeanors. This aspect of service work results in a commercialization of human feelings (Urry, 1998, p. 70; Johansson & Näslund, 2009), which in turn is related to particular experiences of worry (Larsen, Øgaard, & Marnburg, 2005), isolation and other negative affects (Larsen & Folgerø, 1993), as well as a series of positive affects resulting from successful service encounters and manager-employee relations. Looking at the cruise sector specifically, Larsen (1996) underlined that cruise ships are often staffed by an international crew, which might be one motivator for many to take up work in this sector. He also noted that younger people in particular would work onboard cruise ships because of the opportunity it provides to see the world, a point also highlighted by Gibson (2006). At the same time, Larsen and Rapp (1993) alleged that this sector had traditionally been relatively hierarchically organized, and that this could be problematic in contemporary societies where “today’s personnel markets see themselves as socially equals, not only of their supervisors but also of their passengers” (p. 5). They also maintained that one important objective of any cruise line would be to lengthen each employee’s tenure for as long as possible. Johansson and Näslund (2009) argued that onboard cruise ships, emotional labor helps to create the cruise experience. Larsen and Folgerø (1993) highlighted that cruise ships are distinguished by a certain level of isolation, inasmuch as the crew is cut off from families and friends and from various recreational possibilities. De Lange, De Witte, and Notelaers (2008) reported that low work engagement, low job autonomy, and low departmental resources predicted low retention. In a recent review, Harter et al. (2010) found that managerial actions and practices impact employees’ perceptions of work conditions. The present research therefore addresses the issue of job perceptions in cruise line crews within this general framework. The basic research problem is two-fold: The first is to describe the parameters of the job perceptions in cruise line crews, and the second is to study how these perceptions are related to outcomes at an individual level in terms of organizational commitment and job satisfaction. The overarching research question may therefore be formulated as: Which job perceptions are related to high commitment and high satisfaction in cruise line crews? 2. Methods and materials A two-step research process was conducted for an international cruise line. The first step consisted of two focus groups conducted predominantly with non-supervising crew within the current fleet. The most important aims of these sessions were to bring out crew members’ experiences of their lives onboard in terms of likes and dislikes, relationships with colleagues and managers, and what crew members considered to be important for organizational commitment and job satisfaction; in short, to
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get verbal descriptions of aspects of the psychosocial work setting onboard. Such an elicitation approach is well known in the social sciences as an initial part of a research process. This kind of case approach may often be worthwhile in describing a particular domain, in an attempt to get an overview of the verbal contents of peoples’ experiences in various settings (Howitt & Cramer, 2005; Stanovich, 2010). The two focus groups were led by one of the researchers, and each group was attended by 6e8 crew members representing various operative and “close-to-customer functions” onboard the vessels of this particular cruise line. Each focus group interview lasted approximately one hour, and followed standardized recommendations as outlined by Howitt and Cramer (2005). Some of the crew members attending were on their second contract (mostly novices), while some were long-term employees in the organization (more than 15 contracts). The hotel manager appointed people to participate in these groups, and although an instruction of “randomization” was given, we cannot be sure that the people in the focus groups were randomly selected. In step two of the study, the information that emerged during the focus group interviews was used as a basis to develop a number of items for a questionnaire, which was then distributed among the crew and supervisors for the purpose of measuring the crew’s perceptions of their work environment. 2.1. The questionnaire In addition to standard socio-demographic background questions (such as age, gender, nationality, department, length of tenure (i.e. how many contracts the informant had been on with this company)), the questionnaire also included items measuring various other theoretical constructs such as implicit personality theories (Heslin & Vandewalle, 2008; Heslin, Vandewalle, & Latham, 2006) and cultural values (Quinn & Rohrbaugh, 1981). For the present study, however, the key outcome variables were standardized measures of organizational commitment (OC) and job satisfaction (JS). Job satisfaction, often understood as an emotional response to the individual’s appraisal of his job experiences, was measured using three items adapted from the Michigan Organizational Assessment Questionnaire (Cammann, Fichman, Jenkins, & Klesh, 1983). Organizational commitment, usually understood as the relative strength of an individual’s identification with and involvement in a particular organization (Mowday, Steers, & Porter, 1979), was measured by the short form of the Organizational Assessment Questionnaire (Cammann et al., 1983), but in order to avoid word confusion, only the nine (of 15) items that are positively worded were used (cf. Mathieu, 1991; Mathieu & Zajac, 1990). The job perception items were developed based on the results from the focus groups. Initially, we used 23 items to capture job perception. We also developed one item for the purpose of validation of the job perception items (“Frankly, I just love to work for this company”). 2.2. Respondents There was a total 216 respondents in the survey, 133 of whom reported that they were “ordinary crew” with no supervisory (leadership) tasks in their job, 58 respondents indicated that they had a certain leadership responsibility, and the remaining 18 respondents did not answer this question. These respondents represented 30 different nationalities and the mean age was 33 years (SD ¼ 9). Some 69% of these respondents were men. The number of people working onboard during the week(s) of data collection was 495, yielding a response rate of approximately 44%. Some 25% of respondents were on their first contract with this cruise line, while 18% of the respondents had been on 10 contracts
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or more. All departments were represented, although a majority of the respondents came from Housekeeping (22.4%), Restaurant/Bar (22.9%), or from the Galley (14.3%).
their living quarters it’s been discussed before thar some of the sleeping bunks or they are sleeping on are not on the standard some are very close to the ceiling they cannot even seat straight.”
3. Results
3.2. Results from the survey
3.1. Themes emerging in the focus groups
All of the original 23 items developed to tap crew perceptions were factor analyzed using the principal component technique (Varimax rotation). This explorative method yielded a solution with five factors having Eigenvalues above one. One item was excluded for unclear wording (negative sentence), and one item was excluded because it did not fill the inclusion criterion of a factor loading above .5 on any of the factors. This procedure gave a relatively unitary solution for the remaining 21 items, with only a few items (items 2, 7, & 15; see Table 1) loading > .5 in more than one factor. As can be seen from Table 1, approximately 68% of the variance in job experiences was explained with the current factor solution. Factor 1 was labeled “Supervisor respect and fairness” (12 items, a ¼ .92), Factor 2 was labeled “Social atmosphere: Guests and friends” (five items, a ¼ .79), Factor 3 was labeled “See the world and earn money” (three items, a ¼ .76), Factor 4 was labeled “physical aspects” (two items, a ¼ .63, r ¼ .50), and Factor 5 was labeled “Supervisor flexibility” (two items, a ¼ .64, r ¼ .47). In order to inspect the validity of the measures, we included one validation question in our questionnaire: “Frankly, I just love to work for this company”. This item is best conceived of as an organizational commitment item (but it is not included in the Mowday et al. (1979) scale). This item should therefore correlate most strongly with the OC scale and second highest with the JS scale, but it should also correlate moderately, but positively, with the job perception scales. As can be seen from Table 2, the validation item correlated significantly with both JC (r ¼ .82, p < .01) and JS (r ¼ .63, p < .01). As expected, the correlation of this item with the job perception scales was significantly lower (all rs between .19 and .45, p < .01). This
The most prevailing themes were those pertaining to the topics of “Getting respect for what we do” and “Social support” e being supported as a valued member of the service team onboard. While several crew members indicated that the perception of being respected or supported was not at all absent onboard, they simultaneously indicated that a prevalent experience was that very often crew members were just taken for granted. One crew member explicitly said that (s)he was only noticed by the supervisor if something went wrong; one’s everyday high standard performance was rarely noticed. Another important theme concerned “Free time and length of contract”. Crew members maintained that they would sometimes not get permission to go ashore and get free time away from the ship. This was seen as a token of lack of flexibility on the part of the supervisors. Some, particularly from frontline personnel in the ships’ maritime sector, also claimed that contracts were too long, or as one informant phrased it, “Working onboard here is Monday. Every day is Monday for 9 months”. A fourth recurring theme concerned “Physical aspects” of the job setting onboard. The first of these physical aspects concerned money (“I work here for the money”), while a second theme indicated a certain feeling of powerlessness and worry concerning the recruiting office and the required medical tests needed before getting a contract. A third issue in this group of aspects was related to living quarters onboard. The following is a direct quote from one crew member, who anonymously left a letter to the researcher which said (original grammar and spelling), “.. I just want to inform you the living condition of the other crew member specially
Table 1 Factor solution of job experiences. Item 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
Factor 1 My supervisor appreciates what I do My colleagues really respect me My supervisor respects the kind of work that I do My supervisor understands how important my work is My supervisor always remembers to thank me for a job well done If I make I mistake, I always feel that I am just as much respected as a professional My colleagues respect the kind of work that I do I took the job to see the world I took the job because the money is good This job gives me a great opportunity to travel the world I love being with the guests e so many interesting and fun people I like the international atmosphere onboard I have many friends onboard, that’s really what keeps me here In stressful periods, my supervisors always comment on how well my job is handled My supervisor is flexible and sees to it that I get free time to go ashore when I dock My supervisor is interested in my suggestions I am happy about the living quarters onboard The crew food is generally very good I am being treated fairly by my boss When my day’s work is done, I can get a few moments extra to go ashore when we dock I am being treated respectfully by my boss Initial Eigenvalue Explained variance Cronbach’s alpha
Factor 2
.888 .623 .887 .850 .846 .659
Factor 3
Factor 4
Factor 5
.573
.620
.555 .802 .717 .848 .622 .778 .622
.743 .524
.654
.745 .795 .829 .668 .647 .745 8,61 31,26
2,32 11,49 .92
.79
1,53 10,37 .76
1,49 7,66
1,09 7,56 .63
.70
S. Larsen et al. / Tourism Management 33 (2012) 592e597 Table 2 Correlation among organizational commitment, job satisfaction, the item “I just love to work for this company”, and the scales measuring the crew’s job perceptions. “I just love to work for this company” Organizational commitment Job satisfaction Respect Social See the world & money Physical Supervisor flexibility
Organizational commitment
Job satisfaction
.82** .35** .40** .26** .45** .17**
.36** .35** .12 .36** .11
.82** .63** .39** .39** .19** .45** .24**
indicates that job perceptions, as they are measured here, reflect aspects of work life onboard other than both job commitment and job satisfaction do, which in turn can be interpreted as a sign of these measures’ content and discriminant validities. The mean scores on all factors measuring job experiences were above four on the seven-point scale, indicating that the crew generally judge the job perception factors included in this study to be relatively positive. As can be seen from Fig. 1, both nonsupervising crew and crew members who indicated that they had some supervisory tasks onboard obtained relatively high scores. Fig. 1 also shows that the two groups are similar in the structure of responses, indicating that they are similar with respect to job perceptions, except that for the supervising crew, the “See the world” experience seems less important (F (1,188) ¼ 28.72, p ¼ .000; all other differences were non significant). Although the supervising crew (mean age 35.1) were somewhat older than the non-supervising crew (mean age 31.7) (F (1,180) ¼ 5.75, p ¼ .018), the correlation between this job perception factor (“See the world”) and age was not significant (r ¼ 004, p ¼ .96), which excludes age as a factor that could account for this difference. There was also an even distribution of gender in the two groups (c2 ¼ .0.43, n.s.), which excludes gender as an explanation. Using a simultaneous entry multiple regression method, a significant model was found for the relationships between job perceptions and OC (see Table 3), and for the relationships between job perceptions and JC (see Table 4). While all job perception scales contributed to explaining variance in organizational commitment, only three variables, “Supervisor respect and fairness”, “Social atmosphere: Guests and friends”, and “Supervisor flexibility” contributed significantly to explaining the variance in job satisfaction. The total explained variance was 50% for OC, and 34.4% for JC. 4. Discussion The main finding in this study is that job perception in the cruise industry incorporates factors such as the crew’s relationship with supervisors, colleagues, and clients (guests), and encompasses physical aspects of the work environment. We also found that three of these dimensions; the experience of “Supervisor respect and 7
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Table 3 Regression analysis of organizational commitment. Variable
B
Constant Get respect Social See the world Physical Sup flexibility
4.383 .346 .445 .268 .260 .179
b
t
Sig.
.297 .393 .236 .351 .157
24.025 5.509 7.411 4,435 6.495 2.958
.000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .004
R2 ¼ .503.
fairness”, the positive experience of the “Social atmosphere: Guests and friends”, and the positive experiences of food and living quarters, all significantly predicted job satisfaction in cruise line crews. Job commitment was found to be predicted by the same factors as well as by the empirical factors of “Getting to see the world” and the experience of “Supervisors’ flexibility”. Our results further showed that job perception factors were judged to be relatively positive in the current cruise line. Nonetheless, crew with supervisory responsibilities perceived “See the world and earn money” to be less important than non-supervising crew perceived this factor to be. Neither age nor gender can explain this difference. Job perceptions are important inasmuch as they are related in various ways to peoples’ everyday lives (Harter & Arora, 2009). Judge and Ilies (2004) found that moods at work affected moods after work, and underlined that attitudes toward work extended to emotions after work. Onboard cruise ships, one may expect these relationships to be even stronger, since the workplace is not only the arena for work but also for much of the crew members’ leisure time; the cruise ship is both home and work. However, the fact that most crew have separate areas for work and leisure time onboard does not mean that these are distinctly separated at the psychological level. People may feel that the confines of the cruise ship are tight, and that there is no real possibility for them to get away from these confines for leisure purposes. This is one important reason why job perceptions, particularly as they pertain to the social life onboard (relationships to superordinates, colleagues, subordinates, and guests) are of particular interest for the cruise sector. Another reason for approaching this challenging area of research in the cruise sector is that job perceptions have been shown to be linked with job satisfaction (Testa & Mueller, 2009). Indeed, job perceptions have been causally linked with the bottom line and with customer loyalty in various industries (Harter et al., 2010). This further underlines that job perceptions should be an area of concern, both for the organization’s strategic management and for the daily leadership onboard cruise liners. Customer satisfaction is positively related to profitability (Harter et al., 2010; Cronin & Taylor, 1992), and customer satisfaction is, to a large extent, a function of the service workers’ happiness (Yee et al., 2008). In addition, our data suggest that job experiences influence outcomes such as job satisfaction and organizational commitment, and logically an intense focus should be held concerning this issue. It is our contention that if the cruise line is successful in administering factors that influence job satisfaction
6 5
Crew (n=132)
4
Supervising crew (n=58)
3 2 1
e Se
W
o
** rld
l c ia So
Re
t ec sp
e Fl
y ilit xib
P
al sic hy
Fig. 1. Job perceptions in supervising- and non-supervising crew.
Table 4 Regression analysis of job satisfaction. Variable
B
Constant Get respect Social See the world Physical Sup flexibility
4.536 .399 .427 .121 .227 .132
R2 ¼ .344.
b
t
Sig.
.312 .334 .095 .273 .103
19.448 5.130 5.561 1,571 4.470 1.709
.000 .000 .000 .118 .000 .089
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and organizational commitment, such as the crew’s perception of their jobs, they can also develop their internal cultures, their work environment as it is, in the direction of promoting positive outcomes concerning organizational commitment and job satisfaction. This logically highlights one other area of interest for this kind of research, namely the relationship of job experiences on the one side and satisfaction with life in general on the other. In an essay published almost 20 years ago, Larsen and Rapp (1993) raised the issue of crew tenure, an area which is no less difficult to handle today (Testa, 2004). Based on the knowledge drawn from the present study, we can probably say that Larsen and Rapp’s contention that online management training is pivotal is equally valid today, since such training efforts may influence both spheres of crew members’ lives. In addition, we now know that in order to increase the likelihood of keeping qualified workers within the cruise industry, attention needs to be directed directly toward work environment issues, including those that concern perceptions of managers, colleagues, and guests onboard, and those that pertain to the general social environment of the cruise ship as such. 4.1. Some final remarks The response rate in the present research is somewhat low. This can be interpreted as fear or resistance in the crew. It may also reflect some of the individual ships’ cultures as being protective and not open to insight from external individuals. Thirdly, it may reflect the personnel’s suspicions concerning the organization as such, or concerning the researchers; they may not have believed in the assurance of anonymity. The lack of research into the cruise sector is probably due in part to the difficulties in gathering data from the sector, and to the difficulties in getting access both to people working in the industry and to cruise line passengers for systematic sampling and data collection purposes. One may, of course, also speculate that some operators in the cruise industry would be hesitant to allow researchers to enter their domain, reluctant to be researched and to pay the price for getting systematic knowledge. Along the same lines, one could also speculate that the cruise sector is highly vulnerable and that operators in the industry tend to keep what is understood to be “trade secrets” to themselves for reasons of competition. On the other hand, it may well be that managers in the sector are skeptical toward academic research because research results are viewed at best as “not being practical”, or at worst, as useless. Our results stipulate relationships between theoretical constructs, but they can also be translated relatively easily into practical management and leadership skills. Onboard cruise ships, our data could guide training programs for officers and supervising crew in basic skills of interaction and of communication of respect and flexibility. Huang and Hsu (2010) showed that contact between customers onboard cruise ships is important for the service quality experience of the clients, just as our data show that such contact between crew members is important for crew members. It is, therefore, reasonable to expect that communication skills training, highlighting respect and flexibility, could have spillover effects inasmuch as such abilities are generic and can be applied in many relationships, also in relation to customers. Such training efforts could, therefore, easily turn out to be winewin situations. At the same time, it is imperative to underline that the cruise sector should not be deceived by consultancies offering expensive programs with “guaranteed positive effects” (cf. Stanovich, 2010). If such programs are not based on sound empirical knowledge, they may prove to be of marginal, if indeed any, value. While Lee-Ross (2006) asserted that there are a lot of “poor management practices”
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Petrick, J. F., Li, X., & Park, S.-Y. (2007). Cruise passengers’ decision-making processes. Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing, 23(1), 1e14. Quinn, R. E., & Rohrbaugh, J. (June 1981). A competing values approach to organizational effectiveness. Public Productivity Review, 122e140. Seidl, A., Guiliano, F., & Pratt, L. (2007). Cruising for colonies: cruise tourism economics in Costa Rica. Tourism Economics, 13, 67e85. Stanovich, K. E. (2010). How to think straight about psychology (9th ed.). Boston: Pearson. Swaan, C. M., Ouwerkerk, I. M., & Roest, H. J. (2010). Cluster of botulism among Dutch tourists. Eurosurveillance, 15(14), 4e9. Testa, M. R. (2001). Organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and effort in the service environment. The Journal of Psychology, 132, 226e236. Testa, M. R. (2004). Cultural similarity and service leadership: a look at the cruise industry. Managing Service Quality, 14, 402e413. Testa, M. R., & Mueller, S. L. (2009). Demographic and cultural predictors of international service worker job satisfaction. Managing Service Quality, 19, 195e210. Tsoukatos, E., & Rand, G. K. (2007). Cultural influence on service quality and customer satisfaction: evidence from Greek insurance. Managing Service Quality, 17, 467e485. Urry, J. (1998). The tourist gaze. London: Sage. Wilkinson, P. F. (1999). Caribbean cruise tourism: delusion? illusion? Tourism Geographics, 1, 261e282. Yee, R. W. Y., Yeung, A. C. L., & Cheng, T. C. E. (2008). The impact of employee satisfaction on quality and profitability in high-contact service industries. Journal of Operations Management, 26, 651e668.
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Working onboard e Job perception, organizational commitment and job satisfaction in the cruise sectorq Svein Larsen a, b, *, Einar Marnburg b, Torvald Øgaard b a b
University of Bergen, School of Psychology, Dept. of Psychosocial Science, Norway University of Stavanger, Norwegian School of Hotel Management, Norway
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history: Received 25 September 2010 Accepted 27 June 2011
This paper focuses on the perceived work environment and its influence on organizational commitment and job satisfaction in the cruise sector. Two focus group interviews were conducted in addition to one survey among the crew in an upmarket cruise line. The focus groups elicited responses concerning crew experiences of working onboard. Based on this information, a questionnaire was constructed to measure job perceptions among crew members. The results indicate that all of the experience domains were related to job commitment and job satisfaction, but that the strongest effects were found to be perceived “Respect”, the “Social atmosphere”, and “Food and living quarters”. Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Cruise line crew Job perception Organizational commitment Job satisfaction Crew experiences
1. Introduction Although the cruise sector is a fast-growing segment of the international tourism industry (Gibson, 2006; Hung & Petrick, 2010; Murray, 2005), it has received relatively little research attention (Hosany & Whitham, 2009; Lee-Ross, 2006). Loper (2005) highlights a number of important challenges facing the cruise segment. These include: (1) The changing demographics of cruise passengers, (2) the question of how to attract customers, and (3) how to maintain customer loyalty (Dowling & Cowan, 2002; Gibson, 2006; Petrick, Li, & Park, 2007). Another problem is the sustainability issue (Dowling & Cowan, 2002; Johnson, 2002; Klein, 2008), including pollution (Klein, 2005, 2008), safety and hygiene (Klein, 2005, 2008), and various problems of the marginal economic impact of the industry on destinations (Klein, 2005, 2008; Seidl, Guiliano, & Pratt, 2007; Wilkinson, 1999). The sustainability issue also incorporates some economic implications, for example that cruise passengers in the future will be expected to pay more “ecotaxes”, at least in some areas. Still, from the point of view of the passenger, more immediate issues such as food poisoning (e.g. Larsen, Brun, Øgaard, & Selstad, 2007; Swaan, Ouwerkerk, & Roest, 2010) and other salient issues of risk and worry (Larsen, Brun, & Øgaard, 2009) may also prove to be important for choice of cruise line and itinerary. q Some preliminary data presented at the CAUTHE conference, Hobart, Australia, February 8e11, 2010. * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ47 55588628; fax: þ47 55589897. E-mail address: [email protected] (S. Larsen). 0261-5177/$ e see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.tourman.2011.06.014
In addition to such external challenges linked to the market (environment and economical impact), the cruise sector also faces several internal exertions at an operative level. Such problems include the relatively complicated areas of staffing (Gibson, 2006) and handling of management issues in everyday multicultural environments (Tsoukatos & Rand, 2007) of cruise ships (Testa, 2004). This is pivotal in maintaining high service quality, in reducing costs by a decreased demand for recruiting new personnel, and through savings made by decreasing the demand for initial training of newly-recruited crew members. For any operation in the cruise sector, the staffing question represents at least a two-fold challenge. On the one hand, it concerns recruiting and selecting staff (Larsen & Rapp, 1993), for example chefs, sommeliers, waiters, and other highly qualified frontline personnel, who may get better paying jobs in good restaurants at home. On the other hand, this problem pertains to the issue of keeping such crews happy so that they stay onboard for more than one contract. It is well known in the service literature that happy service staff tend to produce happy guests (e.g. Nebeker et al., 2001; Brown & Lam, 2008; Yee, Yeung, & Cheng, 2008), and in turn happy guests are more willing to return to the same service provider. In fact, Harter, Schmidt, Asplund, Killham, and Agrawal (2010) documented a causal relationship between employees’ work perceptions and the bottom line of organizations Therefore, crew members’ perceptions of their work environment and the relationship of these factors to organizational commitment and job satisfaction are areas of fundamental importance for cruise lines (Larsen & Folgerø, 1993; Larsen & Rapp, 1993; Testa, 2001, 2004; Testa & Mueller, 2009).
S. Larsen et al. / Tourism Management 33 (2012) 592e597
1.1. Aspects of working onboard In pinpointing the concept of the “tourist gaze”, Urry (1998) brought some of the problems of management in the hospitality and tourism industries to the forefront within the framework of a more general sociological approach. Urry maintained that in the tourism industry, labor itself is part of the service product, which logically makes the service worker part of the service. This implies that various domains of the service workers’ individualities, such as the way they speak, their appearances, and their personalities become matters of management interest e management is expected to interfere, intervene and control these aspects of a service worker’s personal behavior. This sort of understanding is in line with Hochschild’s (1983) analysis. She underlined that service work is emotional labor inasmuch as the customer procures the service workers’ personal demeanors. This aspect of service work results in a commercialization of human feelings (Urry, 1998, p. 70; Johansson & Näslund, 2009), which in turn is related to particular experiences of worry (Larsen, Øgaard, & Marnburg, 2005), isolation and other negative affects (Larsen & Folgerø, 1993), as well as a series of positive affects resulting from successful service encounters and manager-employee relations. Looking at the cruise sector specifically, Larsen (1996) underlined that cruise ships are often staffed by an international crew, which might be one motivator for many to take up work in this sector. He also noted that younger people in particular would work onboard cruise ships because of the opportunity it provides to see the world, a point also highlighted by Gibson (2006). At the same time, Larsen and Rapp (1993) alleged that this sector had traditionally been relatively hierarchically organized, and that this could be problematic in contemporary societies where “today’s personnel markets see themselves as socially equals, not only of their supervisors but also of their passengers” (p. 5). They also maintained that one important objective of any cruise line would be to lengthen each employee’s tenure for as long as possible. Johansson and Näslund (2009) argued that onboard cruise ships, emotional labor helps to create the cruise experience. Larsen and Folgerø (1993) highlighted that cruise ships are distinguished by a certain level of isolation, inasmuch as the crew is cut off from families and friends and from various recreational possibilities. De Lange, De Witte, and Notelaers (2008) reported that low work engagement, low job autonomy, and low departmental resources predicted low retention. In a recent review, Harter et al. (2010) found that managerial actions and practices impact employees’ perceptions of work conditions. The present research therefore addresses the issue of job perceptions in cruise line crews within this general framework. The basic research problem is two-fold: The first is to describe the parameters of the job perceptions in cruise line crews, and the second is to study how these perceptions are related to outcomes at an individual level in terms of organizational commitment and job satisfaction. The overarching research question may therefore be formulated as: Which job perceptions are related to high commitment and high satisfaction in cruise line crews? 2. Methods and materials A two-step research process was conducted for an international cruise line. The first step consisted of two focus groups conducted predominantly with non-supervising crew within the current fleet. The most important aims of these sessions were to bring out crew members’ experiences of their lives onboard in terms of likes and dislikes, relationships with colleagues and managers, and what crew members considered to be important for organizational commitment and job satisfaction; in short, to
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get verbal descriptions of aspects of the psychosocial work setting onboard. Such an elicitation approach is well known in the social sciences as an initial part of a research process. This kind of case approach may often be worthwhile in describing a particular domain, in an attempt to get an overview of the verbal contents of peoples’ experiences in various settings (Howitt & Cramer, 2005; Stanovich, 2010). The two focus groups were led by one of the researchers, and each group was attended by 6e8 crew members representing various operative and “close-to-customer functions” onboard the vessels of this particular cruise line. Each focus group interview lasted approximately one hour, and followed standardized recommendations as outlined by Howitt and Cramer (2005). Some of the crew members attending were on their second contract (mostly novices), while some were long-term employees in the organization (more than 15 contracts). The hotel manager appointed people to participate in these groups, and although an instruction of “randomization” was given, we cannot be sure that the people in the focus groups were randomly selected. In step two of the study, the information that emerged during the focus group interviews was used as a basis to develop a number of items for a questionnaire, which was then distributed among the crew and supervisors for the purpose of measuring the crew’s perceptions of their work environment. 2.1. The questionnaire In addition to standard socio-demographic background questions (such as age, gender, nationality, department, length of tenure (i.e. how many contracts the informant had been on with this company)), the questionnaire also included items measuring various other theoretical constructs such as implicit personality theories (Heslin & Vandewalle, 2008; Heslin, Vandewalle, & Latham, 2006) and cultural values (Quinn & Rohrbaugh, 1981). For the present study, however, the key outcome variables were standardized measures of organizational commitment (OC) and job satisfaction (JS). Job satisfaction, often understood as an emotional response to the individual’s appraisal of his job experiences, was measured using three items adapted from the Michigan Organizational Assessment Questionnaire (Cammann, Fichman, Jenkins, & Klesh, 1983). Organizational commitment, usually understood as the relative strength of an individual’s identification with and involvement in a particular organization (Mowday, Steers, & Porter, 1979), was measured by the short form of the Organizational Assessment Questionnaire (Cammann et al., 1983), but in order to avoid word confusion, only the nine (of 15) items that are positively worded were used (cf. Mathieu, 1991; Mathieu & Zajac, 1990). The job perception items were developed based on the results from the focus groups. Initially, we used 23 items to capture job perception. We also developed one item for the purpose of validation of the job perception items (“Frankly, I just love to work for this company”). 2.2. Respondents There was a total 216 respondents in the survey, 133 of whom reported that they were “ordinary crew” with no supervisory (leadership) tasks in their job, 58 respondents indicated that they had a certain leadership responsibility, and the remaining 18 respondents did not answer this question. These respondents represented 30 different nationalities and the mean age was 33 years (SD ¼ 9). Some 69% of these respondents were men. The number of people working onboard during the week(s) of data collection was 495, yielding a response rate of approximately 44%. Some 25% of respondents were on their first contract with this cruise line, while 18% of the respondents had been on 10 contracts
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or more. All departments were represented, although a majority of the respondents came from Housekeeping (22.4%), Restaurant/Bar (22.9%), or from the Galley (14.3%).
their living quarters it’s been discussed before thar some of the sleeping bunks or they are sleeping on are not on the standard some are very close to the ceiling they cannot even seat straight.”
3. Results
3.2. Results from the survey
3.1. Themes emerging in the focus groups
All of the original 23 items developed to tap crew perceptions were factor analyzed using the principal component technique (Varimax rotation). This explorative method yielded a solution with five factors having Eigenvalues above one. One item was excluded for unclear wording (negative sentence), and one item was excluded because it did not fill the inclusion criterion of a factor loading above .5 on any of the factors. This procedure gave a relatively unitary solution for the remaining 21 items, with only a few items (items 2, 7, & 15; see Table 1) loading > .5 in more than one factor. As can be seen from Table 1, approximately 68% of the variance in job experiences was explained with the current factor solution. Factor 1 was labeled “Supervisor respect and fairness” (12 items, a ¼ .92), Factor 2 was labeled “Social atmosphere: Guests and friends” (five items, a ¼ .79), Factor 3 was labeled “See the world and earn money” (three items, a ¼ .76), Factor 4 was labeled “physical aspects” (two items, a ¼ .63, r ¼ .50), and Factor 5 was labeled “Supervisor flexibility” (two items, a ¼ .64, r ¼ .47). In order to inspect the validity of the measures, we included one validation question in our questionnaire: “Frankly, I just love to work for this company”. This item is best conceived of as an organizational commitment item (but it is not included in the Mowday et al. (1979) scale). This item should therefore correlate most strongly with the OC scale and second highest with the JS scale, but it should also correlate moderately, but positively, with the job perception scales. As can be seen from Table 2, the validation item correlated significantly with both JC (r ¼ .82, p < .01) and JS (r ¼ .63, p < .01). As expected, the correlation of this item with the job perception scales was significantly lower (all rs between .19 and .45, p < .01). This
The most prevailing themes were those pertaining to the topics of “Getting respect for what we do” and “Social support” e being supported as a valued member of the service team onboard. While several crew members indicated that the perception of being respected or supported was not at all absent onboard, they simultaneously indicated that a prevalent experience was that very often crew members were just taken for granted. One crew member explicitly said that (s)he was only noticed by the supervisor if something went wrong; one’s everyday high standard performance was rarely noticed. Another important theme concerned “Free time and length of contract”. Crew members maintained that they would sometimes not get permission to go ashore and get free time away from the ship. This was seen as a token of lack of flexibility on the part of the supervisors. Some, particularly from frontline personnel in the ships’ maritime sector, also claimed that contracts were too long, or as one informant phrased it, “Working onboard here is Monday. Every day is Monday for 9 months”. A fourth recurring theme concerned “Physical aspects” of the job setting onboard. The first of these physical aspects concerned money (“I work here for the money”), while a second theme indicated a certain feeling of powerlessness and worry concerning the recruiting office and the required medical tests needed before getting a contract. A third issue in this group of aspects was related to living quarters onboard. The following is a direct quote from one crew member, who anonymously left a letter to the researcher which said (original grammar and spelling), “.. I just want to inform you the living condition of the other crew member specially
Table 1 Factor solution of job experiences. Item 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
Factor 1 My supervisor appreciates what I do My colleagues really respect me My supervisor respects the kind of work that I do My supervisor understands how important my work is My supervisor always remembers to thank me for a job well done If I make I mistake, I always feel that I am just as much respected as a professional My colleagues respect the kind of work that I do I took the job to see the world I took the job because the money is good This job gives me a great opportunity to travel the world I love being with the guests e so many interesting and fun people I like the international atmosphere onboard I have many friends onboard, that’s really what keeps me here In stressful periods, my supervisors always comment on how well my job is handled My supervisor is flexible and sees to it that I get free time to go ashore when I dock My supervisor is interested in my suggestions I am happy about the living quarters onboard The crew food is generally very good I am being treated fairly by my boss When my day’s work is done, I can get a few moments extra to go ashore when we dock I am being treated respectfully by my boss Initial Eigenvalue Explained variance Cronbach’s alpha
Factor 2
.888 .623 .887 .850 .846 .659
Factor 3
Factor 4
Factor 5
.573
.620
.555 .802 .717 .848 .622 .778 .622
.743 .524
.654
.745 .795 .829 .668 .647 .745 8,61 31,26
2,32 11,49 .92
.79
1,53 10,37 .76
1,49 7,66
1,09 7,56 .63
.70
S. Larsen et al. / Tourism Management 33 (2012) 592e597 Table 2 Correlation among organizational commitment, job satisfaction, the item “I just love to work for this company”, and the scales measuring the crew’s job perceptions. “I just love to work for this company” Organizational commitment Job satisfaction Respect Social See the world & money Physical Supervisor flexibility
Organizational commitment
Job satisfaction
.82** .35** .40** .26** .45** .17**
.36** .35** .12 .36** .11
.82** .63** .39** .39** .19** .45** .24**
indicates that job perceptions, as they are measured here, reflect aspects of work life onboard other than both job commitment and job satisfaction do, which in turn can be interpreted as a sign of these measures’ content and discriminant validities. The mean scores on all factors measuring job experiences were above four on the seven-point scale, indicating that the crew generally judge the job perception factors included in this study to be relatively positive. As can be seen from Fig. 1, both nonsupervising crew and crew members who indicated that they had some supervisory tasks onboard obtained relatively high scores. Fig. 1 also shows that the two groups are similar in the structure of responses, indicating that they are similar with respect to job perceptions, except that for the supervising crew, the “See the world” experience seems less important (F (1,188) ¼ 28.72, p ¼ .000; all other differences were non significant). Although the supervising crew (mean age 35.1) were somewhat older than the non-supervising crew (mean age 31.7) (F (1,180) ¼ 5.75, p ¼ .018), the correlation between this job perception factor (“See the world”) and age was not significant (r ¼ 004, p ¼ .96), which excludes age as a factor that could account for this difference. There was also an even distribution of gender in the two groups (c2 ¼ .0.43, n.s.), which excludes gender as an explanation. Using a simultaneous entry multiple regression method, a significant model was found for the relationships between job perceptions and OC (see Table 3), and for the relationships between job perceptions and JC (see Table 4). While all job perception scales contributed to explaining variance in organizational commitment, only three variables, “Supervisor respect and fairness”, “Social atmosphere: Guests and friends”, and “Supervisor flexibility” contributed significantly to explaining the variance in job satisfaction. The total explained variance was 50% for OC, and 34.4% for JC. 4. Discussion The main finding in this study is that job perception in the cruise industry incorporates factors such as the crew’s relationship with supervisors, colleagues, and clients (guests), and encompasses physical aspects of the work environment. We also found that three of these dimensions; the experience of “Supervisor respect and 7
595
Table 3 Regression analysis of organizational commitment. Variable
B
Constant Get respect Social See the world Physical Sup flexibility
4.383 .346 .445 .268 .260 .179
b
t
Sig.
.297 .393 .236 .351 .157
24.025 5.509 7.411 4,435 6.495 2.958
.000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .004
R2 ¼ .503.
fairness”, the positive experience of the “Social atmosphere: Guests and friends”, and the positive experiences of food and living quarters, all significantly predicted job satisfaction in cruise line crews. Job commitment was found to be predicted by the same factors as well as by the empirical factors of “Getting to see the world” and the experience of “Supervisors’ flexibility”. Our results further showed that job perception factors were judged to be relatively positive in the current cruise line. Nonetheless, crew with supervisory responsibilities perceived “See the world and earn money” to be less important than non-supervising crew perceived this factor to be. Neither age nor gender can explain this difference. Job perceptions are important inasmuch as they are related in various ways to peoples’ everyday lives (Harter & Arora, 2009). Judge and Ilies (2004) found that moods at work affected moods after work, and underlined that attitudes toward work extended to emotions after work. Onboard cruise ships, one may expect these relationships to be even stronger, since the workplace is not only the arena for work but also for much of the crew members’ leisure time; the cruise ship is both home and work. However, the fact that most crew have separate areas for work and leisure time onboard does not mean that these are distinctly separated at the psychological level. People may feel that the confines of the cruise ship are tight, and that there is no real possibility for them to get away from these confines for leisure purposes. This is one important reason why job perceptions, particularly as they pertain to the social life onboard (relationships to superordinates, colleagues, subordinates, and guests) are of particular interest for the cruise sector. Another reason for approaching this challenging area of research in the cruise sector is that job perceptions have been shown to be linked with job satisfaction (Testa & Mueller, 2009). Indeed, job perceptions have been causally linked with the bottom line and with customer loyalty in various industries (Harter et al., 2010). This further underlines that job perceptions should be an area of concern, both for the organization’s strategic management and for the daily leadership onboard cruise liners. Customer satisfaction is positively related to profitability (Harter et al., 2010; Cronin & Taylor, 1992), and customer satisfaction is, to a large extent, a function of the service workers’ happiness (Yee et al., 2008). In addition, our data suggest that job experiences influence outcomes such as job satisfaction and organizational commitment, and logically an intense focus should be held concerning this issue. It is our contention that if the cruise line is successful in administering factors that influence job satisfaction
6 5
Crew (n=132)
4
Supervising crew (n=58)
3 2 1
e Se
W
o
** rld
l c ia So
Re
t ec sp
e Fl
y ilit xib
P
al sic hy
Fig. 1. Job perceptions in supervising- and non-supervising crew.
Table 4 Regression analysis of job satisfaction. Variable
B
Constant Get respect Social See the world Physical Sup flexibility
4.536 .399 .427 .121 .227 .132
R2 ¼ .344.
b
t
Sig.
.312 .334 .095 .273 .103
19.448 5.130 5.561 1,571 4.470 1.709
.000 .000 .000 .118 .000 .089
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and organizational commitment, such as the crew’s perception of their jobs, they can also develop their internal cultures, their work environment as it is, in the direction of promoting positive outcomes concerning organizational commitment and job satisfaction. This logically highlights one other area of interest for this kind of research, namely the relationship of job experiences on the one side and satisfaction with life in general on the other. In an essay published almost 20 years ago, Larsen and Rapp (1993) raised the issue of crew tenure, an area which is no less difficult to handle today (Testa, 2004). Based on the knowledge drawn from the present study, we can probably say that Larsen and Rapp’s contention that online management training is pivotal is equally valid today, since such training efforts may influence both spheres of crew members’ lives. In addition, we now know that in order to increase the likelihood of keeping qualified workers within the cruise industry, attention needs to be directed directly toward work environment issues, including those that concern perceptions of managers, colleagues, and guests onboard, and those that pertain to the general social environment of the cruise ship as such. 4.1. Some final remarks The response rate in the present research is somewhat low. This can be interpreted as fear or resistance in the crew. It may also reflect some of the individual ships’ cultures as being protective and not open to insight from external individuals. Thirdly, it may reflect the personnel’s suspicions concerning the organization as such, or concerning the researchers; they may not have believed in the assurance of anonymity. The lack of research into the cruise sector is probably due in part to the difficulties in gathering data from the sector, and to the difficulties in getting access both to people working in the industry and to cruise line passengers for systematic sampling and data collection purposes. One may, of course, also speculate that some operators in the cruise industry would be hesitant to allow researchers to enter their domain, reluctant to be researched and to pay the price for getting systematic knowledge. Along the same lines, one could also speculate that the cruise sector is highly vulnerable and that operators in the industry tend to keep what is understood to be “trade secrets” to themselves for reasons of competition. On the other hand, it may well be that managers in the sector are skeptical toward academic research because research results are viewed at best as “not being practical”, or at worst, as useless. Our results stipulate relationships between theoretical constructs, but they can also be translated relatively easily into practical management and leadership skills. Onboard cruise ships, our data could guide training programs for officers and supervising crew in basic skills of interaction and of communication of respect and flexibility. Huang and Hsu (2010) showed that contact between customers onboard cruise ships is important for the service quality experience of the clients, just as our data show that such contact between crew members is important for crew members. It is, therefore, reasonable to expect that communication skills training, highlighting respect and flexibility, could have spillover effects inasmuch as such abilities are generic and can be applied in many relationships, also in relation to customers. Such training efforts could, therefore, easily turn out to be winewin situations. At the same time, it is imperative to underline that the cruise sector should not be deceived by consultancies offering expensive programs with “guaranteed positive effects” (cf. Stanovich, 2010). If such programs are not based on sound empirical knowledge, they may prove to be of marginal, if indeed any, value. While Lee-Ross (2006) asserted that there are a lot of “poor management practices”
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