مقیاس فرهنگ مهمان نوازی : اندازه گیری فرهنگ سازمانی و ویژگی های شخصی

The hospitality industry has a unique and specific culture when compared to other industries. Because of this, not everyone will want to make this industry a career, as evidenced by the high turnover. Yet, the hospitality industry needs to attract and keep motivated and dedicated employees. This study set out to discover attributes that are unique to hospitality organizations as well as the characteristics and values of a person who would be successful in a work environment that exhibited this culture. This includes determining if a person is a match to the culture of the hospitality industry. In order to identify the variables of hospitality culture, an extensive review of the literature and a panel of industry experts were consulted. The items identified from both groups were used to establish the constructs for a scale, which is called the Hospitality Culture Scale. Seven hundred and forty one hospitality professionals rated the attributes. Principal component analysis determined the final factors for the organizational culture and personal attributes. These constructs included: management principles, customer relationships, job variety, job satisfaction, principles, propitiousness, leadership, risk taker, accuracy, and composure.

The hospitality industry has a unique and specific culture that can be generalized to multiple organizations that provide accommodations, lodging, and/or foodservices for people when they are away from their homes (Woods, 1989). The components of the hospitality product include not only the physical product, but the service delivery, service environment, and the service product (Rust and Oliver, 1993). This industry is different than any other because of the intangible hospitality product that the personnel are delivering. Unlike most service industries, it is the manner in which the hospitality employee provides the service – as opposed to the service itself – which is critical to the customer's overall enjoyment of the product or “experience” being purchased. Accordingly, the relationship between front-line hospitality employees and the customer greatly influences customer satisfaction and loyalty. As such, attracting and retaining workers who are able to provide exceptional customer service should be a high priority for any hospitality organization. At the same time, the hospitality industry is often characterized by notoriously poor wages, low job security, long working hours, limited opportunities for personal development, and seasonality ( Deery and Shaw, 1999 and Baum, 2008). Not only is it unlikely that these job attributes will attract the most qualified candidates for exceptional customer service, but they greatly contribute to the industry's high turnover rate. Yet, hospitality organizations are given the challenge of finding and hiring personnel who hold similar values, and are able to both manage people and the service process under difficult circumstances. Organizations routinely engage in activities to identify and select individuals who are likely to share their cultural values (Schneider, 1987 and Lee-Ross and Pryce, 2010). These individuals are hypothesized to share common backgrounds, characteristics, and orientations. By relying on both established recruiting sources (e.g., search firm and/or specific universities for college recruiting) and established screening selection techniques (e.g., specific tests and minimum cut-off scores), organizations are able to narrow the range of characteristics chosen applicants are likely to possess (Bretz et al., 1989). Researchers have made theoretical and methodological advances in understanding the development of cultural values in non-hospitality organizations (Judge and Cable, 1997 and Sheridan, 1992). However, little research has investigated what attributes produce a measurably distinctive hospitality industry culture (Dawson and Abbott, 2011). Even fewer studies have examined whether a person is a match to this culture or not. A person's match is important because as Gordon (1991) argues, the organizational culture is strongly influenced by the characteristics (shared meanings) of the industry in which the company operates. He believes that within industries, certain cultural characteristics will be widespread among organizations, and these most likely will be quite different from the characteristics found in other industries. The purpose of this study was to create a scale of hospitality culture by establishing the organizational culture and personal attributes (characteristics and values) of those employed in the hospitality industry. A quantitative instrument was developed and validated in order to measure this. We call this instrument, The Hospitality Culture Scale (HCS). It is intended to measure a person's understanding of the culture of hospitality organizations and to determine if a particular individual's values are in-line with those currently working in the industry.

5.1. Discussion The outcome of the study is the developed instrument we call the Hospitality Culture Scale (HCS). This instrument was designed to measure dimensions specific to hospitality. The original goal was to make the attributes as hospitality industry specific as possible. The loading yielded four organizational factors – management principles, customer relationships, job variety, and job satisfaction. Although job satisfaction only had an alpha of .536, it was retained because of its relationship to the underlying theoretical foundation. Six personal factors were identified-principles, propitiousness, leadership, risk taker, accuracy, and composure. Similar to job satisfaction, composure, which had an alpha of .595, was also retained due to its relationship to the underlying theoretical foundation. When examining the attributes that make-up each of the factors on the scale, the uniqueness of the hospitality industry is truly captured. Through this investigation, the determined management principles for hospitality organizations demonstrate a focus towards employee centered philosophies rather than only being bottom line driven. For instance, these principles emphasize values such “treating others as I wish to be treated” and “having an entrepreneurial spirit.” Perhaps the most distinct features of hospitality culture are found within the factor, “Customer Relationships.” Hospitality organizations strive to be places that are looked upon as “a home away from home,” “creating memories for their guests,” and “helping guests celebrate milestones in their lives.” Organizational culture also included the negative aspects of the hospitality industry with the attributes, “high turnover” and “burn-out.” The key principle of measuring a potential employee is to make sure that their values correspond with the industry. Turnover and burn-out represent the reality of our industry. These are important characteristics for a potential employee to be aware of before starting with an organization or even within the hospitality industry itself. Candidates must have a desire to embrace this known adversity in order to be successful. The personal attributes of the scale include many distinctive hospitality specific traits as well. The factor, “Propitiousness” highlights that someone must posses characteristics that value a service to others in order to fit within the industry. A service oriented person must also have leadership qualities in order to be effective. The attributes of leadership are well defined through the variables of “being a coach or mentor,” “strategic in thinking,” and “turning a loss leader into a profit.” One could argue that the attributes we examined could describe any industry. However, research has shown that services are different than goods and the type of employees who work in a service environment need to be different (Bowen and Ford, 2004). Service employees are “on stage” most of their working time; as such, they need to possess many of the values addressed in our scale. If they do not, they might become frustrated in their job and possibly quit. They quit because they cannot adapt into the service environment. The nature of simultaneous production and consumption require that the employee makes immediate decisions when confronted with a service quality issue. Unlike a manufacturing plant that can shut the line down in order to fix a quality issue, service employees must fix the problem while the customer impatiently waits. We believe the HCS captures this uniqueness. 5.2. Implications This study's findings offer a number of implications for the hospitality industry. For practice, several potentially relevant contributions for hospitality managers are offered. The HCS scale provides four organizational and six personal dimensions to measurably define hospitality culture. Schein (1992) considered a culture to be valid if it can be taught to new members as the correct way of doing things. The HCS can be used in the selection process. In addition to matching applicant's knowledge, skills, and abilities, with job requirements, an ideal process might be screening a potential employee on their match with the organizational culture and the personal attributes of a particular organization (Tepeci et al., 2002). The HCS provides traits of a person who would be successful in a work environment that exhibited this culture. This study contributes to the theoretical knowledge regarding hospitality culture. Moreover, it advances previous work and knowledge with respect to the development of scales that measure organizational and personal attributes of hospitality culture. Table 6 displays the final list of the organizational and personal factors that were derived from this study. The previous attempts to identify hospitality culture did not provide a tool that could represent the multiple stakeholders that make-up the entire industry. Woods (1989) only examined the norms and values of restaurants and provided a list of the attributes. The HCS scale is quantifiable and can be applied to the entire industry. Three of the attributes from Wood's (1989) study, burnout, turnover, and retention are represented within two of the factors included as part of the HCS scale. Tepeci and Bartlett (2002) created the Hospitality Industry Culture Profile, however, the sample only included students with a mean of 19 months experience in the industry. The Hospitality Industry Culture Profile has a factor called attention to detail that includes the attributes: paying attention to detail accuracy, detail oriented, and precise. The organizational factor, “Accuracy,” in this study loaded similarly to Tepeci and Bartlett (2002) with variables of detail oriented, precise, and takes calculated risks. Additionally, the scale offers educational implications. The HCS can be utilized by high school counselors and college recruiters to determine if a student is a potential candidate for the hospitality industry. Although the high school student may not have experience in dealing with customers or possess leadership skills, the scale offers a tool to determine if this person has the propensity to develop and value these traits in the future. 5.3. Recommendations for future research Although employment placement testing is not common for hospitality industry (Berger and Ghei, 1995), further studies can be conducted with the HCS to measure a link between a person's match with the industry and their job satisfaction, as well as individual retention rates. Given the enormous turnover rate of hospitality employees, it would make sense that the industry would want to hire those who have similar values to those in the industry and who will be satisfied with their organizations. The HCS should be given to graduating college students who are enrolled within hospitality, business, and liberal arts disciplines. The scores from each group of students could be used to measure the differences on each of the factors. The study could have the potential of showing that hospitality programs are adequately preparing students to become part of the industry in which they are preparing them. 5.4. Limitations The HCS instrument will benefit from continued testing and refinement. Although the instrument was tested on a small sample of students, there were statistical differences between hospitality, law, and business majors on some of the factors. Those currently in the hospitality industry had an overall score of 5.09 on the organizational characteristics and a mean score of 5.81 on the personal characteristics. Recall that it was suggested that any scores above 5.23 for the organizational and 5.82 on the personal indicate that the person will likely be a good match to the hospitality industry. While the pilot test is slightly less than the proposed baseline, hospitality students did have statistically higher means. Because of the large number of factors that were included in the initial survey, multiple questions measuring the same concept were not added to the instrument. As a result, the factors Composure and Job Satisfaction had low reliabilities. The low reliabilities were due, in part, to the fact that only two items comprised each factor. These factors were purposely kept in the analysis for two reasons. First, both job satisfaction and composure are important constructs that may help describe hospitality culture. Second, by retaining these constructs we are hopeful that other researchers will be encouraged to engage in research to further define them. This study attempted to define hospitality culture by examining the multiple stakeholders who are part of the industry. However, it was discovered, club managers differed with regards to a number of factors. Previous research supports that there are numerous aspects of club operations that set that segment apart from other operations in the hospitality industry (Barrows, 1994). One could surmise this differentiation is due to the fact that the club industry is working to satisfy the needs of members versus the general needs of guests. When examining the specific differences between the segments, country club managers differed from all segments of the industry in the area of management principles. If you examine the attributes associated with these principles, one could ascertain the unique aspects with regards to the club's organizational culture versus the rest of the industry. Perhaps, the culture of the club industry should be explored separately in the future. 5.5. Final thoughts Though further study and development of the survey dimensions and items are needed, subsequent revisions of the HCS can be used to assess the culture of individual organizations, the culture of industry segments, and also to measure the match of individuals with a particular organization and with the culture of the hospitality industry. A person must display certain personal principles, want to service others, display leadership abilities, be a risk taker, be known for accuracy, and yet are able to exhibit composure throughout their job in order to succeed within the hospitality industry.