مشارکت کاری، تعهد، رضایت و جایگزینی کارمندان: شواهد به دست آمده از کارکنان هتل

ABSTRACT Job involvement, commitment, satisfaction and turnover: Evidence from hotel employees in Cyprus

The tourism sector is highly labor intensive with the performance of its human resources being a significant and determining factor in its sustainability. Consequently, this reliance on human resources for its proper functioning and growth, demands both effective and efficient workforce practices in order for employees to perform at optimum levels, thereby enabling the sector to remain viable in a rapidly changing, and fiercely competitive, global environment (Ogbeide & Harrington, 2011; Zopiatis & Constanti, 2007). As organizations in the tourism sector have become increasingly aware that mismanagement of resources can lead to their demise, they have focused on cost minimization while simultaneously maintaining quality (Birdir, 2002; Hinkin & Tracey, 2000). Thus informed, these organizations are encouraged by the literature (Gronroos, 2000; Karatepe & Kilic, 2007; Zeithaml & Bitner, 2000) to consider employee performance, as a means to gain competitive advantage.

Subsequently, scholars have investigated workplace issues that are likely to impact on employee attitudes in order to better understand, and therefore to develop strategies to improve both individual and organizational performance. One of the issues includes the tacit acceptance that turnover behavior is quite appropriate and an accepted element of life within the industry (Davidson, Timo, & Wang, 2010; Iverson & Deery, 1997). The profound impact that turnover behavior has on an organization’s costs has increased the need for continual management vigilance in order to mitigate any likely adverse effects to the enterprise (Hinkin & Tracey, 2000; Lashley, 2001; Ryan, Ghazali, & Mohsin, 2011; Simons & Hinkin, 2001).

Others have posited that low levels of job satisfaction, which is impacted by routinization, role conflict and lack of promotional opportunity (Carbery, Garavan, O’Brien, & McDonnell, 2003; Lambert, Lewig, & Dollard, 2003), can have deleterious effects on the organization. In the same vein, two further universal dimensions of the work experience, organizational commitment and job involvement, can impact not only an employee’s decision to quit an organization, but also on its bottom line results (Deery, Iverson, & Walsh, 2002; Falkenburg & Schyns, 2007; Johnson et al., 2005).

Upon scanning the job involvement, organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and turnover literature in Cyprus we found a barren landscape. Utilizing structural equation modeling (SEM) and grounding our research in the turnover, job satisfaction, job involvement and organizational commitment theories, we embarked on a theoretical and empirical journey to discover the relationships between the aforementioned workplace constructs. Before presenting an overview of the relevant literature which is synthesized with the development of several hypotheses, we provide the context and background of the study.