نقش رضایت شغلی در ارتباط برتری تجاری و رفتار شهروندی سازمانی (OCB)

ABSTRACT Role of Job Satisfaction in the relationship of Business Excellence and OCB: Iranian Hospitality Industry

Organizations need to implement a proper quality management system in order to deal with the changes in today’s fast growing industries. The tourism industry is known to be one of the fastest growing industries in the new millennium. Iran with its rich history is one of the gradually developing countries in terms of tourism.

The main resource for revenue gain is the petroleum products of Iran; however tourism is also one of the earning industries for such a country. Iran is ranked 7th in the world in terms of its historical places and monuments, and it is known to be 70th in term of its tourism hosting capacity (WTTC, 2010). In terms of world tourism revenues, Iran’s share is a meager 0.000%. In 2004, a total number of 1,411,500 tourists visited Iran, 431,500 of whom were foreigners and the rest were Iranian citizens (ICHTO, 2006).

The secretary of the Iran Hotel Owners Society (Iran Daily, 2006) of Iran declared that, there are 619 hotels in the country, with a total capacity of 27,034 rooms and 55,382 beds. These hotels include 17 five-star hotels, 27 four-star hotels, 60 three-star hotels, 203 two-star hotels, 212 one-star hotels, and 100 not graded hotels (Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, 2000). These establishments have generated US$29.8 billion of economic activity in 2006, and it was estimated to grow toUS$71.4 billion by 2016. Total demand is expected to grow by 2.4% and by 4.0% per annum through 2016.

A rapid growth in the country’s hotel industry is planned, so there are new hotels being constructed and old hotels are being renovated in order to be able to compete with other hotels in the hospitality sector. Iran’s travel and tourism industry are expected to contribute 3.5% to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (US$8.4 billion), rising in nominal terms to US $23.6 billion (4.0% of total) by 2016. The travel and tourism economy involvement should decline from 9.8% -US $23.4 billion- to 9.1% -US $53.6 billion- during this same period.

In terms of employment there are 1,712,000 jobs in the Iranian travel and tourism industry which contains 8.7% of the employment share of Iran. The industry is expected to generate 12.1% of total exports US $8.9 billion, growing to US $13.2 billion (19.4% of total) by 2016 (WTTC, 2006). Based on the aforesaid statistical results, the administrations in the industry should use necessary management tools in order to get better outcomes and avoid low levels of job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behaviors.

One of the most important contributions of this study to the hospitality literature is to mention the importance of business excellence practices and their relationships with job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behavior in the hospitality industry, since there are very limited studies that have taken the business excellence practices into consideration in the hotels, especially in a developing country like Iran (Oakland and Tanner, 2008; Arasli and Baradarani, 2010).