Intercultural competence in tourism and hospitality: Self-efficacy beliefs and the Dunning Kruger effect

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Abstract

This study aims to measure intercultural competence (awareness) of tourism and hospitality employees who tend to be in continuous interaction with intercultural customers. By comparing the results of a self-report awareness test/scale with the results of a knowledge-based test, the study shows that employees not only have extremely low intercultural competence, they also exaggerate their intercultural awareness/competence. Hence, in addition to the implications for intercultural competence/awareness of tourism and hospitality employees and for the businesses for which they work, the study has also implications regarding the measurement ability of self-report scales/tests.

Introduction

The famous quote “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” (as cited in Koc, 2020, p. ix) by the management guru Peter Drucker emphasises the overriding influence of culture on business and management. Culture has an important influence not only on the attitudes and behaviours of people but also on the processes and systems people establish and manage. Hence, ignoring cultural differences may have significant negative implications for the efficiency and effectiveness of businesses. For instance, a lack of awareness of the cultural differences, between the French, European, and the American customers, cost Disney over $4 billion in their Euro Disney (Disneyland Paris) project (Matusitz, 2010).

Tourism and hospitality are probably the two most relevant fields of study from the perspective of culture, as these industries involve continuous and intense multi-cultural social contact and interaction between customers, employees, and managers (Gibson & Zhong, 2005; Koc, 2017; Lieberman & Gamst, 2015).

The influence of culture on tourism and hospitality is particularly important for two main reasons. First, tourism and hospitality activities are increasingly becoming international in nature with the participation of more and more people from different countries and cultures (Koc, 2020; Mihalič & Fennell, 2015). Second, tourism and hospitality services take place in a social servicescape (Koc, 2019a; Tombs & McColl-Kennedy, 2003) within which intense and frequent social contact or interactions take place between service providers and customers, and among service providers themselves (Boz, Arslan, & Koc, 2017; Dolnicar, Grabler, Grün, & Kulnig, 2011; Koc, 2003, 2013). Due to this intense social contact and interaction, tourism and hospitality industry businesses are often referred to as people businesses (Kim, Wang, & Mattila, 2010).

The incongruences and incompatibilities between people due to their different cultural backgrounds may cause conflicts and misunderstandings during social interactions (Cushner & Chang, 2015; Weber, Sparks, & Hsu, 2016; Koc, 2020), and may result in unsatisfactory customer experiences. For instance, a service provider’s lack of knowledge about the fact that the expressions of people from individualistic cultures are more controlled (Safdar et al., 2008) may cause misunderstandings and misperceptions during communication.

Research shows that the social contact and interaction between the service personnel and customers often form the basis of service quality evaluations of customers (Koc, 2006; Prayag & Ryan, 2012; Rauch, Collins, Nale, & Barr, 2015). For instance, while 14 % of customer switching is related to dissatisfaction with actual products/services, i.e. to the technical aspect of quality, 67 % of customer switching is related to dissatisfaction with social exchanges between the customer and service personnel, i.e. to the functional aspect of quality (Doyle, 2008). In line with this finding, most of the service quality elements (e.g. reliability, responsiveness, and empathy) in the service quality models such as SERVQUAL (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, & Berry, 1988) are to do with service encounters and social interaction between the service providers and the customers. According to research (Koc & Bozkurt, 2017; Solomon, Surprenant, Czepiel, & Gutman, 1985; Wang & Mattila, 2010) customers’ perceptions of service interactions significantly influence their service quality evaluations and satisfaction. Based on the above background this study aims to measure and compare intercultural competence/awareness scores of tourism and hospitality employees in a self-report scale/test compared with a knowledge-based test. The main motivation behind the study is that self-report tests or scales may reflect the participants’ claims or self-perceptions or self-efficacy beliefs rather than their actual levels of competence/awareness. The actual measurement of service employees’ intercultural competence/awareness levels may be significantly important in tourism and hospitality and tourism as service environments in these industries are increasingly becoming international and multicultural.

Section snippets

Intercultural awareness, intercultural competence and intercultural sensitivity

Although the concepts of awareness, competence, and sensitivity have different meanings, quite often the concepts of intercultural awareness, intercultural competence and sensitivity tend to be used interchangeably to refer to knowledge, and attitudes required to interact effectively with other cultures.

According to Barrett, Byram, Lázá, MompointGaillard, and Philippou (2013) cross-cultural or intercultural awareness comprises the sensitivity and respect towards other people’s culture and

The method

This study investigates and compares the results of self-report and knowledge-based tests of intercultural awareness abilities of 150 tourism and hospitality employees working at hotels and restaurants on the Aegean Coast of Turkey. The reason for choosing this region is that this region attracts mainly international tourists (Ayyildiz, 2020). Resorts such as Kusadasi, Bodrum, and Marmaris in this region are among the top international tourist resorts in the world (UNWTO, 2020). Hence,

Findings and analysis

Table 1 shows the results of factor and reliability analysis. The results indicated that Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin values obtained for the two constructs measured,

Cross-cultural Awareness Scale and Intention to Develop (allocating resources) were 0.76 and 0.62 respectively. The factors accounted for 76 % and 62 % of the variance, respectively. The factor loadings for each construct ranged from 0.30 to 0.86.

Based on the reliability analysis of the data obtained from the two scales Cross-Cultural

Theoretical implications

The findings of the study have a number of theoretical implications as well. As it was shown above, self-report scales may hinder the unravelling of the truth as self-report measurements may reflect self-claims or self-perceptions of people, rather than the actual. This is because they are likely to provide exaggerated responses due to the fact that people may engage in impression management, may have hidden motives and, may lack the ability to make objective evaluations (Johansson et al., 2005

Practical implications

As explained above, many studies show the importance of employees' intercultural awareness from the perspective of customer satisfaction, revisit intention, customer loyalty, and competitive advantage (Sizoo et al., 2003; Sizoo, 2008; Stauss, 2016; Wang & Zhou, 2016; Arli & Bakan, 2018; Koc, 2020). However, this study showed that there was a lack of awareness of basic cultural facts among tourism and hospitality employees who regularly served international and intercultural customers. Moreover,

Limitations of the study and the recommendations for future research

Although, in general, a sample size of 70 and above is considered sufficient for a survey (Bagozzi & Yi, 2012; Janes, 2001; Nunnally, 1978) future research may be implemented with groups larger than the sample size of this study (150). Although the study has been carried out with tourism and hospitality employees its findings may be relevant for other services which may involve intercultural service encounters as well. Hence, future research may investigate employees’ intercultural awareness in

Conclusions

This study shows that tourism and hospitality employees serving international customers may have a considerably low level of intercultural awareness/competence. This finding has important implications as tourism and hospitality industries are increasingly becoming highly international and intercultural from the perspectives of both demand and supply. By comparing self-report and knowledge-based scales to measure intercultural competence/awareness of tourism and hospitality employees, the study

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