Reducing hotel employee turnover intention by promoting pride in job and meaning of work: A cross-cultural perspective

Highlights

• Pride in job can be fostered by work centrality, obligation norms, and work value.

• No significant relationship is found between entitlement norms and job pride.

• Pride in job diminishes hotel employees’ intention to leave the job.

• The impact of job pride on turnover intention differs across cultures.

• The effect of MOW on job pride generalizes between individualism and collectivism.

Abstract

Characterizing with an image of low-skilled jobs and low social status, the hotel industry is undergoing a “great resignation” from staff due to stress post-Covid-19, urging a need to encourage hotel employees to stay with their jobs. This study attempted to explore whether employees’ turnover intention was decreased by promoting their pride in jobs and how job pride was predicted by dimensions of the meaning of work. Two online surveys were conducted on American and Vietnamese hotel employees. A structural equation modeling analysis revealed that work centrality, obligation norms, and work values positively affected job pride which subsequently reduced turnover intention. The study also showed the negative relationship between job pride and turnover intention was only significant for Americans, confirming the culture’s moderation role. The findings provide valuable theoretical contributions regarding employees’ behavioral intention from a multicultural perspective and managerial implications for hoteliers in human resources management practices.

Introduction

High employee turnover rate is a critical issue in hotel jobs, resulting in organizations’ increasing costs of recruiting and training, high-stress levels of existing employees, loss of organizational knowledge and culture, and a decline in overall service performance (Arnett et al., 2002, Robinson et al., 2014). The post-Covid-19 has witnessed a “great resignation” as countless hotel employees voluntarily quit their jobs due to stress and trauma induced by the pandemic (Stahl, 2021). Characterized by an interpersonal interaction focus, the hotel industry has undergone an earlier employment loss than other industries caused by social distancing and the drop in travelers (Jung et al., 2021). Considering the dependence of the hotel industry on many competent and qualified staff, there is an urgent need to retain and motivate employees to stay in the field.

Employees’ job motivation cannot be sufficiently attained only by monetary reward but also by internal sources of motivation (Deci and Ryan, 2000). Among intrinsic determinants of turnover intention and behavior, pride is a significant factor closely related to job satisfaction (Helm, 2011) and staff loyalty (Wan et al., 2014). While previous literature has mainly focused on employees’ pride in organizations (Boğan and Dedeoğlu, 2020, Raza et al., 2021) and in performance (Kraemer et al., 2017), empirical research on pride in jobs remains scarce. Since employees who were proud of their organizations would develop a strong bond with them (Kashif et al., 2017), hotel employees’ job pride may predict their job retention.

While existing studies on job pride concentrated on medical and public services occupations (Hosein, 2017, Lee, 2016), an empirical study is needed on hotel jobs which are commonly perceived as less respected than those in other sectors (Bamford, 2012). Hotel jobs are temporary works that fill new graduates’ career gaps before finding occupations (Goh and Baum, 2021). A hotel career is often identified with a low-skilled job, low social status, limited promotion opportunities (Wan et al., 2014), irregular and long working hours (Brien et al., 2017), low pay (Park et al., 2017), and work-family conflict (Pan and Yeh, 2019), explaining for job dissatisfaction and instability in this industry. As hotels can hardly commit to their staff on salaries and promotional opportunities (Chang and Chang, 2008), such an intrinsic factor as job pride should be studied to retain employees in the field.

Empirical evidence indicates the correlation between the meaning of work (MOW) and employees’ internal motives (Chalofsky, 2003). Since MOW determines individuals’ self-perception of their social position (Kim et al., 2011), those attaching meaning to work are highly motivated (Jung and Yoon, 2016). Although the vital role of MOW in encouraging employees to overcome work difficulties and value jobs is widely recognized in various jobs like nurses (Beukes and Botha, 2013) or soldiers (Britt et al., 2001), MOW differs across types of occupation (Hsu and Stanworth, 2018). In hospitality, MOW was defined either as a unidimensional factor (Guo and Hou, 2022, Supanti and Butcher, 2019) or measured by six components but examined as a fundamental factor (Jung and Yoon, 2016). Approaching the multidimensional conceptualization, Lin et al. (2020) showed conflict results of MOW dimensions’ impacts on work engagement and career commitment with previous research. Hence, this study aims to fill the literature gap by constructing MOW as a multidimensional factor and examining its dimensions’ impacts on job pride in the hotel context.

Beliefs and perceived values on work were found to vary among cultures. Considering employees from various countries, the MOW international research project (MOW, MOW, MOW, International Research Team, 1987) and its follow-up study (Lundberg and Peterson, 1994) indicated that MOW dimensions differ across national groups. Although these studies compared MOW among numerous countries in Europe, Asia, and North America, whether the effects of MOW on job pride and turnover intention vary between cultures is still underexplored. For example, while employees in Eastern countries are more workaholics than those in Western ones, the former are less likely to engage in work than the latter (Hu et al., 2014). Moreover, representing collectivism versus individualism, Chinese work-centric employees perceive a higher level of personal achievement than their American counterparts, although less-workaholic individuals from these two countries have a similar degree of perceived accomplishment (Cheung et al., 2018).

This study investigates the impacts of MOW dimensions (i.e., work centrality, entitlement norms, obligation norms, and work values) on hotel employees’ job pride. The influence of job pride on turnover intention is also proposed based on the social identity theory (Tajfel and Turner, 1979). Furthermore, this study considers the moderation of culture (i.e., individualism vs. collectivism) on the relationships between MOW dimensions and job pride, and between job pride and turnover intention. The United States (U.S.) and Vietnam are selected to represent individualism and collectivism with a significant gap in the Hofstede individualism index (i.e., 91 and 20, respectively). In Vietnam, despite the hotel employment demand has been increasing along with the rapid growth in accommodation numbers (Tuan, 2018), hospitality jobs are not entitled to a high social status and are not attractive to qualified workers like other industries (i.e., technology, banking) (Brien, 2004, Lashley, 2009). Therefore, selecting Vietnam, which differs from the widely researched representatives of collectivism, is an add-on to the literature. These research findings provide insights into employees’ elements in the hotel context from a multicultural view and suggestions for human resources management practices.