Pablo Zoghbi-Manrique-de-Lara

Reconsidering the boundaries of the cyberloafing activity: the case of a university

While many scholars generally conceptualise cyberloafing as just one more type of conventional deviant behaviour at work, others consider this activity to be innocuous or even productive. In either case, cyberloafing is viewed as merely misusing Internet resources, without contemplating its potential online character. The purpose of this study is to address these aspects of the cyberloafing ontology. It suggests that under certain conditions cyberloafing (a) could become a virtual activity, (b) is distinct from conventional forms of deviance and (c) that it may impair the organisations effectiveness. Cyberloafing by instructors in degree courses was examined in a university with a specific culture of teaching and using e-resources. The argument developed here is that cyberloafing among instructors acts as a contextual activity that obstructs the technological core of this university over the Internet. This fact would lead cyberloafing to be (a) perceived by students ‘on the other side of the Net’, (b) significantly differentiated by teachers as a behaviour distinct from conventional deviance and (c) counter-productive since it would harm the teaching-learning process. Results of confirmatory factor analysis indicated that cyberloafing and conventional deviance measures are separate. Unlike conventional deviance, individual cyberloafing was found to be negatively associated with student satisfaction with the teaching service, as rated in each degree course. Since this negative impact mainly occurred in a virtual environment, the results also suggest that cyberloafing can become online behaviour that impairs the organisations effectiveness over the Internet. Theoretical and practical implications of the results are finally discussed.

Bringing cyber loafers back on the right track

Purpose – Despite the use in companies of policy and control mechanisms to tackle cyberloafing, these practices are still popular among employees. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that control systems alone are unable to deter cyberloafing because they are eventually perceived as a sort of “ineffectual dog that may bark a lot, but ultimately does not bite.” Instead, control systems are only expected to deter cyberloafing if employees view them as leading to punitive consequences.Design/methodology/approach – First, given the easy visibility of cyberloafing activities, the paper proposes a design for control systems that not only includes perceptions of organizational control (monitoring), but also perceptions of the supervisors physical proximity (proximity). Data are collected from university administration and services personnel, whose main working tool is the computer. They all have internet access and individual e‐mail, a stable physical location at work, and a supervisor. Multiple hierarchica...

Hotel Guests’ Responses to Service Recovery How Loyalty Influences Guest Behavior

Contrary to conventional wisdom, loyalty may be a driver of hotel guests’ favorable behavior when they are satisfied with a hotel’s service recovery effort. Instead of having satisfaction with service recovery directly influencing guests’ supportive actions, loyalty acts as a precondition to consumers’ positive citizenship behavior. Moreover, the factors that drive such favorable behavior may be independent of those that cause guests to offer favorable word of mouth after a hotel stay. Based on a study of 288 guests in seven high-end hotels in Spain’s Canary Islands, satisfaction with service recovery has a direct effect on loyalty, which in turn has a strong effect on customer citizenship behaviors. However, loyalty plays its mediating role only on the effects of satisfaction with service recovery on favorable citizenship behavior. That is, the fact that a guest is loyal helps to explain why a guest decides to help the hotel after satisfactory service recovery. On the other hand, loyalty does not enter into the equation when a guest is not happy with the service recovery and elects to behave dysfunctionally, including trashing the room.

Employee Deviance as a Response to Injustice and Task-Related Discontent

The aim of this study was to examine employee satisfaction with tasks as a mediator in the relation between procedural justice and deviant workplace behavior directed at the organization as a whole. Because organizational procedures are the methods customarily used by employees in handling their activities and by human resources managers in determining job descriptions, when organizational procedures are unfairly implemented the author suggests that they encourage employee discontent with work tasks. In turn, this task dissatisfaction leads employees to engage in deviant workplace behavior directed at the organization. Results of structural equations modeling used to test direct and indirect relations among the variables indicate that procedural justice (a) positively influenced task satisfaction and (b) had a negative influence on deviant workplace behavior directed at the organization through its effect on employee task satisfaction. The author concludes by discussing human resources managerial implicat...

Employees’ justice perceptions as a factor influencing successful outsourcing in the hospitality industry

Purpose This study aims to hypothesize that the more in-house staff perceive themselves as beneficiaries of the procedural justice (PJ) followed in the outsourcing, or perceive their outsourced peers as recipients of distributive (DJ) and interactional justice (IJ), the more they will show acceptance and positive evaluations of the outsourcing initiatives. Although prior research in the hospitality industry has extensively studied individual-level reactions to organizational justice, no study has been undertaken to examine how hotel staff support and value outsourcing initiatives based on the way they perceive management’s treatment of them and their peers. Design/methodology/approach Questionnaire data from 215 in-house employees working side-by-side with outsourced employees at 14 hotels in Gran Canaria (Spain) were analyzed by using structural equation modeling. Findings The results found that in-house employees who perceived themselves or their outsourced peers as recipients of organizational justice to a greater extent reported greater support for outsourcing by expressing higher levels of acceptance and better evaluations. The results also supported procedural justice (PJ) as playing a dominant role over distributive (DJ) and interactional justice (IJ). Research limitations/implications The findings suggest that by encouraging justice perceptions among in-house employees, mainly those related to properly discussing the outsourcing procedures with affected employees, hotel managers can promote successful outsourcing. Given that in-house employees reacted not only to the way they were treated by hotel management but also to the way their outsourced peers were treated, the findings also indicate that all (un)fair treatment in outsourcing, regardless of the recipient, should receive explicit attention by hotel managers. Originality/value This paper is one of the first to primarily focus on the individual level of analysis in examining and supporting organizational justice in hotel firms as a factor influencing outsourcing success.

Indispensable, Expendable, or Irrelevant? Effects of Job Insecurity on the Employee Reactions to Perceived Outsourcing in the Hotel Industry

This study examines the role of job insecurity as a moderator that may trigger destructive responses by employees to perceived outsourcing of labor services. Although some studies have suggested that outsourcing might not be viewed favorably by the hotel staff, the article first argues that because outsourcing of labor can be a useful strategy for the effective functioning of a hotel, mere perceptions of outsourcing by internal employees should lead them to react favorably to the hotel in the form of citizenship (organizational citizenship behavior–organization [OCB-O]) and decreased deviance (deviant workplace behavior–organization [DWB-O]). We invoke unitarism theory, which emphasizes the shared interests of all the members of an organization. The article then argues that these reactions to outsourcing may become negative when internal employees note the presence of job insecurity, triggering decreased OCB-O and DWB-O. Data were collected from 215 in-house employees working concurrently with outsourced employees at 14 hotels in Gran Canaria (Spain). Structural equation modeling (SEM) results suggest that, contrary to expectations, perceived outsourcing leads employees to significantly increase their DWB-O, but not vary their OCB-O. Unlike OCB-O, these DWB-O reactions to perceived outsourcing became stronger among employees who were high rather than low in job insecurity. The findings suggest that job insecurity plays an expendable, but relevant, role in reactions to outsourcing that harm their success.

Cómo reacciona el personal de hotel cuando observa un trato (in)justo hacia los huéspedes

El personal de hotel actua a menudo como observador de encuentros de servicio de huespedes durante su estancia en el hotel. Si un empleado percibe senales de un trato (in)justo del hotel hacia los clientes, ?como reaccionaria? Investigaciones empiricas previas no proporcionan una respuesta clara a esta pregunta, y este estudio tiene como objetivo cubrir este vacio de la literatura. Basandonos en literatura previa que indica que tambien los empleados como meros observadores hacen juicios y responden en una organizacion a la forma en que son tratados los demas, este articulo sugiere que el personal atribuiria tal trato a la responsabilidad del hotel y, dependiendo que este sea justo o injusto, aumentaria o disminuiria sus conductas orientadas al cliente (COBs). Los datos fueron recogidos de 204 empleados de ocho hoteles de lujo en las Islas Canarias (Espana). Para examinar las hipotesis se utilizaron modelos de ecuaciones estructurales (SEM). No asi en el caso de percepciones de justicia distributiva, los resultados muestran que cuanta mas justicia procedimental e interpersonal hacia los huespedes perciban los empleados, mas se implican en conductas orientadas al cliente (COBs).Los hallazgos sugieren la necesidad de prevenir episodios de maltrato a los huespedes por parte del hotel, haciendo especial hincapie en aquellos que son visibles para los empleados, para promover asi conductas orientadas al cliente (COBs).Hasta donde nosotros sabemos, este es el primer estudio empirico en donde la justicia organizativa (distributiva, procedimental e interpersonal) dirigida hacia los clientes y las conductas orientadas al cliente (COBs) de los empleados son examinadas conjuntamente en un mismo modelo.

Customer citizenship as a reaction to hotel's fair treatment of staff: Service satisfaction as a mediator:

Little is known about how guests respond to a hotel based on the way they perceive managements treatment of staff. This study suggests that during their stay at the hotel, the more guests witness episodes where staff members are fairly treated, the more they will display (a) satisfaction with hotel service and (b) customer citizenship behaviour directed at the hotel as a whole. It then suggests that (c) service satisfaction serves as a mediator to explain why justice perceptions would lead guests to citizenship behaviour. Data were collected from 343 guests in seven sampled hotels in the Canary Islands (Spain). Results provide support for the effects of justice on citizenship and partial mediation. Given that guests’ citizenship helps the hotel to function, the results warn managers about ‘looking the other way’ or getting involved in episodes of employee mistreatment. In addition, the support for service satisfaction as a mediator suggests that by striving to achieve managements fair treatment of staff, managers also communicate to guests that they aim to provide satisfactory service and, therefore, are deserving of their help.

Corporate Culture as a Mediator in the Relationship Between Ethical Leadership and Personal Internet Use

Despite the large number of factors at work that have been linked to personal Internet use (PIU), ethical leadership has not yet been examined. The first aim of this study is to test whether ethical leadership is associated with employees’ participation in PIU, specifically with cyberloafing and e-citizenship. The article then proposes an explanation for this linkage. The prediction is made that ethical leadership influences the way followers perceive corporate culture, which, in turn, leads them to PIU. Questionnaire data from 300 employees at 100 investment banks in the City of London on ethical leadership, Cameron and Quinn’s corporate cultures, cyberloafing, and e-citizenship were analyzed. Results found a significant negative relationship between ethical leadership and cyberloafing, and a positive relationship with e-citizenship. Once corporate culture was entered into the model as a mediator, ethical leadership also showed significant links with corporate culture, which, in turn, acted as a significant mediator. All the culture types performed as partial mediators in ethical leadership’s association with cybercivism, and only adhocracy culture performed as a full mediator in the case of cyberloafing. A practical implication is that managers should pay explicit attention to the advantages of supervising PIU with ethical values and, especially in the case of cyberloafing, with the innovative values of adhocracy culture.

El bienestar y la conducta de los empleados de hotel en el contexto de la actual crisis económica

Se sabe poco sobre la medida en que la inseguridad laboral provocada por la crisis economica actual esta afectando al comportamiento y rendimiento de los empleados del sector turistico. Este trabajo examina el posible impacto que i) la inseguridad laboral puede ejercer sobre la ansiedad y ii) depresion de los empleados de hoteles, y si estos estados de animo, a su vez, afectan su iii) comportamiento civico (OCB) y iv) al rendimiento de sus tareas. Los datos fueron extraidos de 188 empleados de siete hoteles entre tres y cinco estrellas de la isla de La Palma (Espana). Los resultados respaldan efectos significativos de la inseguridad laboral sobre la ansiedad y la depresion. A su vez, conforme a lo esperado, la depresion afecto negativamente a la conducta del empleado, pero solo a su comportamiento civico (OCB) dirigido hacia la organizacion (OCB-O). Sin embargo, la ansiedad no se relaciono conforme a lo esperado, aumentando el OCB-O del empleado y el rendimiento de sus tareas, lo que pudiera perseguir un intento de proteccion de su puesto de trabajo. Los hallazgos nos permiten afirmar que la actual situacion de crisis esta afectando significativamente al empleado de hotel, perjudicando su estado de animo y, a traves de la depresion, su conducta OCB-O .