Sean McGinley

Operations research from 1913 to 2013: the Ford assembly line to hospitality industry innovation.

Purpose – This article aims to first summarize and explain major services operations research foci from the past century. Second, this article relates how hospitality scholars have conducted operations-related research with a particular focus on research related to hotels and lodging. Finally, the article makes recommendations regarding potential future areas of concentration of operations research in hospitality. Design/methodology/approach – The article presents a scholarly literature review, where literature from hospitality and general operations management (OM) was reviewed to document research foci throughout recent periods in history. Findings – Hospitality scholars have been conducting research, which reflects trends in general OM literature. Additionally, the research being conducting, which focuses on services in OM, is becoming more commonplace and more distinct from production-based research. Originality/value – The article provides a compilation of literature regarding OM and how hospitality scholars have applied those principles to hotel and lodging operations. Additionally, recommendations regarding potential future topical areas and methodologies are provided for scholars.

Unconditioned Superstition and Sports Bar Fans

This study investigates whether inducing a superstitious belief in a consumer by suggesting a relationship between the consumer’s purchase behavior and a specified outcome could influence consumer behavior. It also examines the moderating role of preconsumption mood in processing the information. Using information processing theory as a framework, hypotheses were developed using hypothetical scenarios and surveys. Our results demonstrated that participants in the positive mood condition reported higher expectations for the team’s performance, more positive attitude, and stronger intent to purchase when the ads contained the superstition cue, whereas participants in the negative mood condition did not. These results expand the literature on superstitious consumer behavior by demonstrating that companies can not only address superstitions that consumers already hold, but can also induce superstitious beliefs in customers. By doing so, managers and marketers may be able to positively influence consumers’ attitudes toward the company and loyalty behaviors.

Effects of economic conditions and other factors on hotel sale prices

Purpose This study aims to examine previously identified hotel automated valuation models (AVMs) using a more extensive and updated sample of hotel sale transaction data, introduce economic conditions as a new determinant for hotel market value and test the moderating role of economic conditions on the relationship between the previously identified indicators and market value, operationalized as sale transaction price. Design/methodology/approach This study performs simple and multiple regression analyses to examine the proposed relationships. The sample period is from 2000 to 2012, because the economy prior to 2000 is likely to have been a less-relevant economic environment for the contemporary business world. Findings As hypothesized, there is an insignificant main effect of economic conditions on hotel sale prices. A moderating role of economic conditions on the relationship between average daily rate (and net operating income) and market value was found, while no moderating effect was found for occupancy rate and hotel size. Results also find certain support for AVMs previously presented in the literature, as described herein. Originality/value This study attempts to make contributions to the existing lodging and real estate literature by investigating a main effect of economic conditions on hotel sale prices and a moderating role of economic conditions on the relationship between various hotel performance indicators and hotel sale prices. In addition, this study operationalizes a relatively extensive (large base sample size of 2,441 hotel sale transactions) and recent (since 2000) database compared to previous studies.

Attraction to Hospitality Companies: How Processing Fluency Moderates Value Fit

The purpose of this research study was to investigate how processing fluency moderates the effect of value fit on attraction to hospitality organizations. Specifically, the study found that processing fluency moderates the relationship between value fit and attraction to an organization so that highly fluent advertisements induce higher feelings of attraction to organizations than do advertisements that are not highly fluent. This article extends the reach of the marketing-based processing fluency framework into the study of recruitment, while also suggesting that value fit may not always explain attraction to organizations. Recommendations are given to practitioners regarding how they should present information to job seekers to attract the right quantity and quality of applicants.

The Moderating Role of Career Progression on Job Mobility A Study of Work–Life Conflict

Employment and professional mobility are important aspects of life for both hospitality organizations and individual employees. Across two studies, we examine the effects of work–life conflict and actual (Study 1) and perceived (Study 2) progression in one’s career on hotel managers’ intentions to leave their organizations or leave the hotel industry altogether. In Study 1, positive relations between work–life conflict and turnover and career change intentions were found among actual hotel managers. Similarly, in Study 2, job seekers who were experimentally induced to expect higher work–life conflict in their future careers reported higher turnover and career change intentions. Across both studies, this effect was stronger among those with less progression in their careers. These results provide a more nuanced understanding of the high turnover rates in the hospitality industry, and we discuss how hospitality organizations can leverage this knowledge in managerial retention efforts.

Reducing Longitudinal Attrition Through Facebook

Attrition of subjects is a concern when designing longitudinal field studies. One way to potentially reduce attrition in longitudinal studies may be to use a social network. In this study, two groups are contrasted. One group of participants completed a survey online and was redirected to a Facebook page for the purposes of the study, and was then invited to become Facebook friends. The second group completed the survey using pen and paper. In the second phase of the study, 6 months later, hospitality managers who had become friends of the study on Facebook were contacted via Facebook, while those who completed the paper survey were contacted via their personal e-mail addresses. The Facebook group had a response rate of 51.4%, while the e-mail group had a response rate of 15.2%. Our results suggest that Facebook might be an effective means of minimizing attrition in longitudinal studies.

When birds flock together: an identification of the destination social servicescape

ABSTRACT While servicescapes have been studied in a variety of travel and tourism domains, the phenomenon has been largely ignored at the destination level. This is especially true when it comes to considerations of the social servicescape, which is reflective of the extent to which the mere presence of other destination visitors can influence affective responses to the destination experience. Accordingly, the purpose of this research is to propose and empirically test a model of the destination social servicescape that explores perceived psychographic similarity within the social servicescape and the effects of this construct on affective evaluations and behavior.

The effect of anticipated emotional labor on hotel employees’ professional mobility

ABSTRACT This study examined the moderating effects of anticipated emotional labor on the relations between currently felt emotional labor and hotel employees’ intention to remain with their companies or in the hotel industry. Drawing on image theory and expectancy theory, we argue that service employees’ perceptions of industry-wide expectations moderate the association between emotional labor and professional mobility. The results indicate when perceived industry-wide emotional labor is higher, employees are less likely to be professionally mobile when undergoing high emotional labor, but when perceived industry-wide emotional labor decreases, the impact of emotional labor is attenuated. This research provides hotel managers with strategies for effectively recruiting employees by projecting a company image that reduces application barriers for proximal job seekers and implementing better workplace practices. Hotel managers are also offered suggestions for cooperating with managers in competing firms to reduce the negative impact of emotional labor on industrial employment.

The impact of temporal distance and need for status on employee evaluations of Corporate Social Responsibility campaigns

ABSTRACT Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs depend on employee participation, and hospitality companies are looking for ways to increase employee engagement. A better understanding of the factors leading to positive attitudes among employees toward CSR programs is needed. This article examines the moderating effect of need for status (NFS) on relationships between the temporal distance of the CSR campaign, employee attitudes, and turnover intention using the framework of Costly Signaling Theory. The results indicated that when the CSR campaign was to benefit a short-term cause, individuals high in NFS had a more positive attitude and lower turnover intention than those low in NFS.

The moderating role of career progression on job mobility: A study on career change and turnover

The protean career framework was used in the subject studies, to understand the effect of career progression on both career change and turnover. Two studies were conducted, the first being a correl...