Editorial

Citation

Okumus, F. (2013), "Editorial", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 25 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijchm.2013.04125daa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Volume 25, Issue 4

This issue has eight full articles presenting and discussing empirical study results on different aspects of hospitality management including restaurant management, hotel management, corporate social responsibility and human resources development. The articles in this issue present empirical findings from several countries including China, Greece, Romania, the US and Zambia.

In the first paper, Yin-Hsi Lo examines stakeholder management practices in the hotel industry in China. The author collected data from 228 three to five-star hotels in China through using a questionnaire. Study results indicate that trust and commitment on the part of hotel owners/investors positively influence stakeholder management practices. The study findings imply that stakeholder management practices positively and significantly influence financial performance and customer satisfaction from both hotel owner and customer perspectives.

In the second article, Chin-Yi Fang, Pao-Yu Peng and Wei-Ta Pan look at efficiency and profitability strategies in restaurants by using an innovative metafrontier-to-data-envelopment analysis (MDEA) model. The authors used six months of point of sale (POS) data from a teppanyaki-style restaurant, and found that the MTR is lower for the combo-set category than for the a la carte category. This study contributes to menu analysis by establishing an efficiency index and using financial performance as criteria for determining which menu items to improve in a teppanyaki-style restaurant.

In the third article, Constantine Manasakis, George Datseris, and Alexandros Apostolakis investigate the relative efficiency among hotels operating under a brand and hotels operating independently. They collected data from 50 hotels operating in Crete. According to the study results, nationally branded hotels are the relatively most efficient; internationally branded are the least efficient, while those operating under a local brand and the independent ones lie in between. The efficiency difference is mainly due to the input/output configuration but not their management teams’ performance to organize the inputs in the production process.

The article by Kuo-Chien Chang examines the relationships among perceived trust, perceived value, customer satisfaction, and corporate reputation for understanding how customer perceptions evolve into customer loyalty in the restaurant sector. Study results from the aggregated survey responses (n=529) in the two selected chain restaurants suggest that corporate reputation creates loyalty through trust and value. The study findings imply that restaurant managers should consider enhancing customer perceived value by providing innovative products and services.

In the fifth article, Myung-Ja Kim, Choong-Ki Lee, Woo Gon Kim and Joung-Man Kim investigate the structural relationships between lifestyles of health and sustainability (LOHAS), healthy food choices, trust, and emotional loyalty among seniors and non-seniors in restaurants. Study results imply that the senior market segment differs from the non-senior market segment in two aspects: the magnitude of impact of LOHAS on healthy food choices is much stronger for senior diners than for non-senior diners; and the impact of LOHAS on trust and emotional loyalty is greater for seniors than non-seniors. The authors suggest restaurant marketers to focus on target segments and to develop different strategies for the senior and non-senior market segments instead of attempting to appeal to the market as a whole.

In the next article, Cynthia Jasper and Paul Waldhart analyze US government survey data of leisure and hospitality employers’ perspectives for investigating the employers’ most serious concerns when considering hiring people with disabilities as well as the best hiring practices alleviating the concerns. Employee abilities and workplace accommodations seem to raise substantial concerns, while financial incentives and practices addressing workplace attitudes are seen as helpful solutions. This is one of the first statistical examinations, based on the theory of planned behavior, to investigate the most recent nationally representative and randomized data of leisure and hospitality employer perceptions on hiring people with disabilities.

In the following article, Dzingai Kennedy Nyahunzvi looks at the nature and adequacy of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting in annual reports, mission statements and at websites of Zimbabwe’s hotel groups. According to the research findings, Zimbabwe’s hotel groups give primacy to financial performance rather than social and environmental themes in their CSR reporting, which lags behind some of their developed world counterparts. The author suggests a need for legal compulsion and third party verification to enhance the hotel groups’ CSR reporting.

In the final article, Osman Karatepe presents and discusses study results on emotional exhaustion as a mediator of the effects of work overload, work-family conflict, and family-work conflict on job embeddedness and job performance. The author collected data from 110 full-time frontline hotel employees and their managers in Romania. Study results suggest that emotional exhaustion fully mediates the effects of work overload, work-family conflict, and family-work conflict on job embeddedness and job performance. This study suggests that hotel managers should take decisive steps to establish and maintain a family-supportive work environment for helping employees to balance their work (family) and family (work) roles, reducing emotional exhaustion, and ultimately achieving the sustainably high performance.

We hope that our readers find all the articles published in this issue timely, relevant and useful.

Fevzi OkumusEditor-in Chief