Corporate social responsibility: perspectives of hotel frontline employees

Abstract

This study examines hotel frontline employees' perceptions of Corporate Social responsibility (CSR) activities at the hotel they currently work, and how their perceptions influence their level of Organizational Identification, an indicator of their relationship quality with the hotel. • Design/methodology/approach: This study uses 575 responses of hotel frontline employees in the U.S., collected through a national online survey. • Findings: Results show that hotel employees' perceptions of CSR activities encompass the host community, colleagues, and customers, beyond green practices. Moreover, their perceptions of CSR activities positively and significantly influence the level of Organizational Identification. • Research limitations/implications: The results of this exploratory study should not be generalized to all frontline employees in the U.S. hotel industry. Future studies should extend this study to examine potential relationships among other variables relevant to Organizational Identification, and in other hospitality industry contexts. Also, this study does not seek to question the merits of CSR per se, as it takes a managerial perspective to assist hoteliers' understanding of and decision-making on CSR. • Practical implications: As CSR activities often represent company values and norms, frontline employees' perceptions of them can influence how they identify with the company, which is an impetus for their attitudinal and behavioral support to help achieve the company's goals. Accordingly, CSR activities can be a critical tool in engaging frontline employees to achieve better performance and derive more meaning in their careers, and in attracting good quality employees. • Originality/value: This study is a first attempt to empirically examine how CSR activities can benefit hotel employees, based on various literatures on service-profitchain, CSR, and social identity theory.

Antecedents of Corporate Reputation in the Hotel Industry: The Moderating Role of Transparency

“…However, CSR and CA on customer trust and satisfaction in the hospitality literature is nevertheless incomplete [20]. The effects of CSR and corporate ability on CR have yet to be adequately addressed within the hotel context.…”

Why and how hotel groups in luxury segments give back to their communities

“…• Employees' identification with the organization, in hotels located in China, South Korea, and the USA (Fu, Ye, & Law, 2014; Y. K. Lee et al, 2014;Park & Levy, 2014). These studies indicate that hotels use involvement in the community to motivate employees and reduce turnover, although Fu et al (2014) point out that hotels need more than just activities in the community to motivate employees.…”

“…In-kind donations (Park & Levy, 2014). Donations of this type include blood donations, donations of hotel linen and furniture, serving food to the homeless and parents on youth night patrols (X.…”

“…When analysing the papers that referred to hotels, we saw that some authors state that altruism is the main reason for becoming involved in the community in some countries (Garay & Font, 2012). However, we only found three papers including some sense of purpose that indicate an altruistic perspective; these works talk about improving quality of life, alleviating poverty, and helping the needy (Park & Levy, 2014;Prud'homme & Raymond, 2013).…”

“…Chen & Lin, 2015a), customer satisfaction that results in trust and loyalty (Martínez García de Leaniz & Rodríguez Del Bosque Rodríguez, 2015), employee identification with the hotel's responsible behaviour, which involves higher motivation and lower turnover (Park & Levy, 2014), and the legitimacy of the hotel as being a responsible organization from the customer perspective, which also results in trust and loyalty (Sánchez-Fernández, Vargas-Sánchez, & Remoaldo, 2014).…”