(Press-News.org) Guest relationships can become collateral damage when hotel employees envy the relationships co-workers have with their bosses, according to an international team of researchers.
In the study of front-line hotel employees -- desk staff, food and beverage workers, housekeepers -- workers who have poor relationships with their bosses were more likely to envy co-workers with better relationships with supervisors, said John O'Neill, associate professor, School of Hospitality Management, Penn State. The study showed that the envious workers were also less likely to help co-workers or to volunteer for additional duties. The researchers report their findings in the current issue of International Journal of Hospitality Management.
"People who are less envious often go above and beyond their normal job duties to do things like cover for an employee who has gone home to help a sick family member," said O'Neill. "Conversely workers who are more envious are less willing to perform these additional duties."
Front-line employees are typically hourly employees who interact directly with guests. Since these employees have personal contact with guests, people staying at hotels become the unintended victims of on-the-job envy, according to O'Neill, who worked with Soo Kim, assistant professor, management and information systems, Montclair State University, and Hyun-Min Cho, tourism policy research division, Culture Contents Center, Republic of Korea.
"Guests often need hotel workers to go above and beyond their normal job duties, even if it's just making a cup of coffee when the restaurant is closed," said O'Neill. "Performing these extra duties for guests, in turn, creates guests who are loyal to the hotel."
O'Neill said that the study established a path linking workplace envy with hotel success.
"Limiting envy is crucial not just to the success of the employee in his or her career, but it's crucial to the success of the hotel itself," said O'Neill. "The success of a hotel lies in how it treats its guests."
In the study, researchers surveyed 233 employees from four full-service hotels on their relationships with their supervisors and fellow workers. Those who answered questions indicating low-quality relationships with bosses were significantly more likely to envy co-workers. The study showed that poor relationships between supervisors and workers accounted for 41 percent of the envy expressed by workers. The presence of envious feelings toward co-workers, then, significantly predicted uncooperative behavior. Envy accounted for 26 percent of the lack of cooperation with co-workers.
To combat envy in the workplace, O'Neill suggested hotel organizations develop a formal structure to establish and guide relationships between employees and supervisors. O'Neill said that supervisors, who typically manage between six and 10 workers, can establish bonds by using techniques such as formal employee reviews and open-door management practices.
"While it can be a challenge for leaders to establish these relationships, it's in their best interest to have a relationship with each of their employees," O'Neill said. "It's really about establishing trust and having a dialogue with all of your workers."
Despite previous research indicating that gender, age and length of service played important roles in on-the-job behavior, the study did not find that those variables contributed significantly to workplace envy and uncooperative behavior.
"The behavior went across ages and genders," O'Neill said. "Whether it was different ages, or men or women, the more envious the employees were, the less likely they were to do things above and beyond their job descriptions."
INFORMATION:
END
RUSTON, La. – Geopolymer concrete, an innovative and environmentally-friendly building material developed at Louisiana Tech University's Trenchless Technology Center (TTC), will be featured in a transportation exhibition taking place at the Detroit Science Center.
Developed by Dr. Erez Allouche, research director for the TTC, and his team, geopolymer concrete is an emerging class of cementitious materials that utilize "fly ash", one of the most abundant industrial by-products, as a substitute for Portland cement, the most widely produced man-made material on earth.
"Presenting ...
Philadelphia, PA, September 28, 2010 – The Epinephrine Roundtable was convened during the 25th Annual Meeting of the Wilderness Medical Society (WMS) in 2008 to explore areas of consensus and uncertainty in the field treatment of anaphylaxis. The panel endorsed the administration of epinephrine to treat anaphylaxis in the field under emergency conditions by trained non-medical professionals. Anaphylaxis, an acute allergic reaction, is sudden in onset and requires immediate treatment. The recommendations of the panel are published in the September issue of Wilderness & Environmental ...
Stem cells that glow like fireflies could someday help doctors heal damaged hearts without cutting into patients' chests.
In his University of Central Florida lab, Steven Ebert engineered stem cells with the same enzyme that makes fireflies glow. The "firefly" stem cells glow brighter and brighter as they develop into healthy heart muscle, allowing doctors to track whether and where the stem cells are working.
Researchers are keenly interested in stem cells because they typically morph into the organs where they are transplanted. But why and how fast they do it is ...
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Sept. 28, 2010 -- Individual cancer-causing mutations have a minute effect on tumor growth, increasing the rate of cell division by just 0.4 percent on average, according to new mathematical modeling by scientists at Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, and other institutions.
Their research, appearing this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reinforces that cancer is the culmination of many accumulated mutations. It also highlights the fundamental heterogeneity and randomness of many cancers, consistent with the observations ...
Montreal September 28, 2010 – Loners and antisocial kids who reject other children are often bullied at school – an accepted form of punishment from peers as they establish social order. Such peer victimization may be an extreme group response to control renegades, according to a new study from Concordia University published in the Journal of Early Adolescence.
"For groups to survive, they need to keep their members under control," says author William M. Bukowski, a professor at the Concordia Department of Psychology and director of its Centre for Research in Human Development. ...
A new study by University of Notre Dame ecologist Jennifer Tank and colleagues reveals that streams throughout the Midwest are receiving transgenic materials from corn crop byproducts, even six months after harvest.
Transgenic maize (corn) has been genetically engineered to produce its own insecticide, a delta endotoxin from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). Bt endotoxins deter crop pests, such as the European corn borer.
In a 2007 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), Tank and a group of researchers demonstrated that transgenic ...
EAST PROVIDENCE, RI – Although research has shown that teens with mental health disorders are more likely to engage in high risk sexual behaviors, like unprotected sex, a new study from the Bradley Hasbro Children's Research Center suggests there is an additional risk associated with certain psychiatric diagnoses.
According to researchers, teens who experience the manic phase of bipolar disorder – which is marked by dramatic mood swings from euphoria and elation to irritability – are more sexually active, have more sexual partners and are more likely to have a sexually ...
While many young adults will share the details of their daily lives with dozens – sometimes hundreds – of friends on Facebook, communicating with their health care providers about mental illness is another story.
"Roughly one in every five young adults between 18 and 25 has a mental illness," says Melissa Pinto-Foltz, a postdoctoral scholar and instructor at the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing at Case Western Reserve University. "Seventy percent of them don't receive treatment. Of those that do receive treatment, they have trouble managing the illness and often ...
COLUMBIA, Mo. – University of Missouri researchers believe they have found a critical piece of the puzzle for the treatment of Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) – the leading genetic cause of infantile death in the world. Nearly one in 6,000 births has SMA, and it is estimated that nearly one in 30 to 40 people have the trait that leads to SMA.
In a new study in Human Molecular Genetics, Christian Lorson, professor in the Department of Veterinary Pathobiology and the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, has found prenatal cardiac defects in mice with SMA. Lorson ...
Montreal September 28, 2010 – Multicultural education in classrooms has failed to produce a deeper understanding across cultures, according to a Concordia University researcher. Education professor Adeela Arshad-Ayaz blames teacher training for failing to address issues of diversity and equity. Her recent presentation at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, in Montreal, calls for an alternative approach.
"The way we currently teach multiculturalism fails to bring divergent groups together," says Dr. Arshad-Ayaz. "Our present approach is alienating minority ...