From Hotel Career Management to Employees Career Satisfaction

From hotel career management to employees’ career satisfaction

Marzieh DehghaniDepartment of management, science and research branch, Islamic Azad University, Sanandaj, Iran

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Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationships between perceived hotel career management, career ability, and career satisfaction. It also goals to examine the reconciliationprocedures through which hotel careermanagement contribute to employees’ career satisfaction. Results from structural equation modeling (SEM) show that career ability reconciliation the effects of three dimensions of hotel career management (career assessment,career development, and careerpreparation) on career satisfaction. The article concludes with indirect suggestions for theory development and management practice.

Keywords:reconciliationeffect, Career ability, Careermanagement, Career satisfaction, Iran

1. Introduction

Drawingand employingcertifiedtalentisamajorissueinthe hospitality industrytoday. Thefastincreasesinthenumbersof homebound anddomestictourists Iranianhotelindustryhasexpanded significantly. Thisfastdevelopmenthasledtoanincreasing demand for high qualityhotelstaff.However,hotelsinIranare facing manyproblemsinrecruitingand employingthebest talent (Gu etal., 2006). Ascareerdevelopmentisan impressiveway of employinganddevelopingstaff,itis important for hotelsinIran to practice impressivecareermanagement.According to Arthur et al. (1995), personal ability reflects different forms of knowing, and intelligent careers reflect the application of these forms of knowing. They classifycareer ability into three types: “knowing why”, “knowing whom”, and “knowing how”. The first relates to career motivation, personal meaning, and recognition; the second interest'scareer- related networks and contacts; and the third includescareerrelated skills and job related knowledge. Improvement employees’ career ability requires a cooperative relationship between hotel managers and hotel employees. From the employee viewpoint, accomplishment career management emphasizes the property of the requisite personal qualities, and thus career ability has become increasingly important (Arthur et al., 1999). From the hotel viewpoint, helping staff to develop their own careers and improving their career satisfaction is an impressive means of drawingand employing certifiedstaff members (Barnett and Bradley, 2007). Nowadays, most organizationsworkas enablers in the careermanagement system by supporting employees’ career development (Baruch, 2006).Impressive hotel career management can contribute to the development of employees’ career ability, thereby improving their career satisfaction. It would thus be useful to investigatethe reconciliation effect of career ability on the relationship between hotel career management and career satisfaction.

2. Literature review

2.1. Perceived hotel career management and career ability

In today’s business environment, the organization plays an important role in career management systems, working as a supportive enabler and developer of its human assets (Baruch, 2006). Organizational career management (OPM), which is also known as “organizational support for career development” or “organizational endorsement”, refers to the programs, procedures, and assistancefurnished by organizations to support and increase the career accomplishment of their employees (Ng et al., 2005). The significance of OPM to the career development ofemployees’ career has become increasing important to the hotel industry. Hence, this study tried to examine career management in hotels through employees’ intuitions of hotel career management (HPM) practices. Hotels can furnish impressivecareer management activities such as preparation, mentoring, performance assessment, and development programs to their employees (Kong et al., 2010). These activities are pleasurable to the development of career ability. For example, performance assessment can furnish input to career planning, and may help employees to be better aware of their performances (Baruch, 2003). Mentoring plays an important role in directing career development and decision making (Ayres, 2006). The use of these career activities can furnish employees feedback on their strengths, and following related to the ability of “knowing why”, “knowing whom”, and “knowing how”. Employees receiving feedback of their performance can develop specific career goals, leading to the “knowing why” career ability. In addition, mentoring and preparation furnish networking opportunities (Higgins and Kram, 2001; O’Brien and Gardiner, 2006), and thus increase the “knowing whom” ability. Organizational preparation and development programs can also increase employees’ learning and the “knowing how” ability (Sullivan et al., 1998). All of the above relationship leads to the following prediction that:

H1. Perceived hotel career management may contribute positively tocareer ability

2.2. Career ability and career satisfaction

Career satisfaction is the satisfaction that individuals extract from the essentialand external aspects of their careers, including pay, promotion, and developmental opportunities (Greenhaus et al., 1990). Employees’ perceivedcareer satisfaction reflects how they feel about their career-related roles, realizations, and accomplishment. Career satisfaction is an important predictor of career accomplishment that has been conceivedas includingboth externaland essential outcomes, and is thus measured using both objective and subjective signals (Barley, 1989; Nabi, 1999). Objective career accomplishment indicates an external viewpointthat describes more or less tangible signals of an individual’s career situation (Arthur et al., 2005). Signals of objective career accomplishment include salary (Tharenou, 2001), promotion (Judge et al., 1999), family structure (Schneer and Reitman, 1993), and job level (Judge and Bretz, 1994). Subjective career accomplishment is defined as “individuals’ feelings of performance and satisfaction with their careers” (Judge et al., 1995), and is most often measured by career satisfaction (Ng et al., 2005). As objective career accomplishment includes observable outcomes, it generally depends on a third-person viewpoint, and thus does not reflect an employee’s assessment of his or her own accomplishment. In recent years, subjective measures of career accomplishment have become increasingly important (Arthur et al., 2005; Parker and Arthur, 2000), with career satisfaction being one of the most significant predictors of career accomplishment. This study thus focused on employees’ career satisfaction. As stated, career abilityincludes three types: “knowing why”, “knowing whom”, and “knowing how”. The “knowing-why” ability surroundscareer perception, a proactive personality, and accessibility to experience. People who know themselves well are able to clarify their career goals(Suutari and Makela, 2007), while people with a proactive personality tend to seek opportunities and act on them (Crant, 2000). Accessibility to experience refers to the degree to which individuals are curious, creative, willing to accept changes, and accepting of diversity (Barrick and Mount, 1991;Mignonac, 2008). Individuals who score highly on this trait tend to obtain higher levels of job performance and seek regular training and development opportunities to obtain transferable skills (Banai and Harry, 2004). It has also been found that employees with high job performance scores are perceived to have more favorable promotion prospects, which is related with a higher level of career satisfaction (Igbaria and Wormley, 1992). The “knowing whom” ability relates to the career-related networks, mentoring, and contacts of an individual both inside and outside the organization (Arthur et al., 1995). Individuals in a mentoring relationship show great impressiveness in self-managing their own careers (Murphy and Ensher, 2001) and better career accomplishment (Janasz et al., 2003). Individuals often benefit greatly from networks, as networking inside and outside the organization helps them to stay on top of new developments and approaches (Higgins and Kram, 2001). An employee can also gather career- related information and social capital through networks (Moss and Barbuto, 2010). As both internal and external networking aid career development (Raider and Burt, 1996; Sturges et al., 2010), it is supposed that the “knowing whom” ability is an important predictor of career satisfaction. The “knowing how” ability includescareeror job-related skills and career personality. Career personality is the degree to which people absorb themselves in skill- improvement and career activities (London, 1993; Noe et al., 1990). As employee skills are an important predictor of job performance (Semadar et al., 2006), employees who are strong in a variety of skills are expected to receive better compensation and promotion opportunities (Todd et al., 2009), which increases their career satisfaction. Thus, the accumulation of careeror job-related skills may help to increase employee career satisfaction. This lead to the following prediction that:

H2. Career abilitymay contribute positively to career satisfaction.

2.3. Perceived hotel career management and career satisfaction

Hotels can increase the career satisfaction of their employees by engaging in impressivecareer management activities. It has been found that specific career management activities, such as job rotation plans, are positively related to career satisfaction (Campion et al., 1994). Other career management practices, such as career endorsement, preparation, and careerdevelopment programs, also contribute positively to career satisfaction (Greenhaus et al., 1990; Ng et al., 2005). Organizations try to increase employee career satisfaction by providing impressivecareer support, such as preparation,performance assessment, and challenging jobs (Burke, 2001; Burke and McKeen, 1995). This produces a perception among employees of being supported by the organization, which leads to better career satisfaction and retention intention (Allen et al., 2004; Armstrong- Stassen and Ursel, 2009). Therefore it is hypothesized that:

H3. Perceived hotelcareer management may contribute positively tocareersatisfaction

2.4. Reconciliation effect of career ability

In addition to its direct effect on career satisfaction, career abilitymay reconciliation the relationship between hotel career management and career satisfaction. The function of an intervener represents the creative mechanism through which the focal independent variable is able to affect the dependent variable of interest (Baron and Kenny, 1986). There are two forms of intervention: full intervention and incomplete intervention. When the direct effect between the independent variable and the dependent variable is no longer statistically different from zero after controlling for the intervener variable, the effect is said to be one of full interventions. However, if the perfect size of the direct effect between the independent variable and the dependent variable is reduced after controlling for the intervener variable but the direct effect is still significant, then the intervention effect is regarded as incomplete. As many previous studies, such as those of Allen et al. (2004), Greenhaus et al. (1990), and Ng et al. (2005), have found that organizational careersupportcontribute s significantly to career satisfaction, this study focused on the incomplete intervention effect of career ability. As shown in Fig. 1, it is assumed that, also to its direct effect on career satisfaction, career ability acts as an intervener of the relationship between hotel career management and employee career satisfaction. Impressive hotel career support activities requestcareer ability in various ways. For example, mentoring helps individuals to build “knowing why” and “knowing whom” ability (Baruch, 2003). These career abilities in turn enable individuals to personal opportunities, take action to obtain their career goals, and thus experience career satisfaction (Crant, 2000; Raider and Burt, 1996). In sum, hotel career management activities furnish appropriate organizational support for employees to secure better career satisfaction by improvement their career ability. Therefore it is deducted that:

H4. Career abilitymay reconciliationtherelationshipbetween perceived hotelcareermanagementandcareersatisfaction

3. Research methodology

This study collected data to test the hypotheses developed by questionnaire survey. Perceived hotel career management was measured using 11items developed by Kong et al. (2011). Two sample items included in the questionnaire to measure the organizational career management construct. Career abilitywas estimated using items adopted from the study of Eby et al. (2003). Career satisfaction was measured using a four item measurement developed by Greenhaus et al. (1990).All of the items were measured using a five point Likert type scale that ranged from 1 (disagree) to 5 (agree). Based onquotasampling,datawerecollectedfromatarget sample ofhotelmanagersinIran. A total of 104,five and fourstar hotels were recognized in 20 of the main tourist cities in Iran. Two methods were employed to collect the data. First, the researcher approached a large number of the selected hotels (62 hotels), and with the help of thegeneral managersdistributed a questionnaire and collected on the spot by the researcher. For hotels that were far from the authors’ institution, 40 general managers were contacted by email or phone. Once they had agreed to aid with the survey, the questionnaires were emailed to the target hotels. A total of 1260 questionnaires were collected, giving a response rate of 70% which is used a SEM analysis. And 1200 valid questionnaires were retained. On testing, they were found to follow a multivariate normal distribution. The respondents were varied in terms of age, education level, job position, work area, and work experience. Fifty-nine per cent of the respondents were male and 41% were female. The average age of the respondents was 43, with a working experience of 2–12 years in the hospitality industry. Over 83% had completed college level education or above, showing that a large ratio were well educated. The great majority of the respondents (98%) were department managers or supervisors. They generally had a wide range of duties and served in the food and beverage, sales and marketing, housekeeping, front office, human resources, accounting, security, engineering, public relations, purchasing, or other departments. In coordination with previous studies, such as those of Judge et al. (1995), and Noe (1996), several control variables were included in the study. As age, gender, education, and salary may be relatedwith intuitions of career satisfaction, these variables were controlled in all of the analyses. In addition, career ability may vary based on individual job strength (as measured in years), and hotel career management activities may be different depending on the size of the hotel (as measured by star rating). These variables were thus also treated as control variables. The individual measurement model was tested using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The purpose of the EFA was to find groups of variables that represent a basic dimension, since that of the CFA was to specify the relationships between the observed measures and their assumed basic factors. EFA with varimax rotation was considered an appropriate first step to simplify the interpretation of the recognized factors and to determine the major constructs in the data (Field, 2005; Tabachnick and Fidell, 2007). Cross-validation was conducted to prove that the data structure was representative of the population. Following Hair et al. (2009), the entire dataset was randomly split into two equal subsets of 600 for the EFA and CFA, respectively. For each measurement model, EFA with varimax rotation was first conducted with one subset, followed by CFA at a later stage with the other subset. Finally, structural equation modeling (SEM) was conducted with the entire data to test the relationships among the constructs.

4. Results

4.1. Individual measurement model

4.1.1. EFA and CFA of perceived hotel career management

EFA of the 26 hotel career management items was conducted, and three dimensions were recognized: career assessment and advice, career development programs, and careerpreparation. As shown in Table 1, the three factors explained 70.92% of the total variance. The result of Bartlett’s test of sphericity was significant, and the Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling fitness was 0.90, indicating that the models of correlations were relatively compact and created distinct and reliable factors (Field, 2005). The Cronbach’s alpha of the full scale was 0.90, and that for the three factors ranged from 0.83 to 0.89, all of which exceed the minimum standard for reliability (0.70) recommended by Nunnally (1978). It can thus be concluded that the items including the three dimensions were internally coherent and stable, and together formed a reliable scale. CFA wasthencarriedouttotesttheconstructof perceived hotel careermanagement,which includedthethreefactorsof career assessment,careerdevelopment,andcareerpreparation. Based on themodelfitindices(x2 = 283.59, df = 67, CFI=0.95, GFI=0.92, RMSEA=0.09),itcanbeconcludedthatthemodelfitthedata acceptably well.Whencheckingthevalidityofameasurement model, inadditiontothegoodness of fitindicesitisimportantto find specific evidence of construct validity (Hair etal., 2009). The convergent validity of hotel career management was thus estimated by the size of the factor loadings and their statistical significance level. Table 2 shows the estimate, standardized factor loading, critical ratio (CR), and squared multiple correlations (SMC) between each variable and all of the other variables. All of the standardized loading estimates exceeded 0.5 and were statistically significant (Byrne, 2001). It can thus be concluded that the convergent validity of the perceived hotel career management construct is satisfactory (Anderson and Gerbing, 1988; Hair et al., 2009). The average variance extracted (AVE) was also used to test forboth convergentvalidityanddiscriminantvalidity.TheAVEvalues of assessment,development,and preparation were0.59,0.53,and0.65, respectively. Asallofthesevaluesaregreaterthan0.52,ahighlevel of convergentvalidityis shown.Also,theAVEforeach construct wasgreaterthanthesquaredcorrelationcoefficientsfor the correspondinginter-constructs, showing satisfactorydiscriminant validity(Fornell andLarcker, 1981).

4.1.2. EFA and CFA of career ability

EFA with varimax rotation was conducted, which supplyfour items that explained 66.16% of the total variance. A succession of factor analyses recognizedsevenfactors namedcareer perception, proactive personality, and accessibility to experience, mentoring, networks within the hotel, networks outside the hotel, career/job-related skills, and career personality. The result of Bartlett’s test of sphericity was significant and the KMO measure of sampling fitness was 0.95 (Field, 2005). The Cronbach’s reliability scores of the factors ranged from 0.83 to 0.95, indicating satisfactory internal consistency. After the EFA analysis, CFA was conducted. The career ability construct was complex, with more than one level of latent variables. Three approaches are normally used to deal with complex structural models: total dis-collection, incomplete dis- collection, total collection, and incomplete collection (Bagozzi and Edwards, 1998). Anincomplete collection model is supposed appropriate when the focus is on a higher level of abstraction, rather than the specific ingredients (Bagozzi and Edwards, 1998). When itemswithin ingredients are aggregated the aggregates can be used as signals of the ingredients. The fitindicesofthecareer abilitymodelwere x2 = 119.69, df = 18, CFI=0.95, GFI=0.96, and RMSEA=0.08, indicatingthatthe model fitthedatareasonablywell.Allofthe standardized estimates werestatisticallysignificantatthe p < 0.05level.Asshown in Table 3, theeffectsofcareer abilityon“knowingwhy”, “knowing whom", and “knowinghow”werestatistically significant, with standard regression weights of 0.97, 0.98, and 0.93, respectively. TheAVEvaluesof“knowing why", "knowing whom”, and “knowinghow”were0.57,0.53,and0.59,respectively, indicating satisfactoryconvergentvalidity.In addition,theAVEvaluefor each constructwasgreaterthansquaredcorrelationcoefficients for thecorrespondinginter-constructs, indicatingsatisfactory discriminant validity(Fornell andLarcker, 1981, Haiyan Konga, et al, 2012).