Elsevier

Tourism Management

Volume 30, Issue 1, February 2009, Pages 41-50
Tourism Management

Hospitality teams: Knowledge sharing and service innovation performance

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2008.04.009Get rights and content

Abstract

Knowledge sharing and team culture have been found to have an important influence on service innovation performance. However, there has been relatively little substantive research focusing on these issues. This study's results support team culture's role in maintaining and moderating the relationship between knowledge sharing and service innovation performance. The research framework developed in this study was tested by 621 employees of international tourist hotels. The survey responses indicated that the relationships between and among knowledge sharing, team culture and service innovation performance are significant and strong. The main overall practical implication that can be drawn from these findings is that to achieve high service innovation performance, organizations first need to develop knowledge sharing behaviors plus a better team culture.

Introduction

The hospitality industry—which includes the restaurant, accommodation, entertainment and transportation businesses (Brotherton, 1999, King, 1995)—faces increasing competition. Those who are working in this industry must be able to keep and attract new customers by satisfying their increasingly sophisticated demands. Tourists in particular are more than ever before looking for “new” and “unique” experiences. To meet this new challenge there has recently been more emphasis on “knowledge sharing” in the hospitality industry, and even on the notion of “teamwork.” Thus we are now seeing more and more “organizational teams” within the industry.

Moreover, the members of these teams are increasingly sharing among themselves their knowledge and experience in order to provide new and more creative products and services, for there is an emerging consensus that knowledge is a key factor in any enterprise's success. In recent research that is not limited to the hospitality industry, the importance of knowledge management (KM) and knowledge sharing (KS) has been firmly established. Many studies have recognized the importance of KM and KS in supporting innovation in an organization (Finnegan and Willcocks, 2006, Hallin and Marnburg, 2008, Mohamed et al., 2004).

However, despite the increasing research on product and service innovation—including both service innovation performance (SIP) and new service development (NSD)—most of the focus has been on manufacturing and technology-based industries (Matthing, Sanden, & Edvardsson, 2004). Only a few studies have addressed in some depth the implications of SIP in the hospitality and tourism sectors (see e.g., Aune, 2002; Enz & Siguaw, 2003; Jones and Wan, 1992, Matear et al., 2004, Orfila-Sintes et al., 2005, Ottenbacher and Gnoth, 2005, Ottenbacher et al., 2006, Victorino et al., 2005). Furthermore, current theories provide only fragmentary insights into the origins of KS, and thus offer limited guidance for KS practices. To date, there has also been little empirical examination of the important relationship between KS and SIP. Also, although organizations are increasingly relying on teams to respond to the rapidly changing marketplace by coming up with new innovations in management practices as well as goods and services (Hoegl, Ernst, & Proserpio, 2007), discussion of the ability of KS to stimulate SIP is still very limited.

Building on prior research, then, the purpose of this study is to explore issues related to KS, SIP and the role that organizational teams can play in increasing KS and SIP—in organizations both within and outside the hospitality industry. The section Theory and research model of this paper presents the researcher's underlying theory and hypotheses to be tested. The section Hypotheses: background and development then presents the research methods, while the section Method is devoted to a discussion of the theoretical and managerial aspects of the study, and also makes suggestions for future research.

Section snippets

Knowledge management and sharing

KM is essentially a social process, one which must take into account social and cultural factors (Clarke & Rollo, 2002). Companies (businesses, industries) both large and small can gain a competitive advantage only if they are able to integrate the knowledge, expertise and skills of their employees and make use of the most effective managerial practices in their day-to-day operations. This entails the sharing of knowledge and the transforming of it into practice. According to Mason and

Knowledge sharing and service innovation performance

Hertog (2000) identified a number of different processes, including expert consulting and experience sharing, by which innovation can be supported. Empirical studies concerned with the sharing of knowledge and information in and by teams have showed that well-developed “team processes” do result in better coordinated and superior team performance (Bank and Millward, 2000, Erika and Leigh, 1997). Bartol and Srivastava (2002) noted that through KS, employees are able to diffuse relevant

Method

The sample consisted of 1260 employees in 35 different international tourist hotels, generally higher-class hotels, located in Taiwan. The human resource managers of all these hotels promised to administer the questionnaires via random sampling. Six hundred fifty-nine usable questionnaires were returned, yielding a 52.3% response rate; 38 questionnaires containing missing data further reduced the useable sample size to 621 (49.29%).

Characteristics of the respondents

The participants were primarily female (64%). Their ages ranged from 18 to 70 years of age with 55% being 20–29 years old and 20% being 30–39 years old. Most of them were studying in university or had completed their university education (42%). The participants were first-line employees (59%), leaders or supervisors (19%), assistant managers or managers of outlets (13%), and department managers (3%). Table 1 demonstrates the characteristics of the respondents.

Reliability analysis and data reduction

Reliability analysis was used to

Conclusion and discussion

To date, little empirical work has been conducted in the precise area investigated by this research study; most past research, as may be seen from a review of the literature, has focused on the antecedents of individual employee innovation. However, it is clear that teams are increasingly responsible for organizations' service innovations (Chen et al., 2007, Sundstrom, 1999). The major objective of this study was then to investigate the positive relationships between and among the KS, SIP and

References (76)

  • J.T. Yang

    Qualitative knowledge capturing and organizational learning: two case studies in Taiwan hotels

    Tourism Management

    (2004)
  • J.T. Yang

    Knowledge sharing: investigating appropriate leadership roles and collaborative culture

    Tourism Management

    (2007)
  • P.K. Ahmed

    Culture and climate for innovation

    European Journal of Innovation Management

    (1998)
  • A. Ardichvili et al.

    Motivation and barriers to participation in virtual knowledge-sharing communities of practice

    Journal of Knowledge Management

    (2003)
  • L. Aune

    The use of enchantment in wine and dining

    International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management

    (2002)
  • K.M. Bartol et al.

    Encouraging knowledge sharing: the role of organizational reward systems

    Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies

    (2002)
  • A.P. Bank et al.

    Running shared mental models as a distributed cognitive process

    British Journal of Psychology

    (2000)
  • Bentler, P.M. (1995). EQS: Structural equations program manual. Encino, CA: Multivariate...
  • R.B. Bouncken

    Standardization and individualization strategies of hotel brands: matching strategy to quality management instruments and marketing in Germany

    Journal of Hospitality & Leisure Marketing

    (2005)
  • B. Brotherton

    Towards a definitive view of the nature of hospitality and hospitality management

    International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management

    (1999)
  • A. Cabrera et al.

    Determinants of individual engagement in knowledge sharing

    The International Journal of Human Resource Management

    (2006)
  • A. Chan et al.

    Service innovation in Hong Kong: attitudes and practice

    The Service Industry Journal

    (1998)
  • G. Chen et al.

    A multilevel study of leadership, empowerment, and performance in teams

    Journal of Applied Psychology

    (2007)
  • W.F. Chaplin

    The next generation of moderator research in personality psychology

    Journal of Personality

    (1991)
  • L. Chi et al.

    Understanding computer-mediated inter-organizational collaboration: a model and framework

    Journal of Knowledge Management

    (2005)
  • T. Clarke et al.

    Corporate initiatives in knowledge management

    Education and Training

    (2002)
  • J. Cohen et al.

    Applied multiple regression/correlation analysis for the behavioral sciences

    (2003)
  • P.J. Curran et al.

    Testing main effects and interactions in hierarchical linear growth models

    Psychological Methods

    (2004)
  • T.H. Davenport et al.

    Working knowledge: How organizations manage what they know

    (1998)
  • A. Drach-Zahavy et al.

    Understanding team innovation: the role of team processes and structures

    Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice

    (2001)
  • P.C. Earley et al.

    Creating hybrid team cultures: an empirical test of transnational team functioning

    Academy of Management Journal

    (2000)
  • P. Erika et al.

    Negotiation teamwork: the impact of information distribution and accountability on performance depends on the relationship among team members

    Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

    (1997)
  • D. Finnegan et al.

    Knowledge sharing issues in the introduction of a new technology

    Journal of Enterprise Information Management

    (2006)
  • C.M. Froehle et al.

    Antecedents of new service development effectiveness: an exploratory examination of strategic operations choices

    Journal of Service Research

    (2000)
  • S.G. Goh

    Managing effective knowledge transfer: an integrative framework and some practice implications

    Journal of Knowledge Management

    (2002)
  • V. Gonzalez-Roma et al.

    An examination of the antecedents and moderator influences of climate strength

    Journal of Applied Psychology

    (2002)
  • A. Gustafsson et al.

    Competing in a service economy: How to create a competitive advantage through service development and innovation

    (2003)
  • P. den Hertog

    Knowledge-intensive business services as co-producers of innovation

    International Journal of Innovation Management

    (2000)
  • Cited by (459)

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text