Hospitality teams: Knowledge sharing and service innovation performance
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
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