Environmental management best practices: towards social innovation

This research investigates exploratory environmental initiatives in tourism companies in Mallorca over five years, with special consideration to those involving partnerships and synergies with other parties (including academic ones), in an exploration of Social Innovation (SI) approaches in the industry. The paper starts with an outline of the growing importance of sustainability within the hospitality industry and its inherent relation with SI. The study draws its empirical material from ten innovative practices on sustainability from small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and a big hotel chain in Mallorca. The data were collected by means of questionnaires and interviews. All cases incorporated SI features (partnerships, synergies, circular processes, systemic approach), developing, therefore, towards an integrated system of SI policy and practice. The study indicates that embracing environmental principles alongside social and economic concerns can lead to a systemic approach and these commitments can be regarded as a more solid model of sustainability

Entrepreneurial attributes for success in the small hotel sector: a fuzzy-set QCA approach

By examining small hotels in Spain, this research contributes to understanding how human capital, social capital, and contingency factors interact to build a success model based on high hotel occupancy rates, profit, and profit per employee. Human capital theory, social capital theory, and multilevel theory provide the theoretical basis for this research. The study used fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis applied to a sample of 51 small Spanish hotels. The results reveal the existence of different configurations that lead to the desired performance outcomes. Each configuration combines two or three causal conditions. The results also reflect the difficulties that small hotels may face in reconciling different performance objectives. This paper thus provides solutions for managers, who must make strategic decisions based on existing conditions both inside and outside their organisations. The findings discussed herein can thus help small hotels better define their performance objectives by considering their individual characteristics. The findings can also help new small hotel entrepreneurs better understand the conditions required for success in this highly competitive market.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Leading toward creativity and innovation: A study of hotels and resorts

To stay competitive, hotels and resorts, require focusing on being innovative. Given the important role of innovation in the contemporary hotel industry, this research investigated how employee's creativity and innovation can be motivated. Of all the determinants of employee's innovative behavior, leadership has been highlighted in the literature as one of the most influential organizational factors in encouraging subordinates' creativity and innovation. This study examined the influence of perceived innovation-enhancing leadership behaviors on employee's creativity and innovation in Iranian hotels and resorts. In particular, this research investigated the direct impact of seven categories of innovation-enhancing leadership behaviors on employee's creativity and innovation, drawing on a sample of 107 employees and managers from 3-, 4- and 5- stars hotels and resorts in Iran. The empirical findings indicated that the construct of innovation-enhancing leadership is positively and significantly associated with employee's creativity and innovation, further this study identified particular leadership behaviors that account for employee's creativity and innovation in Iranian hotels sectors. This research also reviews the literature on the topic of effective leadership practices in the Asian hotels industry in order to understand more comprehensively how leadership enhances employee's innovative behavior in the context of hotels industry. On the basis of this finding, industry practitioners would be able to develop strategies that enhance and sustain organizational competitive advantage, and this outcome especially in regard to leadership behaviors offer useful directions for training and development programs