A model linking HRM practices, service-oriented OCBs & organizational performance in Malaysian hotel industry

Customer contact employees are the major and direct interface contact with existing and potential customers of hotels. Customer contact employees’ behaviours and service performance are factors for a hotel to be successful. Hotels have to pay a great attention on the human resource management (HRM) practices and manage their customer contact employees’ behaviours which ultimately encourage them to provide better service quality and improve organizational performance. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine a model linking HRM practices, employee satisfaction, service-oriented organizational citizenship behaviours (OCBs), customer satisfaction and organizational performance in hotel industry in Malaysia. A cross-sectional survey was conducted with human resource managers, customer contact employees and customers in upscale hotels (with 4- and 5-star ratings) in Malaysia. A two-stage sampling technique was employed in which stratified sampling was used in choosing the hotels and purposive sampling was used in choosing the respondents. The data collected were analysed using the structural equation modelling analysis to examine and explain the relationships hypothesized in the proposed model. The statistical results obtained provide support to the proposed model. The findings reveal that HRM practices significantly influence employee satisfaction which in turn significantly influences service-oriented OCBs and sequentially determine organizational performance. The findings of this study are believed to provide better understanding and knowledge for the management of hotels about the linkage of HRM practices, employee satisfaction, service-oriented OCBs, customer satisfaction and organizational performance in the hotel industry in Malaysia

A model linking HRM practices, service-oriented OCBs & organizational performance in Malaysian hotel industry / Lee-Yen Foo … [et al.]

Customer contact employees are the major and direct interface contact with existing and potential customers of hotels. Customer contact employees’ behaviours and service performance are factors for a hotel to be successful. Hotels have to pay a great attention on the human resource management (HRM) practices and manage their customer contact employees’ behaviours which ultimately encourage them to provide better service quality and improve organizational performance. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine a model linking HRM practices, employee satisfaction, service-oriented organizational citizenship behaviours (OCBs), customer satisfaction and organizational performance in hotel industry in Malaysia. A cross-sectional survey was conducted with human resource managers, customer contact employees and customers in upscale hotels (with 4- and 5-star ratings) in Malaysia. A two-stage sampling technique was employed in which stratified sampling was used in choosing the hotels and purposive sampling was used in choosing the respondents. The data collected were analysed using the structural equation modelling analysis to examine and explain the relationships hypothesized in the proposed model. The statistical results obtained provide support to the proposed model. The findings reveal that HRM practices significantly influence employee satisfaction which in turn significantly influences service-oriented OCBs and sequentially determine organizational performance. The findings of this study are believed to provide better understanding and knowledge for the management of hotels about the linkage of HRM practices, employee satisfaction, service-oriented OCBs, customer satisfaction and organizational performance in the hotel industry in Malaysia

Resource Limitation, Controphic Ostracod Density and Larval Mosquito Development.

Aquatic environments can be restricted with the amount of available food resources especially with changes to both abiotic and biotic conditions. Mosquito larvae, in particular, are sensitive to changes in food resources. Resource limitation through inter-, and intra-specific competition among mosquitoes are known to affect both their development and survival. However, much less is understood about the effects of non-culicid controphic competitors (species that share the same trophic level). To address this knowledge gap, we investigated and compared mosquito larval development, survival and adult size in two experiments, one with different densities of non-culicid controphic conditions and the other with altered resource conditions. We used Aedes camptorhynchus, a salt marsh breeding mosquito and a prominent vector for Ross River virus in Australia. Aedes camptorhynchus usually has few competitors due to its halo-tolerance and distribution in salt marshes. However, sympatric ostracod micro-crustaceans often co-occur within these salt marshes and can be found in dense populations, with field evidence suggesting exploitative competition for resources. Our experiments demonstrate resource limiting conditions caused significant increases in mosquito developmental times, decreased adult survival and decreased adult size. Overall, non-culicid exploitation experiments showed little effect on larval development and survival, but similar effects on adult size. We suggest that the alterations of adult traits owing to non-culicid controphic competition has potential to extend to vector-borne disease transmission

Testing optimal foraging theory models on benthic divers

Empirical testing of optimal foraging models on diving air-breathing animals is limited due to difficulties in quantifying the prey field through direct observations. Here we used accelerometers to detect rapid head movements during prey encounter events (PEE) of free-ranging benthic-divers, Australian fur seals, Arctocephalus pusillus doriferus. PEE signals from accelerometer data were validated by simultaneous video data. We then used PEEs as a measure of patch quality to test several optimal foraging model predictions. Seals had longer bottom durations in unfruitful dives (no PEE) than those with some foraging success (PEE. ≥. 1). However, when examined in greater detail, seals had longer bottom durations in dives with more PEEs, but shorter bottom durations in bouts (sequences of dives) with more PEEs. Our results suggest that seals were generally maximizing bottom durations in all foraging dives, characteristic of benthic divers. However, successful foraging dives might be more energetically costly (e.g. digestive costs), thus resulting in shorter bottom durations at the larger scale of bouts. Our study provides a case study of how the foraging behaviour of a central place forager foraging in a fairly homogeneous environment, with relatively high travel costs, may deviate from current foraging models under different situations. Future foraging models should aim to integrate other aspects (e.g. diet) of the foraging process for more accurate predictions

Mean (± SD) wing length (mm) for <i>Ae</i>. <i>camptorhynchus</i> adult females (dark grey) and males (light grey) for both resource limitation (left panel) and competition (right panel) treatments.

<p>Mean (± SD) wing length (mm) for <i>Ae</i>. <i>camptorhynchus</i> adult females (dark grey) and males (light grey) for both resource limitation (left panel) and competition (right panel) treatments.</p

Effects of resource limitation (left panel) and exploitation competition (right panel) on <i>Ae</i>. <i>camptorhynchus</i> mean development time and survival to adulthood (mean ± SD).

<p>Treatments with open symbols are directly comparable.</p