Presenteeism of hotel employees: interaction effects of empowerment and hardiness
International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management
ISSN: 0959-6119
Article publication date: 9 October 2017
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate the two-way interaction effects of empowerment and hardiness on the presenteeism of hotel employees.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected from 358 hotel employees in Sabah, East Malaysia, via a questionnaire survey and analyzed using multiplicative regression analysis.
Findings
The results confirm the presence of a two-way interaction effect between empowerment and hardiness on the presenteeism of hotel employees at a significance level of 0.01. Further analysis indicates that the higher the level of hardiness, the greater is its negative effect on the relationship between empowerment and the presenteeism of hotel employees.
Research limitations/implications
The survey was cross-sectional and causal relationships among the variables cannot be inferred. The results were gathered from selected hotels and should not be generalized to all hotel employees in Sabah, East Malaysia.
Practical implications
The findings challenge the assumption of a positive association between empowerment and presenteeism and demonstrate that different levels of hardiness can influence this relationship. When empowering employees, management staff should also consider the provision of resilience-related training programs for less hardy employees. This would enable such employees to handle their presenteeism behavior arising from the increased level of empowerment.
Originality/value
This study provides the first empirical evidence of a two-way interaction effect of predictors on the presenteeism of hotel employees and could serve to influence mainstream journals in the presenteeism literature. Researchers could apply the analytical approach to examine future studies relating to higher-order effects of predictors on the presenteeism of hotel employees.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Yew Ming Chia thanks Stephen Walker for his generous comments and valuable advice throughout the process of writing this paper. The author would also like to acknowledge the helpful suggestions and advice of Jake Ansell, Ingrid Jeacle, Falconer Mitchell and Jamal Ouenniche. The paper has also benefited from the comments of participants at the IJAS Prague 2015 Conference.
Citation
Chia, Y.M. and Chu, M.J.T. (2017), "Presenteeism of hotel employees: interaction effects of empowerment and hardiness", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 29 No. 10, pp. 2592-2609. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-02-2016-0107
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2017, Emerald Publishing Limited