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This paper is a critical literature review of corporate social responsibility (CSR) research in both general management and hospitality management literature. This paper aims to discuss trends, commonalities and inconsistencies to better understand the state of contemporary scholarship, and it calls for a context-specific conceptual engagement with the phenomenon.

Systematic literature review, noting and critiquing a general tendency towards measurement of financial and other internal benefit impacts.

Hospitality management is well-positioned to evaluate the opportunities and challenges of CSR; yet, research has uncritically adopted the instrumental emphasis on assessing processes, perceptions and private profitability from the general management literature, without engaging on a contextually specific and/or theoretical level.

CSR research is abundant and therefore difficult to summarise in one paper. The primarily Anglo-American and Asian contextual bias is reflected in this review.

Consistently inconsistent results challenge the portability of financial impact studies. Studies are needed to re-evaluate the concept of CSR, as it pertains to hospitality and measure the effectiveness of CSR activities relative to context and resource availability.

Further research into the scope of CSR in hospitality management, with an emphasis on recuperating social value, would lead to widespread positive social implications.

This critical review offers a new perspective on CSR in the hospitality literature and industry, calling for a reconsideration of the concept in context, and formulates a working definition.

Augmenting employees’ commitment is of important interest to hospitality managers, particularly in the branded restaurant industry where the workforce is often transient. This paper aims to identify and analyse if levels of personal motivation and flow are drivers of commitment, and if the relationship between the variables is moderated by length of service, age and gender.

The study is a large-scale empirical investigation of hospitality staff in the UK branded restaurants through 1,133 survey responses, measuring levels of personal motivation, flow and commitment, as well as the moderating effects of multi-group differences among age, gender and length of service. Partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) is used for analysis of data.

Using PLS-SEM found personal motivation to be important in determining employees’ level of flow and, in turn, employees’ commitment. Using multi group analysis, results revealed that relationship among personal motivation, flow and commitment played superior role for older employees and working for a long time in a hospitality organisation than those younger and working less than five years. No significant differences between male and female staff are found.

Through finding flow and personal motivations to be drivers of commitment, branded restaurant practitioners can focus on emphasising these elements in their employees to increase commitment. Further, part-time roles are often taken by people likely to be non-committal in their job needs, e.g. students funding their studies. By focussing on extending lengths of service to meet the optimum years identified, managers can fortify their businesses.

The paper is one of few large-scale quantitative studies to examine personal motivation, flow and commitment in the context of UK branded restaurants. It identifies that employees exhibit higher levels of commitment through intrinsic values over time, and establishes relationships between the constructs of flow, personal motivation and commitment.

This paper aims to present a systematic literature review (SLR) of continuous improvement (CI) research in the hospitality and tourism management (HTM) literature. The paper also notes trends, parallels, inconsistencies and opportunities towards a clearer understanding of current scholarship.

This SLR finds a dearth of research in the field. After parameter expansion and exclusions, 35 papers across 11 journals are reviewed.

Studies of CI methodologies and practices are published infrequently, tending to focus on total quality management in European contexts. Despite the guiding customer-centric principles of CI methodologies, studies focus on improving internal processes rather than the service encounter.

The review is guided by sections of the ABS 2015 list, which excludes some journals. Books, conference papers and trade magazine articles are not reviewed.

This paper identifies clear needs for CI research with a specific hospitality management focus, the development of CI toolkits and curricula for hospitality managers. The development and deployment of CI methodologies and practices in HTM literature and industry should lead to long-term service improvements.

This study asserts the need for further context-specific, practice-led research into the refinement and long-term utility of CI methodologies and practices, towards demonstration of significant bottom-line industry impact. The paper also offers a clear SLR methodology and a definition for CI in hospitality.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships between consumer motivations, their interactions with hospitality spaces and experiential outcomes. Enhancing consumer experience is of clear interest to industry professionals. This quantitative study explores the impact of escapism and entitlement to leisure upon involvement in liminoid consumptions spaces, thereby contributing a theory of liminoid motivators within commercial hospitality.

This study adopts a quantitative methodology, using a survey of a sample of student nightclubbers in the UK. Data are analysed through Partial Least Squares.

Hospitality consumers are positively affected by the feelings of increased involvement experienced in consumption spaces that exhibit liminoid characteristics.

Surveys involve potential for error regarding respondents’ ability to agree with questionnaire statements. Data collection was conducted in Scotland, and so, results may not be generalised to other commercial hospitality spaces outside of Scotland.

Hospitality consumers become more involved, and thereby more satisfied, in liminoid consumption spaces when motivated by escapism and entitlement to leisure. Attending to the liminoid motivators that drive consumers away from work and domesticity, and towards commercial hospitality spaces, will go some way towards creating the desired consumer experience.

This is the first quantitative study to investigate consumer motivations to escape and entitlement to leisure as antecedents of involvement in a commercial hospitality context. It develops a theory of hospitality consumption using the liminoid anthropological concept.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to explore how commercial hospitality has contributed to the development of urban areas in relation to commerce, hospitality, religious and imperial patronage in early modern, Safavid Iran (c. seventeenth century). Second, to combine material culture research methods in an analytical framework for future use.

Data were collected during 27 site visits over three years to 14 caravanserai six bazaar complexes. A material culture methodology is proposed, designed and implemented, supplemented by analysis of textual sources.

The form and function of caravanserai at Zein‐i Edin broadly reflect the form and function of desert caravanserai common in much of the Islamic world. However, the complex within the Qaysariyya Bazaar in Isfahan reflects the convergence of specific dynastic, geopolitical and economic issues facing seventeenth century Safavid Iran shaping both urban form and commercial focus. These are consolidation of the Safavid dynasty, rivalry with the Ottoman Empire and the vital importance of trade with Mughal India.

The research is limited by its specific contextual scope but invites further investigation in analogous contexts across this milieu as well as further implementation of the material culture methods it adopts to both historical and contemporary commercial contexts.

The paper explores, for the first time the development of commercial hospitality in early modern Iran and invites further consideration of the development of capitalism outside of Eurocentric teleologies. Furthermore, it presents a new and explicit methodological framework for using material culture as a means of enquiry.

The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the changing food culture of Ireland focusing particularly on the evolution of commercial public dining in Dublin 1700‐1900, from taverns, coffeehouses and clubs to the proliferation of hotels and restaurants particularly during the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Using a historical research approach, the paper draws principally on documentary and archival sources, but also uses material culture. Data are analysed using a combination of hermeneutics (Denzin and Lincoln, O'Gorman) and textual analysis (Howell and Prevenier).

The paper traces the various locations of public dining in Dublin 1700‐1900 and reveals that Dublin gentlemen's clubs preceded their London counterparts in owning their own premises, but that the popularity of clubs in both cities resulted in a slower growth of restaurants than in Paris. Competition for clubs appeared in the form of good hotels. The Refreshment Houses and Wine Licences (Ireland) Act 1860 created a more congenial environment for the opening of restaurants, with separate ladies coffee or dining rooms appearing from around 1870 onwards.

There is a dearth of research on the history of Irish food and commercial food provision in particular. This paper provides the most comprehensive discussion to date on the development of commercial dining in Dublin 1700‐1900 and suggests that the 1860 legislation might be further explored as a catalyst for the growth of restaurants in London and other British cities.

This paper aims to explore some of the different historical roots of commercial hospitality in three distinct epochs with the intention of promoting further empirical research and beginning an informed debate into the origins and evolution of the contemporary hospitality industry.

The paper is a report on empirical research based on texts, artefacts and archaeological evidence. Wherever possible all the primary sources were consulted in the original languages; all translations are the author's own unless otherwise stated.

Contrary to established and often fanciful rhetoric, commercial hospitality has at least 4,000 years of history in the area of investigation. The rich and incredibly diverse heritage of the hospitality industry is illustrated and the conclusions emphasise that hospitality research should focus on deepening understanding of the industry through empirical research: learning from the past helps to inform the future.

The particular focus of this article is restricted to reporting to empirical studies of three epochs: Mesopotamia (c. 2000 BC), Pompeii (79 AD), and Middle Eastern Trade Routes (c. 700 AD onwards). These distinct time periods illustrate the different roots and highlight the need for further research into the evolution of the commercial hospitality industry.

The origins of commercial hospitality is an under‐researched area in hospitality management and this paper highlights the rich data that is available through disciplined empirical study.

The purpose of this paper is to examine travellers' experiences with public houses in Colonial Victoria, to determine how the hospitality industry in the colony was transformed from primitive hospitality provision to sophisticated, well managed hotels in a relatively short time.

The article reviews public records, newspapers of the period, eye‐witness accounts and key texts to chart the development of the hospitality industry in Colonial Victoria and to demonstrate how primitive inns became modern hotels within the space of three decades.

This paper highlights how the discovery of gold in 1851 prompted an unprecedented influx of travellers whose expectations of hospitality provision led to the transformation of existing hostelries from crude and primitive inns to modern, sophisticated hotels.

The research is confined to Colonial Victoria and therefore, not necessarily a reflection of the colonies in general or general trends in hospitality provision at that time.

Tracing the roots of hospitality provision and the traditions of hospitality management can provide a greater understanding of modern hospitality practice. As O'Gorman argues “[…] with historical literature contributing to informing industry practices today and tomorrow: awareness of the past always helps to guide the future”.

This paper adds to the body of knowledge in relation to the roots and evolution of commercial hospitality.

The purpose of this paper is to explore commercial hospitality enterprise and its impact on settlement development in the American West during the 1800s, focussing on the story of the Fanthorp Inn in Texas, USA.

The paper outlines the theory relating to entrepreneurial opportunity and applies it to the historical case of the Fanthorp Inn, Texas, USA. The methodological approach of the paper is based on an in‐depth study into the development of one tavern using multiple sources of evidence.

First, opportunity on the frontier was controlled to the extent that it became objective in the Kirznerian sense. Second, commercial hospitality enterprise was used as a vehicle for settlement development in frontier America.

The paper is limited by its use of one case study and the scarcity of sources of historical evidence. Further studies could engage with different examples of frontier hospitality businesses and develop the method further.

The paper provides deeper understanding of settlement development in the American West during the 1800s and supplies a methodological framework with which further organisational research can engage with historical sources of data. The findings also suggest that opportunity exists relative to its context.

The paper explores hospitality as a context for entrepreneurial activity in the American West and uses a historical case study method.