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The purpose of this study is to extend the findings from a very limited number of studies that have focused on the potential antecedents of firm diversity. Specifically, the authors examined the extent to which a set of firm-level diversity management initiatives, which included diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) policies and oversight structures, senior leader values and utility perceptions about DE&I and DE&I dissemination strategies, may be related to firm-level reported diversity – overall, and that which is specific to gender, ethnicity, race and disability.

The data for this study were gathered from a national sample of 200 US restaurant and foodservice companies during the third quarter of 2021 by an independent data collection firm.

After controlling for firm size, age, ownership structure and chain affiliation, the results from a series of regression analyses showed that formal diversity management policies and procedures (e.g. policies beyond those legally mandated), structural oversight of diversity management initiatives (e.g. designated diversity leader) and beliefs among senior leaders regarding the utility of diversity management initiatives, were positively related to firm-level diversity. There were also several notable differences in the significance of the findings across the four diversity groups, indicating support for a contingency explanation.

There are two unique contributions to this study. First, by considering a more support-based (vs compliance and control) approach to managing DE&I that is authenticated by senior leadership’s beliefs about the utility of DE&I, the findings advance the understanding of the nature and scope of diversity management initiatives that may influence firm-level diversity – in general, as well as that which may be specific to restaurant and foodservice settings. Additionally, the findings offer industry-specific insights regarding the extent and relevance of DE&I policies and practices that have been adopted by restaurants and foodservice organizations and prescriptive guidance for future inquiry on this topic.

This paper aims to challenge existing assumptions in talent management (TM) research, showcasing a misalignment between commonly held assumptions and the characteristics of the youth-intensive hospitality sector workforce.

Following a review of the TM literature, Piirto’s educational talent pyramid is adopted to conceptualize a recalibration. Drawing on multidisciplinary literatures (i.e. adolescent development, youth employment, positive psychology), and adopting a (talent) developmental approach, a reframing of prevalent TM discourses is enunciated based on the logic that the hospitality workforce is predominantly in a developmental state.

TM discourses are misaligned with the workforce composition of the hospitality industry, which is dominated by young, often unexperienced, workers. The need for dramatically recalibrated TM structures and underlying assumptions, centred around a greater attention to the “development” of talent and a more employee-focused and inclusive approach, can facilitate greater alignment between TM and hospitality.

This paper extends a body of work advocating for more inclusive TM and developmental postures. The contribution, via a hospitality industry context, has been to create linkages between talent- and youth-development discourses.

This paper outlines a number of implications, among which are a pathway forward for hospitality industry to rebuild its poor HRM image and conversion of “transient” hospitality jobs to career jobs (for youth).

This paper identifies youth as a distinct workforce entity and suggests that hospitality jobs represent a critical developmental context for young people, resulting in a series of critical implications for TM practice and theorizing.

The purpose of this study is to identify across a number of workplace variables the similarities and differences in attitudes between three key frontline hotel worker groups: housekeepers, front office employees and food and beverage front-of-house staff.

A qualitative study was conducted using 25 semi-structured interviews with frontline workers employed in full-service hotels across Eastern Australia. Analysis was augmented through the Leximancer® software package to develop relational themes in the aggregation and disaggregation of the occupations.

Although work/life balance was a common theme across the three occupations, several distinct attitudinal differences emerged, in particular regarding perceptions of one occupational group towards another.

This study highlights the importance of hotel managers being cognisant of occupational differences and collecting data capable of assisting in the identification of these differences. Several practitioner relevant recommendations are made.

This exploratory study challenges assumptions regarding a “pan-industrial” hospitality occupational community and applies an emerging qualitative software package to highlight occupational differences and relational perceptions.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the immediate impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the hospitality workforce in situ between mid-April and June 2020.

This is a viewpoint paper that brings together a variety of sources and intelligence relating the impacts on hospitality work of the COVID-19 pandemic at three levels: macro (global, policy, government), meso (organisational) and micro (employee). It questions whether the situations faced by hospitality workers as a result of the pandemic are seed-change different from the precarious lives they normally lead or just a (loud) amplification of the “normal”.

In light of the fluid environment relating to COVID-19, conclusions are tentative and question whether hospitality stakeholders, particularly consumers, governments and the industry itself, will emerge from the pandemic with changed attitudes to hospitality work and hospitality workers.

This raises questions about hospitality work for key stakeholders to address in the future, some of which are systemic in terms of how precarious labour forces, critical to the global economy are to be considered by policy makers, organisations in a re-emerging competitive market for talent and for those who chose (or not) to work in hospitality.

This paper contributes to ongoing debates about precarious work and the extent to which such practices are institutionalised and adopts an “amplification model” that may have value in futures-orientated analysis about hospitality and tourism.

This paper is wholly original and a reflection on the COVID-19 crisis. It provides a point of wider reference with regard to responses to crises and their impact on employment in hospitality, highlighting how ongoing change, fluidity and uncertainty serve to magnify and exacerbate the precarious nature of work in the industry.

This paper explores how hospitality frontline employees understand, interpret and practice “hospitality” in a hotel industry context.

Framed by interpretivist and phenomenological approaches a dual-stage semi-structured interview study design was conducted. A sample was drawn from hotel employees in Australia.

Findings support the proposition that the hospitality workforce tends to favor service management and service processes as the guiding paradigm. The essence of what it means to be hospitable, and the host-guest model, appears to be largely absent in practice.

This paper contributes to a scarcity of literature exploring the understanding of hospitality, and how this understanding can translate into hospitable behavior, from the employee perspective. Our main implication is that service management terminology colonizes hospitality within a commercial context, while the essence of hospitality and the “hospitality” lexicon is concomitantly diminishing. The authors advocate for developing an inter-paradigmatic view of hospitality management.

While the study revealed that the majority of frontline hotel employees struggle with grasping and verbalizing their understandings and perceptions of the hospitality construct, although some acknowledged the importance of hospitality as being an integral component to service delivery. We identified consistent organizational practices and intrinsic employee traits that either enabled or obstructed hospitable behavior in hotel settings.

The study reveals tensions between the hospitality and service paradigms in hospitality literature and practice. We uncover hotel management practices that may help to conserve and foster the essence of hospitality in hospitality organizations.

Cookery has been identified as an occupation with skills shortages, at least in the developed world. There is currently a dearth of research into the cookery labour market, its occupational culture and characteristics. This paper seeks to address this issue.

The study utilised a tracking approach to collate and investigate aspects of electronically‐listed job advertisements for cookery‐related vacancies in Australia's northern state of Queensland. Content analysis of advertised employment vacancies has previously been utilised as a method in tourism and hospitality research.

The findings support the proposition that industry demand exceeds labour supply. Moreover, the content analysis of the vacancies' characteristics suggest that a range of job advertisement details, including remuneration, is infrequently supplied.

The study was limited in scope to cookery‐related vacancies and to those advertised for Queensland. Accounting for vacancy duplications and consequential vacancies were the two key analytical challenges. Future research with refined instruments and more generalisable samples is invited.

The study reveals that the increased electronicisation of information facilitates both the collection and generation of labour market research.

This paper aims to share the findings of a study of self-declared “foodies”. In particular this paper provides a demographic and socio-economic profile of the sample and their behavioural and travel preferences.

An online survey was designed, incorporating existing literature. It was administered to a population of foodies in Australia. Data is analysed using SPSS®.

Key results suggest food tourists are mostly female, well-educated and generally affluent. They seek diverse, regional and authentic yet tactile rather than passive experiences, and are willing to travel for food (and drink) complemented by cultural and sightseeing activities.

The geographic scope of this study is limited and the volume of data yielded from the study inhibits efforts to report all findings in a compact paper; the implication being future analysis and research is required.

This study provides valuable insights to destination marketers seeking to niche food tourists.

This study demographically and socio-behaviourally profiles foodies and provides insights into the domestic travel behaviours.

This research paper aims to report on the findings of an innovative study to extract contemporaneous interpretations of Australian colonial domestic hospitality in Mrs. Lance Rawson's Cookery Book and Household Hints.

To dialogue with the text's original author, as free of time and space permutations as possible a hermeneutical approach is adopted. Hermeneutics has been successfully applied as an interpretative tool, to a range of tradition laden significant texts as it assists in the (constructive) deconstruction of texts so that the reader may use them as a portal into the past (its values and assumptions).

The findings of these textual analyses present a number of themes: the embedded notion of host/guest relations, especially as it transpires in “the bush”; the earliest impacts of indigenous and ethnic minorities on food production, its consumption and hence private hospitality; and evidence of a range of issues concerned with the management of a household. An Australian hospitality is also explored.

Just as researchers have sought to identify an antipodean cuisine, this paper is a launch for understanding the origins of colonial hospitality, albeit from a private perspective.

The findings might assist the Australian hospitality industry in developing a regional service culture.

This paper contributes to emerging studies in hospitality, by deconstructing a colonial cookbook, via the medium of textual analysis, and underpinned by a hermeneutic interpretative paradigm.