Customer orientation of service employees in the hotel industry : effects of HEXACO, goal orientation and perceived supervisor support

• Main Authors: Gu, Si Jie, Choo, Yuen Teng, Chai, Sharon Chieh Sin
• Other Authors: Klaus Jurgen Templer
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Subjects: DRNTU::Business::Management::Personnel management
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/15238
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The main objective of this study was to investigate variables such as personality traits, goal orientation and perceived supervisor support that affect customer orientation in the hotel industry. We obtained a sample of 229 matched employee-supervisor questionnaires. Our results showed that specific personality traits such as honesty-humility, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness to experience as well as perceived supervisor support, learning goal orientation and prove (performance) goal orientation were related to customer orientation, which correlated to role clarity, in turn having a positive relationship with job performance. New findings such as personality traits relating to goal orientation and perceived supervisor support were also discovered. Furthermore, perceived supervisor support correlated with role clarity and job performance. The significance of this study lies in the value that managers can make better decisions when recruiting and supervising employees. Firstly, personality traits can be taken into account when recruiting and selecting employees who provide superior customer service. Also, managers can better understand the importance of showing support to the employees as supervisor support is proven to be positively related to customer orientation, role clarity and job performance. In addition, our research findings were also congruent with some of the past findings from literature. Practical implications of our findings, as well as limitations and suggestions for future research were also discussed.