The Impact of Job Stress on Employee Creative Performance in the Hospitality Industry: The Moderating Effect of Psychological Capital A Study of Frontline Hotel Employees in North Cyprus

Creative performance is a significant part of frontline service jobs, since they can improve the whole process of service delivery through creativity and by bringing new ideas to the table. In the contemporary hospitality industry where competition among firms is severe, customers’ expectations for service have increased resulting in higher employee work expectations. Consequently, it is inevitable that these employees experience work-related stress in their work environment. Therefore, employers as well as employees need to rely on the new generation and untapped resources which are mostly referred to personal resources. Psychological capital as a second-order personality construct is considered as personal resource and capacity which they can draw on to help them combat against work-related stress and its consequent dysfunctions. Very little is known about psychological capital in the hospitality management literature. This study aims to fill in this void by linking psychological capital, work-related stress and creative performance as three important aspects of frontline hospitality jobs in a conceptual model. Optimism, Self-efficacy, resilience and hope were treated as the indicators of psychological capital. This study is conducted in 4 and 5 star hotels all located in north Cyprus. 300 questionnaires were distributed among frontline employees of these hotels and the rate of response was 62%, so final analysis was performed with 187 cases. The result of this study evidenced the significant negative effect of stress on creative performance. Furthermore, results revealed the significance of psychological capital as an important personal resource among frontline staff in hotels. All four indicators of psychological capital were negatively related to stress. Optimism and self-efficacy as two important components of psychological capital evidenced a moderating role between stress and creative performance. Keywords: psychological capital, creative performance, stress, hospitality industry, frontline employees