The influence of customer participition on employees' work behaviours and communication in hospitalty

This study aims to explore the influence of customer participation on tourism and hospitality employees' work behaviours, communication and responses. Against this backdrop, the influence of perceived customer participation on the role ambiguity and service orientation levels of the employees and the moderating effect of the employees' self-efficacy belief levels have been investigated. The study comprises of 5 sections. The first section of the study presents the main objectives of the study, the research problem, the rationale for and the limitations of research. Section 2 explains the concepts and theories pertaining to the research variables together with a review of the literature in the field. The third section presents the research model, the hypotheses, and the research universe, the choice of the sample and the survey and the pilot test to be used in the study. The penultimate section, section 4 presents the findings of the research. The scales which were found to be highly reliable were test in 9 different hotels in the Aegean Region of Turkey. The responses gleaned from 514 hotel employees were analysed by structural equation model by using SPSS 23 and SmartPLS 3.0 package programs. In the final section, Section 5, hypotheses of the research were analysed, interpreted and discussed in the light of previous research. The theoretical and practical implications of the study, its contribution and recommendations to practitioners were discussed. The study shows that perceived customer participation positively influences role ambiguity of employees, and, in turn, this role ambiguity influenced employees' service orientations negatively. Also, it was seen that employees self-efficacy beliefs (perceptions) of employees had a regulating effect on role ambiguity and service orientation levels of employees.