The effects of psychological capital and organizational socialization on the creativity of hotel employees: The case of Alanya

The importance of human capital in hotel businesses is revealed by the fact that tourism as a service industry is labor intensive and employees are always in close contact with customers. Since the services offered by hotels are generally intangible in nature, hotel businesses should use human resources in the most efficient and effective manner. In order to gain competitive advantage, hotel businesses should make sure that employee creativity is used to its highest level. In order to investigate the premises behind creativity, this study analyzes the effects of psychological capital and organizational socialization levels of hotel employees on their creativity. The concept of psychological capital consists of self-efficacy, optimism, hope and resilience factors and illustrates the positive aspects of the employees. Organizational socialization, the other variable of the study, includes factors like organizational goals and values, performance capability, people in the organization, organization policy, organization language and history of the organization; and refers to the compliance with the organization. The aim of this study is to determine the impact of psychological capital and organizational socialization on the creativity of managers working in various positions in four and five star hotels in Alanya. Within this research, a total of 500 questionnaires were distributed to 48 hotels and out of the 327 collected, 25 questionnaires were not included due to missing data. Multiple regression analysis was conducted to test our models. Analysis results revealed that three dimensions of psychological capital of variable account for 20,1% of the variance in creativity variable as dependent variable. The dimensions included in the model were hope, resilience and self-efficacy. The three dimensions model of organizational socialization, which included organization language, history of the organization, and organization policy, was able to account for 7,6% of the variance in creativity.