The Elicitation of Frontline, Customer-Contact, Hotel Employee Innovative Behavior: Illuminating the Central Roles of Readiness for Change and Absorptive Capacity

Although service innovations have been recognized to be important for the long-term strategic success of hospitality firms, to date, the elicitation of innovative behavior has received little attention in the extant hospitality research literature. In the current study, we used a matched set of responses from 294 frontline, customer-contact, hotel employees and their direct supervisors to address this lack. Consistent with extant human resource management (HRM) studies that have advocated the agent-centered perspective, this study’s results illuminate a causal chain through which employee self-reported (Time 1, Source 1) perceived high-investment human resource practices (HIHRP) augments individual frontline, customer-contact, hotel employee supervisor-rated (Time 2, Source 2) innovative behavior. This study contributes to the extant hospitality and HRM research literatures by elucidating individual hotel employee self-reported perceived HIHRP as a key proximal determinant and individual hotel employee supervisor-rated innovative behavior as a key proximal consequence of two positive organizationally relevant individual-level psychological outcomes: that is, frontline, customer-contact, hotel employee self-reported readiness for change and absorptive capacity. Findings, implications, and limitations as well as avenues for future research are discussed.