Introduction
This essay critically examines the work conducted by Koburtay and Syed on the well-being of hotel workers and guests as dictated by religious accommodation. Koburtay and Syed’s (2021) article examines how religious observance and the provision of spiritual services can affect the psychological well-being of hotel employees and guest happiness. This work will consider ways in which their research extends Schneider’s (1995) attraction-selection-attrition (ASA) theory by incorporating the context of the Middle East. Then, this essay will discuss the paper’s key findings, provide some critique of the conducted analysis, and suggest the direction for potential future research.
Main Themes and Hypotheses
Examining how spirituality and religiosity affect people’s well-being in a Middle Eastern context is a new topic in management literature. It is notionally framed through the ASA theory, which proposes a person-oriented model of organizational behavior based on the suggestion that it is the collective characteristics of people who define an organization (Koburtay & Syed, 2021). Previous research has shown that the fit of people’s values to the values of the organization they join predicts individual satisfaction, commitment, turnover, and performance (Koburtay & Syed, 2021). The authors systematically define workers’ psychological well-being and provide a theoretical analysis of guests’ subjective happiness.
The article presents and discusses multiple hypotheses, each pair supported by a review of existent research. The first pair of hypotheses concerns the presence of a significant match between the guests’ spiritual needs and spiritual facilities at hotels (Koburtay & Syed, 2021). The second pair evaluates whether there is a positive or a negative relationship between the availability of spiritual facilities at hotels and guests’ happiness (Koburtay & Syed, 2021). The last pair of hypotheses assesses the relationship between guests’ religiousness and their happiness during their stay in non-Islamic hotels (Koburtay & Syed, 2021). The authors tested the hypotheses to understand how hotels’ spiritual facilities and religious conformance affect workers’ and guests’ well-being.
Analysis and Results
Overall, the article provides a comprehensive analysis of the topic. The researchers proposed two theoretical models for workers and guests based on the above hypotheses. Koburtay and Syed (2021) conducted two studies on religious practices and spiritual facilities at 5-star hotels in Jordan. In the first study, the authors interviewed 18 senior hotel managers in the Dead Sea area (Koburtay & Syed, 2021). The second study collected data from Muslim guests who stayed at a Jordan 5-star hotel (Koburtay & Syed, 2021). Then, hypotheses were tested using partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) using SmartPLS 3.3.3. application (Koburtay & Syed, 2021). The methodology section carefully documented the resulting models and reoccurring themes, showing the authors’ attention to detail.
The results and discussion section reviewed the findings of the hypotheses’ testing and broke it down into major topics. Koburtay and Syed’s (2021) results revealed increased employee well-being and guest happiness if spiritual facilities were present in hotels. At the same time, non-compliance with religious norms negatively affected employee well-being and guest happiness (Koburtay & Syed, 2021). The main theme of the first study’s analysis and results was that religious conformance and spirituality were important for workers’ well-being (Koburtay & Syed, 2021). In fact, these notions were highly linked with self-acceptance, purpose in life, autonomy, positive relations and are moderately linked with personal growth and environmental mastery (Koburtay & Syed, 2021). For the second study, Koburtay and Syed (2021) posit that the self-spirituality of hotels’ guests was negatively linked with their happiness, while the availability of spiritual facilities at hotels was positively linked with their happiness. In general, the study presented a critical understanding of the relevance of spirituality in hotel management to the ASA theory.
Article Critique and Future Research
Overall, the article’s research methods allowed for a comprehensive answer to posed questions. The inclusion of interview excerpts strengthened authors’ conclusions, and the breakdown of findings by topic was effective for conveying major takes. The hypotheses that the authors created were well contextualized by a substantial body of relevant literature. Subsequently, all three pairs of hypotheses have been thoroughly tested and answered. The potential issue with the article’s applicability lies in the cultural specificity of concepts such as spirituality and psychology. The potential differences between Muslim and non-Muslim perspectives on spirituality, religiosity, and well-being deserve deep conjecturing. However, this article remains a profound exploration of integrating religious consideration in daily hotel management routine through the lens of Islamic practices.
The authors additionally acknowledge and reflect on several limitations in their work. Firstly, male participants were overrepresented in study one, which may affect the results’ generalization (Koburtay & Syed, 2021). In addition, the limited focus on only 5-star hotels raises concerns about the validity of extrapolating the results to other hospitality services (Koburtay & Syed, 2021). Furthermore, the study was conducted from an Islamic perspective, including Muslim people as a sample (Koburtay & Syed, 2021). Again, this sampling raises concerns about the possibility of generalization to the countries with a non-Muslim population majority. Future researchers may benefit from including more diverse samples and other hotel classes in their studies. However, despite the listed limitations, this article remains an example of a successful deductive research, with all three pairs of hypotheses yielding conclusive results.
Conclusion
To conclude, the article offers a contextual and novel framework for understanding the connections between religion and psychology in hotels in a diverse cultural context in the Middle East. Authors effectively build on the ASA theory and integrate novel constructs that may affect the cycle of recruiting, choosing, and firing employees. Through two studies, they show how spirituality and religion-compliant approaches may improve workers’ well-being and thus performance, as well as the experience that hotel guests get.
Reference
Koburtay, T., & Syed, J. (2021). Do religion and spirituality matter for hotel workers’ well-being and guests’ happiness? An update of the attraction-selection-attrition theory.International Journal of Hospitality Management, 95, 102951.