The purposes of this study were to examine the elements of praise in which the tourism employees perceive, to develop trustworthy and reasonable praise scale and to study the effects of positive influence from the perceived praises by employees in tou...
The purposes of this study were to examine the elements of praise in which the tourism employees perceive, to develop trustworthy and reasonable praise scale and to study the effects of positive influence from the perceived praises by employees in tourism industries on the work attitudes through empirical analysis.
For the subjects and samples of the empirical study, a total of 810 copies through the main and the second research in this study were distributed to employees of tourism industries. Using the valid 670 copies, the statistics package, SPSS 12.0, was used for the frequency analysis, factor analysis and reliability analysis, and AMOS 5.0 was used for the confirmation of validity and hypothesis testing for the perceived praise scale.
From the results of empirical analysis, measuring perceived praises were classified into 4 factors of verbal praise, physical praise, gesture/expression praise and materialistic praise with 19 detailed items. And among 13 hypotheses which were suggested in this study, 12 hypotheses were selected with following details.
First, the variables of verbal praise, gesture/expression praise and materialistic praise were analyzed to have positive effects on the self-efficacy, and the positive effects of physical praise on the self-efficacy were not statistically significant. Second, the negative effects between self-efficacy and burn-out were analyzed to be significant. Third, the negative effects between burn-out and work attitude were analyzed to be significant.
The theoretical findings from the results was that, first, despite the applications of praise concept in various study fields worldwide, the understanding of the theories has not been adequately achieved in the tourism studies which research the field of service industry which performs the emotional labor to satisfy the specific psychological state of customer’s need during the process of work practice. But in this study it is important to make an issue of praise that employees of tourism industry perceive. The second purpose is in building the foundation for the quantitative study of the praise perception by developing the measuring instrument to measure the praises which are perceived by the employees of tourism industries based on the qualitative studies of Go Dong-woo, Moon Sang-jung and Lee Hyeong-rae(2008). Third, the results of this study have very significant implications scholastically and theoretically. The concepts and perceived praise scale can be utilized usefully in many study fields which deal with organizations and industries such as management, pedagogy, industrial psychology, administration and sociology and can suggest the expansion of related fields and the direction of researches in the future.
The managerial implications which can be suggested from the results of this study are as follows. First, from the aspect of applying the scale, the study of praise has been progressing through the experimental studies in pedagogy and paedology. However, because the perceived praise scale was developed and validated in this study, its practical application can be expected in organizations where the employees of tourism industries are working. Second, all factors except for the physical praise among the sub-factors of praises from the study results were seen as having a positive effect on the self-efficacy. Such result means that if the employees of tourism industries perceive praises highly, the self-efficacy is also perceived highly. The tourism industries should develop the strategy for promoting praises in the corporate culture in regards to such positive effects of praises. Third, the self-efficacy was seen as having a negative effect on the burn-out from the results of this study. In light of such study results, in order to reduce the burn-out in the employees of tourism industries, the tourism industries should try to offer a fair feedback about the performance to enhance self-efficacy, the workshop of successful experiences by organization members and specialized training to produce the vision for the future, and to promote the formation of healthy relationships among organization members. Fourth, the burn-out was seen as having a negative effect on the work attitude from the results of this study. In order to reduce the perceived burn-out in the employees of tourism industries regarding such result, the system which supports the sense of duty and active work performance for employees should be developed by placing professional advisors.
First, in-depth approach to the construct should be carried out by utilizing qualitative study methods such as in-depth interviews, focus group interviews and field experiments about the psychological aspect of the praise construct in the future studies. Second, due to the inadequacy of studies on the variables related to the praise, it is concluded that the construction of comprehensive model which includes various variables related to the praise will be required.