Perceptions of restaurant employees in Asia Pacific on sexual harassment in the hospitality industry

Agrusa, Jerome; Tanner, John F.; Coats, Wendy

doi:10.1080/10941660008722070

Cited by 7 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 16 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Eller (1990) studied a population of hotel employees in the USA and concluded that more hotel employees than workers in society-at-large will experience SH. Similar results were reported by Chung (1993) in a study involving 69 hotel employees in the USA, the same as the works of Agrusa et al (2000) and Coats et al (2004). In a study involving 301 Taiwanese hospitality students, about 97 per cent of the research participants reported incidents of SH (Lin, 2006).…”

Section: Literature Reviewsupporting

confidence: 91%

“…In total, 800 questionnaires were distributed using convenience sampling techniques and 711 were retrieved, whereas 583 were considered to contain sufficient data for the analysis constituting 73 per cent response rate. Packets of questionnaires were handed over to human resource departments and managers to oversee the administration of questionnaires with a request that they ensured fair representation of all groups in the sample (Agrusa et al , 2000; Coats et al , 2004) with respondents completing the questionnaires between February and April 2016.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Dependence on tips and sexual harassment vulnerability of hotel employees in Accra, Ghana

Mensah

2019

JHTI

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between perceived dependence on tips and vulnerability to sexual harassment (SH) among hotel employees in Accra Metropolis, Ghana. Design/methodology/approach Within a cross-sectional research design, 583 employees from 55 hotels completed self-administered questionnaires. Descriptive statistics, χ2 test of independence, Kruskal–Wallis test were used to analyse collected data. Findings Results of the study reveal that dependence on tips is related to SH vulnerability of food and beverage staff. Furthermore, dependence on tips engenders a perception of SH climate. Compared to guests and co-workers, supervisors were least identified as perpetrators of SH in hotel workspaces. Guests were responsible for unwanted sexual attention, whereas co-workers pose the greatest risk for gender harassment. Practical implications Hotel management should invest in the publication of educational materials such as leaflets and posters indicating unacceptability of inappropriate sexual behaviours. Originality/value This paper is one of the pioneers to have assessed the relationship between dependence on tips and perceived climate for SH as well as vulnerability to SH in a hotel context.

show abstract

Section: Literature Reviewsupporting

confidence: 91%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dependence on tips and sexual harassment vulnerability of hotel employees in Accra, Ghana

Mensah

2019

JHTI

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…It seriously threatens employees' job performance [22] and well-being [58]. In hospitality workplaces, including restaurants, the boundaries between work and social interaction are vague, which makes it difficult for companies to control sexual harassment by customers [23,24]. Traditional Confucian values particularly prevalent in Asian culture expect employees to tolerate the emotional impact of this behavior [22,23].…”

Section: Literature Review 21 Jay-customer Behaviorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The restaurant industry is particularly service-oriented, where frontline employees directly face their customers [22]. The blurry line between work and social interaction makes it difficult to regulate harassment in the restaurant industry [23,24], making restaurant employees more vulnerable to jay-customer behaviors [25,26]. Additionally, restaurant culture seems to recognize verbal abuse and harassment as natural factors of a work environment [27].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stress on Frontline Employees from Customer Aggression in the Restaurant Industry: The Moderating Effect of Empowerment

Choi

Yin

et al. 2021

Sustainability

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In service industries such as restaurants, abusive customer (jay-customer) behaviors may evoke emotional exhaustion and burnout in frontline employees, threatening job satisfaction as well as sustainable management in the hospitality industry. Therefore, there is a need to identify whether (and to what degree) such customer behaviors stress frontline employees enough to affect their mental health, which may lead to employee turnover. To understand jay-customer behaviors in a restaurant setting, this study investigated the factors of jay-customer behaviors that induce job stress and decrease job satisfaction. Additionally, the moderating effect of empowerment was tested to see whether employee empowerment decreases the stress caused by jay-customer behaviors. Data collected from 302 restaurant employees from several cities in South Korea were analyzed using exploratory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. The study results demonstrate that three types of jay-customer behaviors (verbal abuse, physical abuse, and sexual harassment) are directly related to frontline employees’ job stress, which in turn, reduces job satisfaction. A moderating effect of empowerment on the relationship between verbal abuse and job stress is found. The results of this study suggest a conceptual model for understanding the process in which jay-customers negatively influence the frontline employees, threatening employee well-being, and they provide valuable implications for the restaurant industry, which can help develop strategies to improve employee welfare and provide better customer management.

show abstract

“…Equally concerning, is the high rate of sexual harassment experienced by hospitality students serving internships (Mkono, 2010;Lin, 2006). Unsurprisingly, within an industry where flirtatious interactions with customers may be explicitly or implicitly encouraged (Gilbert, Guerrier and Guy, 1998), hospitality workers perceive sexual harassment to be more frequent (Agrusa, Tanner and Coats, 2000) and more tolerated (Poulston, 2008) compared to other industries. Indeed, within the hospitality industry, sexual harassment is complex, given that men, women, managers, employees and guests are both targets and perpetrators of sexually harassing behaviours (Klein and Poulston, 2011;Poulston, 2008).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Training the next generation HR practitioners’: Reflecting on HRM student experiences of sexual harassment training

Dyer

Hurd

2021

Hospitality &Amp; Society

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Despite prohibitive legislation and organizational policies and training, high rates of sexual harassment persist in the hospitality industry, a situation that is concerning to organizations and researchers alike. As management educators, we embedded a sexual harassment lecture within the context of a human resource management degree, with the aim of developing the capacity of the future human resource practitioner workforce to address sexual harassment. The reflective journals of these students, collected over a three-year period, reveal that while participants found the session improved their understanding of sexual harassment myths and remedies, many still questioned their ability to act within the context of wider organizational dynamics. Our analysis leads us to conclude that sexual harassment training sessions are a valuable and necessary starting point for developing intolerance. However, if we are truly committed to eradicating sexual harassment, then a much broader and integrated approach is required that includes redressing the limitations of the current legal systems, broadening the scope of education within the wider community and developing intolerant organizational climates.

show abstract

Perceptions of restaurant employees in Asia Pacific on sexual harassment in the hospitality industry

Cited by 7 publications

References 16 publications

Dependence on tips and sexual harassment vulnerability of hotel employees in Accra, Ghana

Dependence on tips and sexual harassment vulnerability of hotel employees in Accra, Ghana

Stress on Frontline Employees from Customer Aggression in the Restaurant Industry: The Moderating Effect of Empowerment

‘Training the next generation HR practitioners’: Reflecting on HRM student experiences of sexual harassment training

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About