Date of Award

2019

Document Type

Thesis - ECU Access Only

Publisher

Edith Cowan University

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

School

School of Business and Law

First Supervisor

Dr Pattanee Susomrith

Second Supervisor

Professor Pi-Shen Seet

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to theorise and empirically test specific antecedents and outcomes of organisational and community job embeddedness in the hotel industry. Aligning with the conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study theorised and empirically tested three antecedents (i.e., perceived organisational support, transformational leadership and transactional leadership) and two outcomes (i.e., innovative work behaviour and voluntary turnover) of organisational and community embeddedness. Using structural equation modelling with path analysis in Amos on a sample of 312 employees from the Ghanaian hotel industry, perceived organisational support was found to be strongly and positively related to organisational and community embeddedness. While transformational leadership was positively related to organisational embeddedness but not community embeddedness, transactional leadership was negatively related to organisational embeddedness. Both organisational and community embeddedness were positively related to innovative work behaviour; however, only organisational embeddedness was negatively related to employee turnover. Most importantly, employees’ organisational and community embeddedness either fully or partially mediated the relationships between the three antecedents and the two outcomes of job embeddedness. Altogether, this study has demonstrated that without employees’ job embeddedness, especially organisational embeddedness, organisational support strategies and leader behaviours are neither useful in promoting employee innovative efforts nor addressing voluntary employee turnover.

In terms of theory, this study contributes to the COR and job embeddedness theories as well as to the organisational support, leadership, employee turnover and innovative work behaviour literatures by providing empirical evidence on specific antecedents and outcomes of organisational and community embeddedness from a collective cultural context, and within the hotel industry where the job embeddedness construct has rarely been studied. This evidence should encourage managers and human resource practitioners to focus on support strategies and managerial practices that enhance desirable work relationships and align employee goals to those of the organisation in order to foster organisational innovation and promote employee retention. The path analysis conducted in this study also suggests that employee innovative behaviour and turnover are complex issues, and therefore continuous research is needed in this area.

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