Emotional intelligence in tourism and hospitality 9781786398321, 178639832X, 9781786398338, 1786398338, 978-1-78639-831-4

Table of contents :
Content: Introduction to emotional intelligence in tourism and hospitality --
Emotions and developing emotional intelligence in tourism and hospitality businesses --
Measuring emotional intelligence in tourism and hospitality --
Emotional intelligence and service encounters --
Development of personal expertise in tourism and hospitality professions : cognitive knowledge, personality and learning style --
Emotional intelligence and its relationship with personality, gender, age and culture in tourism and hospitality --
Developing intercultural sensitivity as an emotional ability --
Service quality and emotional intelligence --
Service failures, recovery and emotional intelligence --
Mystery of spiritual intelligence : predictions, prophecies and possibilities.

Citation preview

Emotional Intelligence in Tourism and Hospitality

This book is enhanced with supplementary resources. To access the customizable lecture slides please visit: https://www.cabi.org/openresources/98314

Emotional Intelligence in Tourism and Hospitality

Edited by

Erdogan Koc

Bandirma Onyedi Eylul University, Turkey

CABI is a trading name of CAB International CABI Nosworthy Way Wallingford Oxfordshire OX10 8DE UK Tel: +44 (0)1491 832111 Fax: +44 (0)1491 833508 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.cabi.org

CABI 745 Atlantic Avenue 8th Floor Boston, MA 02111 USA Tel: +1 (617) 682 9015 E-mail: [email protected]

© CAB International 2019. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronically, mechanically, by photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library, London, UK. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Koc, Erdogan, editor. Title: Emotional intelligence in tourism and hospitality / edited by Erdogan Koc. Description: Wallingford, Oxfordshire, UK ; Boston, MA : CABI, 2019. |   Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018043963 (print) | LCCN 2018055550 (ebook) |   ISBN 9781786398321 (ePDF) | ISBN 9781786398338 (ePub) |   ISBN 9781786398314 (hbk : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Tourism--Psychological aspects. | Tourism--Employees-  Training of. | Hospitality industry--Psychological aspects. | Hospitality   industry--Employees--Training of. | Emotional intelligence. Classification: LCC G155.A1 (ebook) | LCC G155.A1 E42876 2019 (print) |   DDC 910/.019--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018043963 ISBN-13: 978 1 78639 831 4 (Hardback) 978 1 78639 832 1 (ePDF) 978 1 78639 833 8 (ePub) Commissioning editor: Claire Parfitt Editorial assistant: Emma McCann Production editor: Tim Kapp Typeset by SPi, Pondicherry, India Printed and bound in the UK by Bell & Bain Ltd, Glasgow

Contents

List of Contributorsvii Foreword Gill Hasson

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  1 Introduction to Emotional Intelligence in Tourism and Hospitality1 Erdogan Koc   2 Emotions and Developing Emotional Intelligence in Tourism and Hospitality Businesses15 Erdogan Koc and Hakan Boz   3  Measuring Emotional Intelligence in Tourism and Hospitality36 Hakan Boz and Erdogan Koc   4  Emotional Intelligence and Service Encounters46 Poh Theng Loo   5 Development of Personal Expertise in Tourism and Hospitality Professions: Cognitive Knowledge, Personality and Learning Style62 Beverley R. Wilson-Wünsch and J.N. Patrick L’Espoir Decosta   6 Emotional Intelligence and its Relationship with Personality, Gender, Age and Culture in Tourism and Hospitality75 David Rivera, Jr   7  Developing Intercultural Sensitivity as an Emotional Ability95 Anna Irimiás and Mariangela Franch   8  Service Quality and Emotional Intelligence108 Melissa A. Baker   9  Service Failures, Recovery and Emotional Intelligence121 Heejung Ro and Eric D. Olson 10 Mystery of Spiritual Intelligence: Predictions, Prophecies and Possibilities134 Atila Yüksel Index147

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List of Contributors

Melissa A. Baker, Isenberg School of Management, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Massachusetts, USA. E-mail: [email protected] Hakan Boz, Faculty of Applied Sciences, Uşak University, Uşak, Turkey. E-mail: [email protected] Erdogan Koc, Department of Business Administration, Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Bandirma Onyedi Eylul University, Bandirma, Turkey. E-mail: [email protected], [email protected] Mariangela Franch, Department of Economics and Management, University of Trento, Trento, Italy. E-mail: [email protected] Anna Irimiás, Associate Professor, Corvinus University of Budapest, ­Hungary. E-mail: [email protected] J.N. Patrick L’Espoir Decosta, Research School of Management, ANU College of Business & Economics, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. E-mail: [email protected] Poh Theng Loo, International Tourism and Hospitality Department, I-Shou University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. E-mail: [email protected] Eric D. Olson, Department of Apparel, Events, and Hospitality Management, College of Human Services, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, USA. E-mail: [email protected] David Rivera, Jr, Hospitality Management and Culinary Arts Department, George E. Battle School of Business, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Livingstone College, Salisbury, Maryland, USA. E-mail: [email protected] Heejung Ro, Department of Hospitality Services, Rosen College of Hospitality Management, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida, USA. E-mail: [email protected] Beverley R. Wilson-Wünsch, Department of Hospitality, Tourism and Events Management, IUBH International University of Applied Sciences, Bonn, Germany. E-mail: [email protected] Atila Yüksel, School of Tourism and Hotel Management & Vocational School, Adnan Menderes University, Aydın, Turkey. E-mail: ayuksel@adu. edu.tr, [email protected]

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Foreword

When I was young, I worked in hospitality and tourism. I worked in bars, restaurants and hotels in England, the USA and Germany. I worked for several summers in the South of France as a holiday courier. Thirty years later, although my work is now focused on teaching and writing, I have recently come back to working in hospitality and tourism. Twice a year I lead walking holidays in Europe for groups of up to 20 people. What’s the one thing that links all these roles? Emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is concerned with understanding and managing emotions. Hospitality is the quality of receiving and treating guests and strangers in a warm, friendly, generous way. It is about providing a professional and friendly welcome, providing a safe and enjoyable experience, and solving any problems that arise. Hospitality and emotional intelligence are intrinsically linked. With good levels of emotional intelligence, you are more able to sense and manage the needs of others. You are more able to think and behave rationally and calmly before responding in difficult situations, and you know to give yourself and others time to calm down if emotions become overwhelming. But emotional intelligence is not only about understanding and managing difficult situations and emotions. It is also about knowing how to engage the ‘feel-good’ emotions that can give you and other people a positive, enjoyable experience. I have always found tourism and hospitality to be a challenging and interesting, enjoyable and exciting area to work in. It provides endless opportunities to develop our emotional intelligence. And that just serves to make our role in tourism and hospitality even more challenging and interesting, enjoyable and exciting! Erdogan Koc’s edited book entitled Emotional Intelligence in Tourism and Hospitality fills an important gap in the literature and provides useful and practical information for learning and development opportunities for service employees and managers in tourism and hospitality. Gill Hasson

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Introduction to Emotional Intelligence in Tourism and Hospitality Erdogan Koc

Learning Objectives After reading this chapter you should be able to: ●● Understand the concept of multiple intelligences. ●● Explain the difference between intelligence quotient and emotional ­intelligence. ●● Understand the relevance of emotional intelligence for tourism and hospitality.

1.1 Introduction There have been two main motivations for this book. Firstly, emotional ­intelligence is highly relevant for service environments and service encounters, especially in the tourism and hospitality sectors. Secondly, emotional intelligence can be developed, learned and improved through training and experience (Hasson, 2017). In this section, in addition to an introduction to the concept of emotional intelligence in general, the relevance of emotional intelligence for tourism and hospitality businesses is explained.

1.2  Intelligence and Emotional Intelligence 1.2.1 Intelligence Intelligence can be defined as the ‘aggregate or global capacity of the individual to act purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal efficiently and ­effectively with one’s environment’ (Weschler, 1940). Originally, the word intelligence came from the Latin intelligentia, which in turn is derived from intelligere. The Latin word intelligere combines two terms, the first being inter (meaning between) and the second being legere (meaning to choose). Hence, etymologically the origin of the term intelligence refers to knowing © CAB International 2019. Emotional Intelligence in Tourism and Hospitality  (ed. E. Koc)

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how to choose, i.e. intelligence allows people to choose or discern the best options from alternatives for a given problem. The earliest use of the word intelligence in the English language can be traced back to a poem (The Teares of the Muses) written by English poet Edmund Spenser in 1591: A stonie coldnesse hath benumbed the sence … And dimd with darknesse their intelligence

Spenser’s lines above suggest some sort of an understanding of the e­ ngagement of the environment with the individual’s internal capacities. In the Oxford English Dictionary (2018) the word intelligence is listed as a noun meaning ‘the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills’. In basic terms, intelligence is the mental ability to reason, learn and solve problems. Intelligence integrates cognitive functions such as perception, attention, memory, language and planning (Colom et al., 2010). It influences the capacity or ability to learn and understand, and hence influences all dimensions of human conduct (Piaget, 2005). Although a high level of intelligence (e.g. a high intelligence quotient (IQ) score above 120) can be seen as a predictor of success (Sternberg et al., 2001; Duckworth et al., 2007), there are other types of intelligence and new perspectives on the concept of intelligence. 1.2.2  The concept of multiple intelligences After Thorndike (1920) proposed three types of intelligence (mechanical, abstract and social) there was a shift in terms of the focus of intelligence from the brain to other aspects of human intelligence. Later, the theory of multiple intelligences was developed in the 1970s by the psychologist Gardner (1993). According to Gardner, individuals draw on different types of intelligence to solve problems at work, and in their daily lives to solve problems relevant to their contexts and societies (Gardner, 1993, 2008). The nine intelligences offered by Gardner (1999) are outlined in Table 1.1. All the intelligences described in Table 1.1 are applicable to a range of life endeavours. However, the first two, interpersonal and intrapersonal ­intelligence, are especially relevant for service environments and encounters in tourism and hospitality. Below, the concept of emotional intelligence and how it relates to tourism and hospitality service encounters is explained.

1.3  Emotional Intelligence and its Relevance for the Tourism and Hospitality Industry Emotional intelligence is the ability of an individual to perceive, understand, use and manage not only her/his emotions but also the emotions of  other 2

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Table 1.1.  Gardner’s multiple intelligences construct. (From Gardner, 1999.) Multiple intelligences

Explanations

Interpersonal intelligence

The ability: •• to understand other people’s moods, temperaments, motives and intentions; •• to have empathy; •• to recognize differences and distinctions among people; •• to appreciate other people’s perspectives. Intrapersonal The ability: intelligence •• to assess one’s own feelings, moods and motivations; •• to use one’s own feelings, moods and motivations to guide behaviours; •• to understand oneself; •• to be aware of one’s weaknesses and strengths; •• to plan efficiently and effectively to achieve personal goals. Kinaesthetic intelligence The ability: •• to control one’s body movements and to manipulate objects; •• to think in movements; •• to use one’s body in a skilled and complicated way; for expressive and goal-directed activities; •• to have the sense of timing and the ability to coordinate whole-body movement. Linguistic intelligence The ability: •• to use language in an efficient and effective manner; •• to think in words and to use language; •• to express and understand complex meanings; •• to be sensitive towards the meaning of words: order among the words, sounds, rhythms, inflections. Logical–mathematical The ability: intelligence •• to discern logical and numerical patterns; •• to manipulate numerical processes; •• to think of cause-and-effect connections; •• to understand relationships among actions, objects or ideas; •• to have inductive and deductive reasoning skills; •• to be critical and to solve problems creatively. Musical intelligence The ability: •• to produce and understand rhythm, pitch and timbre of music; •• to think in sounds, rhythms, melodies and rhymes; •• to recognize, create and reproduce music by using an instrument or voice; •• to connect music with emotions; •• to be critical and to solve problems creatively. Continued

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Table 1.1. Continued. Multiple intelligences

Explanations

Naturalist intelligence

The ability: •• to understand the natural world – plants, animals and scientific studies; •• to recognize individuals, species and ecological relationships; •• to interact effectively with living creatures and discern patterns of life and natural forces. The ability: •• to think in pictures and to perceive the visual world accurately in three dimensions; •• to transform one’s perceptions; •• to re-create aspects of one’s visual experience via imagination. The ability: •• to perceive and manipulate a visual–spatial world; •• to think that there is an ultimate power that determines people’s destiny; •• to believe in the destiny that influences people’s attitudes and behaviours to achieve harmony and peace and God’s blessings.

Spatial intelligence

Spiritual intelligence

people the individual interacts with (Salovey and Mayer, 1990; Goleman, 1996). Research findings demonstrate that as much as 60% of success in a wide variety of sectors can be attributed to emotional intelligence (Goleman, 1996; Wong and Law, 2002; Coetzee and Harry, 2014). An important proportion of people (90%) who show extraordinary success and performance appear to have relatively higher levels of emotional intelligence (Bradberry and Greaves, 2006, 2009). Senior executives believe that emotional intelligence is among the top ten skills for business success and will continue to be ­important in the future (World Economic Forum, 2015). The World Economic Forum (2015) developed a report and identified the crucial abilities for the 21st century. These abilities or competences included collaboration, communication, critical thinking and problem-solving, or character qualities such as social and cultural awareness, understanding others, curiosity and adaptability. This means that 21st-century skills and abilities are very much parallel with emotional intelligence abilities and skills. Many studies show that the above skills, which are often referred to as soft skills, are, and will continue to be, more important than technical skills (Young, 1996; Rojas, 2014; Nikhil and Arthi, 2018). It is also believed that jobs requiring soft skills will be less ­influenced by automation and artificial intelligence in the future (Cherniss, 1999; Aydin et al., 2017; Nokelainen et al., 2018). Kolbjørnsrud et al. (2017) 4

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showed that sales personnel with higher levels of emotional intelligence are able to meet their sales targets more easily than those with lower levels of emotional intelligence. Moreover, employees with higher levels of emotional ­intelligence tend to be more capable of coping with stress and burnout at work than those employees with lower levels of emotional intelligence (­Hasson, 2012, 2014; Wiens, 2016). Mayer and Salovey’s theory of emotional intelligence suggests that, ­unlike IQ, skills of emotional intelligence can be acquired and improved through learning and experience (Mayer and Salovey, 1997). The basic skills of emotional intelligence comprise self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills. The emotional intelligence skills usually referred to as the five components of emotional intelligence are self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills (Goleman, 2006) (see Table 1.2). Based on Goleman’s components, Koc et al. (2017) developed a framework to show how the components of emotional intelligence relate to service encounters and service quality, especially in tourism and hospitality. This model is explained in Chapter 2 of the book. Research shows that, in service environments, employees with higher levels of emotional intelligence appear to be more capable of service encounters (Min, 2011; Jung and Yoon, 2012; Kwek et al., 2014; Lee et al., 2018), be more capable of working with and managing teams (Wolfe and Kim, 2013; Jung and Yoon, 2016), have higher levels of service orientation (Lee and Ok, 2015) and be better prepared to manage service failures (Solnet and Paulsen, 2006; Kralj and Solnet, 2010; Kim et al., 2012; Wang et al., 2017). As stated above, and as will be explained in Chapter 2, unlike IQ, people can develop their emotional intelligence (quotient) through training, exercise, practice and experience.

Table 1.2.  Components of emotional ability. (From Goleman, 2006.) Skill

Explanation

Self-awareness The ability of an individual to understand her/his emotions, strengths, weaknesses, needs and drives, as well as their influence on other people Self-regulation Having an ability to control and/or redirect disruptive impulses and moods and the propensity to suspend judgement – thinking before acting Motivation A passion to work for reasons that go beyond money or status, with a propensity to pursue goals with energy and persistence Empathy The ability to understand the emotional make-up of other people, with skill in treating people according to their emotional reactions Social skills Proficiency in managing relationships and building networks, with an ability to find common ground and build rapport

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Activity Visit the website below to measure your emotional intelligence. Make a personal evaluation based on the outcome. Identify your strengths and weaknesses in terms of your emotional intelligence. Search for ways to reduce your weaknesses and to bank on your strengths.

http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/ei_quiz/

As service encounters can be strongly emotion laden and they take place in a social servicescape (Tombs and McColl-Kennedy, 2003), within which frequent and intense social interactions occur, service providers need to understand the emotions of customers and be able to recruit staff with ­emotional abilities. Service employees and managers with higher levels of emotional intelligence are expected to not only serve and satisfy customers better but also function better with other employees and managers in the tourism and hospitality business. Studies on interpersonal skills and gender show that, in general, women tend to have a higher level of emotional intelligence than males (Schutte et al., 1998; Sánchez-Núñez et al., 2008; Fernández-Berrocal et al., 2012; Danguah, 2014). A  higher level of emotional intelligence in tourism and hospitality service environments contributes to a greater level of customer and employee job satisfaction (Barlow and Maul, 2000). Women tend to have greater abilities regarding service quality elements (e.g. SERVQUAL – physical evidence (tangibles), reliability, assurance, responsiveness and empathy). For instance, research shows that women can be better at interpreting other people’s emotional messages than men (Noller and Fitzpatrick, 1990) and dealing with negative stimuli in their environment (e.g. a service-failure situation) (MeyersLevy and Loken, 2015). As women can also be more patient and conscientious (Meyers-Levy and Loken, 2015), they may be more able to support reliability in service environments (Koc, 2017). Other factors, such as social anxiety and social avoidance, may be influential in determining the service employees’ level of emotional intelligence. Koc’s (2018) study showed that in Turkey a significant proportion of tourism and hospitality students had social anxiety and social avoidance, which caused these individuals to refrain from social interaction and relationships. Various factors such as the above may influence customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is closely related to customers’ emotional experience during the service encounters. Hence, in addition to the empathy point of 6

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view, emotional intelligence relates to all other SERVQUAL dimensions (reliability, assurance and responsiveness), except for tangibles (Koc, 2006; Koc, et  al., 2017). Rehnman and Herlitz (2007) found that women were better at remembering the appearance of people and at recollection of facial identity than men. This is important as customers like being recognized by service people (Iacobucci et al., 1995; Kang, 2008). Research also shows that females have a better ability to recognize facial expressions of fear and sadness (Nowicki and Hartigan, 1988; Chong and Ahmed, 2017). Based on females’ superiority in reading non-verbal cues (Hall and Matsumoto, 2004; Farris et al., 2008), female employees may notice customer dissatisfaction more easily than their male counterparts. As will be explained in the following chapters, understanding facial expressions and emotions is an important indicator of a higher level of emotional intelligence (Koc, 2017). It has also been noted that females are often superior to males in terms of social cognition, e.g. in terms of making inferences about the beliefs, intentions, emotional states and potential future behaviour of other people (Geary, 2002). Studies have found that a positive emotional display in service interactions, such as smiling and showing friendliness, may increase customers’ purchasing and repeat purchasing behaviours (Oliver, 1993; Tsai, 2001), positive word-of-mouth communication (Tsai, 2001; Tsai and Huang, 2002; Keh et  al., 2013) and perception of a high level of service quality (Parasuraman et al., 1988) in tourism and hospitality service encounters. Research findings show that women are more likely to display positive emotions (e.g. they smile more often than males) (Deutsch, 1990; Ellis, 2006; Ellis et al., 2012). Customer dissatisfaction may have extremely negative consequences for tourism and hospitality businesses (Carley and Lin, 1995; Koc, 2010; Koc and Boz, 2014; Roschk and Gelbrich, 2014; Van Vaerenbergh et al., 2014). The immediate consequences of dissatisfaction may be visible, as in the case of a customer making a formal complaint, or not so visible, as in the case of the alienation of potential customers due to the negative word-of-mouth communication of dissatisfied customers. It is known that while a satisfied customer may express her/his contentment to only four or five people on average, a dissatisfied customer may ­express her/his discontent to as many as nine or ten people (Brown and Reingen, 1987). This means that the damage that may be caused by a dissatisfied customer to a tourism and hospitality business may outweigh the benefit that may accrue from a satisfied customer. Moreover, it is estimated that 96% of all dissatisfied customers switch to other providers without making a complaint (Mariani, 1993; TARP, 2007). This may mean that for every complaint received, there could be as many as 24 silent, unhappy customers. The above explanations show the need for a more comprehensive and systematic education and training of prospective tourism and hospitality employees on emotional intelligence. Tourism and hospitality sector businesses are increasingly demanding graduates who can undertake service ­encounters in an efficient and effective manner. Introduction to Emotional Intelligence in Tourism and Hospitality

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This book is written for two groups of audiences. Firstly, it is for academics teaching tourism and hospitality programmes at universities. In line with the increasing importance of emotional intelligence, academics in tourism and hospitality programmes may wish to offer and develop a new elective or a compulsory course in emotional intelligence to increase the scope and depth of both their undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Additionally, academics teaching service management, human resource management and service quality courses in tourism and hospitality programmes can use this book as a supplementary text to support their teaching. Secondly, practitioners in tourism and hospitality (e.g. marketing and human resource managers) can use this book to design and implement training programmes for their businesses. As this book has been written with the above audiences in mind, chapters comprise plenty of student support materials including real-life examples, case studies, links to websites, activities and discussion questions, recent research findings from top-tier journals and presentation slides for in-class use by academics and trainers. A total of 11 prominent researchers and authors have worked diligently for more than a year to bring this much-needed volume to life. The authors have explained the influence of emotional intelligence on various aspects of service encounters in tourism and hospitality and how emotional intelligence as an important ability in tourism and hospitality can be developed. Based on the dyadic influence of emotional intelligence, i.e. for both the customer and employees, while some chapters have a strong marketing and consumer behaviour background, other chapters have a human resource management and organizational behaviour background. With these perspectives in mind, the book contains ten stand-alone chapters as follows: Chapter 1 Introduction to Emotional Intelligence in Tourism and Hospitality Chapter 2 Emotions and Developing Emotional Intelligence in Tourism and Hospitality Businesses Chapter 3 Measuring Emotional Intelligence in Tourism and Hospitality Chapter 4 Emotional Intelligence and Service Encounters Chapter 5 Development of Personal Expertise in Tourism and Hospitality Professions: Cognitive Knowledge, Personality and Learning Style Chapter 6 Emotional Intelligence and its Relationship with Personality, Gender, Age and Culture in Tourism and Hospitality Chapter 7 Developing Intercultural Sensitivity as an Emotional Ability Chapter 8 Service Quality and Emotional Intelligence Chapter 9 Service Failures, Recovery and Emotional Intelligence Chapter 10  Mystery of Spiritual Intelligence: Predictions, Prophecies and Possibilities

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This introductory chapter by the editor explains the rationale for the book: the relevance of emotional intelligence for tourism and hospitality businesses. This chapter also presents the outline of the book. Chapter 2, written by E ­ rdogan Koc and Hakan Boz, explains how individual employees or students as prospective employees can develop their emotional intelligence abilities. In Chapter 3, authors Hakan Boz and Erdogan Koc explain how individuals and managers can measure the emotional abilities of themselves and their service staff. Tourism and hospitality encounters are based on frequent and intense interactions, and these encounters may often be strongly emotion laden. In Chapter 4, Poh Theng Loo explains emotional intelligence from the perspective of tourism and hospitality service encounters. Chapter 5, written by Beverley R. Wilson-Wünsch and J.N. Patrick L’Espoir Decosta, provides a review of the concepts of cognitive knowledge and learning styles and their relevance for the development of personal expertise in tourism and hospitality. In Chapter 6, David Rivera explains the relationship of personality, gender and culture with emotional ­intelligence in tourism and hospitality. As tourism and hospitality service encounters are increasingly becoming international and intercultural in nature, in Chapter 7 Anna Irimiás and Mariangela Franch ­explain the role and potential of intercultural sensitivity from the perspective of emotional intelligence. Chapter 8, written by Melissa A. Baker, brings many facets of emotional intelligence together and explains the emotional intelligence and service quality relationship. As service encounters in tourism and hospitality are highly prone to failure due to the service characteristics of intangibility, heterogeneity, inseparability and perishability (Koc, 2013), together with other tourism and hospitality-specific features of these services, a whole chapter has been allocated to service failures and recovery. In this chapter, Heejung Ro and Eric D. Olson explain how emotional intelligence can be instrumental in recovering service failures. In the final chapter, Chapter 10, Atila Yüksel, a prominent tourism and hospitality researcher, introduces spiritual intelligence and its relevance for tourism and hospitality service encounters. My wholehearted thanks go to all the contributors who have worked so hard to produce this exceptionally useful and original book, and to Gill Hasson, a prominent author, who has written many influential books on emotional intelligence, for writing the foreword. I hope readers will find this book both interesting and useful.

Questions 1.  What are the basic emotions people have? How do these emotions relate to service encounters, service failures and recovery? 2.  Explain the emotional intelligence abilities and their relevance for service encounters. 3.  Explain one activity for developing each emotional intelligence ability.

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Further Reading Hasson, G. (2012) Brilliant Emotional Intelligence. Pearson, Harlow, UK. Hasson, G. (2014) Emotional Intelligence: Managing Emotions to Make a Positive Impact on Your Life and Career. Wiley, Chichester, UK. Hasson, G. (2017) Emotional Intelligence Pocketbook. Wiley, Chichester, UK.

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Emotions and Developing Emotional Intelligence in Tourism and Hospitality Businesses Erdogan Koc and Hakan Boz

Learning Objectives After reading this chapter you should be able to: ●● Understand the concepts of feelings and emotions. ●● Explain the relationship between emotions and service encounters in tourism and hospitality. ●● Explain the components of emotional intelligence in relation to service encounters. ●● Understand how emotional intelligence can be developed.

2.1 Introduction Research shows that the human brain has more of a tendency to carry out emotional processing rather than rational processing (Amaral et al., 1992; McDonald, 1998; Baker et al., 2006). The number of signals coming from the rational part of the brain (the prefrontal cortex) compared with the emotional part of the brain (the limbic system) is significantly lower (about onetenth) (Hawkins and Blakeslee, 2004). This means that people (including tourism and hospitality customers and employees) are more likely to carry out emotional processing most of the time, rather than rational processing (Amaral et al., 1992; McDonald, 1998; Baker et al., 2006). This fact is in line with the marketing notion that customers more often go through a feel– think–do hierarchy, rather than a think–feel–do hierarchy (Koc, 2017).

2.2 Emotions It is not easy to provide a strict definition of an emotion, as the term has a variety of cognitive, physiological, social and behavioural a­ spects and

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implications (Solomon, 2000). In basic terms, emotions can be defined as the organized psychophysiological responses of individuals to the stimuli in the environment (Scherer, 2003). Anthropologists argue that emotions have developed as reactions to stimuli in the environment to promote specific actions through which individuals satisfy their needs and increase their probability of survival (­Fredrickson, 2001; Kuppens et al., 2008). Darwin’s early work, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, written in 1872, pointed out the importance of the expression of emotions for survival and adaptability. Darwin argued that emotions, being the appropriate reactions to events, especially to emergencies in the environment, increased the survival and adaptability of human beings and animals (Plutchik, 1984). For example, fear and anger as facial expressions are the responses to aversive and threatening stimuli in the environment (Marsh et al., 2005) and influence fight and flight responses of the individual. Emotions are influenced by a wide variety of factors including beliefs, culture and values (Elster, 1998). According to Arnold (1960, p.182), an emotion is ‘the felt tendency toward anything intuitively appraised as good (beneficial), or away from anything intuitively appraised as bad (harmful)’. On the other hand, a feeling is the ‘conscious awareness that one is experiencing an emotion’ (Mercer, 1996, p. 516). Although they are internally experienced, the meaning attached to feelings is cognitively and culturally constructed (Crawford, 2000, p. 125). Feelings can be defined as mental experiences of body states that represent a physiological need arising as the brain of an individual evaluates and interprets emotion (Damasio and ­Carvalho, 2013, p. 143). Emotions can be caused by either internal stimuli (such as body states, e.g. hunger) or external stimuli (e.g. a feeling of disappointment when the dinner is served late and cold). Additionally, emotions can be thought of as being either processes or states (Robinson, 2004). When an emotion is thought of as a state (e.g. being disappointed and angry when the dinner is served cold and late in a restaurant), it is a mental state intertwined with other mental states and causes particular outward behaviours such as making a formal complaint to the restaurant manager. When an emotion is thought of as a process, it may be considered to have two phases. The first phase of the emotion is the period of duration between the perception of the stimulus or event (e.g. cold and late dinner) and the triggering of a bodily response. The second phase of the emotion is to do with the bodily response such as changes in heart rate, blood pressure or facial expression. In service exchanges, while a customer’s positive emotions can be associated with customer satisfaction, a customer’s negative emotions are associated with dissatisfaction. For this reason, tourism and hospitality

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staff are responsible for ensuring that customers have positive experiences. A study by Koc and Boz (2014) showed that improving the unpleasant mood of a hotel customer due to jet lag is also within the responsibility of the staff of that hotel. Contrary to the common belief that feelings are sparked by emotions, feelings may also spark emotions. For instance, thinking about a rude service employee may be sufficient to trigger an emotional response of anger for a customer. Table 2.1 shows the eight basic emotions (Plutchik, 1984) and related feelings from a tourism and hospitality encounters perspective. Research shows that, in general, individuals place a greater significance on negative feelings (Verduyn and Lavrijsen, 2014). As a negative feeling, sadness has been found to be the longest-lasting feeling in the human mind (Verduyn and Lavrijsen, 2014). This is probably because people place much greater emphasis on not losing rather than on winning (Kahneman and Tversky, 1979), as maintaining survival is the main driver of all human beings. The findings of Verduyn and Lavrijsen (2014) have important implications for tourism and hospitality businesses. Due to heterogeneity (the fact that tourism and hospitality services are hard to standardize) and inseparability (the fact that tourism and hospitality services are mostly consumed as they are produced), this may create threats for the satisfaction of customers. Additionally, as tourism and hospitality services require intense and continuous interaction between the customer and service personnel, service encounters are highly prone to produce dissatisfaction and sadness on the part of customers. Therefore, developing models and frameworks for classifying, explaining and understanding the emotions and feelings of people is significantly important. Following Plutchik’s (1984) model of emotions, later, Ekman and Davidson (1994), based on their work Atlas of Emotions, reduced the number of basic emotions to six: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise. At present, the framework that Ekman and Davidson (1994) developed is more commonly used by researchers. Understanding the emotions of oneself and others is of paramount importance in social and business exchanges. It also forms the basis of emotional intelligence as explained below.

2.3  Emotional Intelligence As explained in Chapter 1 (this volume), emotional intelligence is the ability or tendency of an individual to perceive, understand, regulate, control and manage not only her/his emotions, but also the emotions of others (Salovey and Mayer, 1990). According to Goleman (1996), the main constructs of emotional

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Table 2.1.  Eight basic emotions in service encounters. (Adapted from Plutchik, 1984.) Emotion

Related feeling

Explanation

Service encounter explanations and examples

Fear

Feeling of being afraid

Fear comes from sensing danger. Someone who fears something does not want it to happen. A feeling of fear results in the fightor-flight response.

Anger

Anger is a learned and inherited response, Feeling of being angry; when anger is extreme, and is common to all human societies and it is called rage animals. Anger comes about when people are threatened, offended, wronged or denied something they really want or need. Feeling of being sad This is the opposite of happiness. Other words that are similar to sadness are sorrow and grief.

There may be various risk hazards in a tourism and hospitality business. An unsafe lift or exposed power cables in a hotel room may cause customers to feel physiological risk. There are other types of risks such as financial, psychological, social, performance and time risks, which may cause the customer to feel fear. A cold dinner or dinner not cooked according to the customer’s request may anger the customer.

Sadness

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Joy

Feeling of being happy

The feeling of happiness is associated with pleasure and positivity. Someone can be said to be happy if she/he feels relieved, relaxed, satisfied, proud or good. Although happiness is considered to be the opposite of sadness, it is possible to feel both sadness and happiness at the same time.

A holiday that does not meet the expectations of a customer may anger the customer and may make her/him feel disappointed and sad. A recovered service failure at a restaurant or an unexpected kind gesture from a service employee at a hotel may cause the customer to feel joy.

Emotions and Developing Emotional Intelligence in Tourism

Disgust

Feeling that something is wrong or nasty

Surprise

Feeling of being unprepared for something

Trust

Feeling of reliability towards somebody or something

Anticipation A feeling of positive expectation

When people see, touch, hear or taste something nasty or repulsive, they feel disgusted. When a person feels something unexpected has happened or may happen, she/he may feel surprised. A surprise may be pleasant, unpleasant, positive or negative. An intense unpleasant or negative surprise may cause the person to choose the fight-or-flight response.

Trust is a feeling that somebody or something can be relied upon or will turn out to be good. It is the feeling of being sure about something, even if it cannot be proved. Anticipation involves a positive attitude and looking forward to something that may happen.

Unaccustomed foodstuff from a different culture or a lack of hygiene in a restaurant may cause a feeling of disgust. Customer delightment is surprising a customer by exceeding her/his expectations. When a customer is offered a free welcome drink in a restaurant, she/he may be happy due to the arousal occurring as a result of this unexpected gesture of generosity. As in the case of the service-recovery paradox, surprise produces arousal. Trust is important in service encounters. Trust lies at the centre of two of the SERVQUAL elements: reliability and assurance. While a certain level of anticipation of customers regarding service encounters is necessary, increased levels of anticipation may have detrimental effects.

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intelligence are self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management. These constructs are explained in Table 2.2. Although broadly similar in nature, Mayer et  al. (2008) proposed four abilities of emotional intelligence. These abilities are perceiving emotions, using emotions, understanding emotions and managing emotions (Table 2.3). Thus, the skills of emotional intelligence can be summarized as self-­ awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills. These skills can be explained as follows: ●● Self-awareness: ability of an individual to understand her/his emotions, strengths, weaknesses, needs and drives, as well as their influence on other people. ●● Self-regulation: having an ability to control and/or redirect disruptive impulses and moods and the propensity to suspend judgement – thinking before acting. ●● Motivation: a passion to work for reasons that go beyond money or status, with a propensity to pursue goals with energy and ­persistence. Table 2.2.  The main constructs of emotional intelligence. (Adapted from Goleman, 1996.) Construct

Explanation

Self-awareness Self-management

Ability to read emotions and be aware of their impact Ability to manage and control emotions and impulses and the ability to adapt to change Ability to feel, understand and react to others’ emotions; understanding social networks Ability to inspire, motivate, influence and develop others; ability to manage conflict

Social awareness Relationship management

Table 2.3.  Abilities of emotional intelligence. (Adapted from Mayer et al., 2008.) Ability

Explanation

Perceiving emotions

Ability to identify, decode and discern emotions in facial expressions, body language pictures, voices and cultural artefacts Ability to control emotions to aid diverse cognitive activities such as thinking and problem-solving Ability to understand emotions, feelings and underlying reasons, and understand and appreciate the relationship among complicated emotions Ability to manage her/his emotions as well as those of others

Using emotions Understanding emotions Managing emotions

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●● Empathy: ability to understand the emotional make-up of other people, with skill in treating people according to their emotional ­reactions. ●● Social skills: proficiency in managing relationships and building networks, with an ability to find common ground and build rapport.

2.4  The Importance of Understanding and Using Emotions in Tourism and Hospitality The main motive behind any product or service consumption activity (e.g. going to a resort hotel for a place to stay or going to a restaurant for dinner) is the satisfaction of the needs of people. Human beings are motived to reduce the tension they have, caused by the feeling of deprivation when they have a need. Tourism and hospitality products and services that are inefficient cannot meet the demands of customers and cause dissatisfaction and eventually the development of negative feelings such as disappointment, anger and even hatred. As service encounters in tourism and hospitality involve intense customer–employee contact, they may be strongly emotion laden (Patterson et  al., 2006; Servidio and Ruffolo, 2016; Loo and Boo, 2017). The ability of tourism or hospitality service personnel to understand the internal state of customers or the emotions and feelings of peers from external cues (e.g. facial expressions, body language) is usually seen as the basic tenet of social functioning (Marsh et al., 2005; Marsh and Ambady, 2007). Understanding facial expressions and emotions can help individual employees to develop their abilities such as empathy, trust and prosocial behaviour (Marsh et al., 2005; Marsh and Ambady, 2007). Empathy, trust and prosocial behaviour form the basis of emotional intelligence. Table 2.4 shows how each emotional intelligence skill relates to service personnel, service encounters and service quality.

2.5  Development of Emotional Intelligence As mentioned in Chapter 1 (this volume), unlike intelligence quotient (IQ), emotional intelligence can be developed. Research shows that emotional intelligence increases with age (Carson and Carson, 1998; Goleman, 1998; Bal et al., 2011). The reason why emotional intelligence, in general, increases with age is that individuals can develop their cognitive abilities in terms of recognizing and regulating their own and others’ emotional responses through life experiences (Mayer and Salovey, 1997), training and practice. Table 2.5 summarizes some activities that a service employee can use to develop emotional intelligence abilities. Emotions and Developing Emotional Intelligence in Tourism

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Table 2.4.  Components of emotional ability and their relationship with service personnel and service quality. (Adapted from Goleman, 2003.) Skill

Explanation

Characteristics

Relation to service personnel

Relation to SERVQUAL dimensions

Self-awareness

Having a deep understanding of one’s emotions, strengths, weaknesses, needs and drives, as well as their effect on others Ability to control or redirect disruptive impulses and moods and the propensity to suspend judgement – thinking before acting

Self-confidence, realistic self-assessment, self-deprecating sense of humour

Responsiveness Assurance Reliability Empathy

A passion to work for reasons that go beyond money or status, with a propensity to pursue goals with energy and persistence

Strong desire to achieve, optimism (even in the face of failure), organizational commitment

Ability to understand her/his role in service encounters Ability to know her/his abilities, limits and weaknesses when making claims to solve problems Ability to understand and evaluate service failures Ability to think and implement new approaches to deal with service failures Ability to cope with heavy demands of frequent and intense social interactions Unyielding approach towards service failures Commitment to service quality and maintaining a strong image of the service business

Self-regulation

Motivation

Trustworthiness, integrity, comfort with ambiguity, openness to change

Reliability Responsiveness Assurance Empathy

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Responsiveness Reliability Assurance Empathy

Emotions and Developing Emotional Intelligence in Tourism

Empathy

Ability to understand the emotional make-up of other people, with skill in treating people according to their emotional reactions

Service towards customers and clients, crosscultural sensitivity, expertise in building and retaining talent

Social skills

Proficiency in managing relationships and building networks, with an ability to find common ground and build rapport

Managing relationships and building networks, with an ability to find common ground and build rapport

Ability to understand the needs and expectations of customers – including customers from other cultures Service orientation Empathy towards the feelings of customers during service encounters Handling complaints and conflicts Handling difficult customers Ability to manage social interactions effectively during service encounters Ability to use help from networks of people from other departments to solve problems

Empathy Responsiveness Assurance Reliability

Responsiveness Assurance Reliability Empathy

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Table 2.5.  Activities to develop emotional intelligence abilities. Ability

Explanation

Activities

Watch a 10–15 minute programme from a Ability to identify, movie, drama, soap opera or debate on decode and YouTube with the sound turned down. discern Try to guess and write down the emotions emotions in of people in each scene you watch by facial considering their facial expressions, expressions, mimics and body language. Then watch body language, the same programme with the sound on pictures, voices and compare whether you were able to and cultural identify the emotions people had correctly. artefacts Write down ten negative sentences such as Using Ability to control ‘You have disappointed me’ or ‘You have emotions emotions to aid made me angry’. Then rephrase them diverse cognitive with sentences such as ‘I feel activities such disappointed’ and ‘I feel angry’. This as thinking and exercise will help you own your feelings problem-solving rather than blaming others. 1.  Think of the exercise provided above for Understanding Ability to ‘perceiving emotions’ and this time when emotions understand you are watching and listening try to make emotions, sure of the following: feelings and •  Look for more than one clue. underlying •  Take the context into account. reasons, and understand and •  Look out for any changes in the emotions evident in verbal and non-verbal appreciate the communication. relationship •  Think about the reasons why people feel among the way they do. complicated •  Frequently practice your ability to ‘read’ emotions other people. 2.  When you are next in a restaurant, try to monitor other restaurant customers and staff. Particularly try to identify the following: •  Customers who are happy and unhappy with their food. •  Staff who are making fake gestures. •  Customers who are trying to get the attention of the waiter. •  Customers who are tense and disappointed. •  Staff who are weary, tired and stressed. •  Staff who are lively and joyful. Think about the reasons why people feel the way they do. Perceiving emotions

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Table 2.5. Continued. Ability

Explanation

Activities

Managing emotions

Think of two situations: one in which you had Ability to manage positive and another in which you had her/his emotions negative emotions. as well as those For each situation: of others •  Identify your triggers: What can suddenly make you angry or frustrated? What sort of situations make you feel disappointed? •  Think about your physical feelings, thoughts and behaviour: you may breathe quickly, feel tense or feel your heart beating more rapidly. •  Think about ways to change your thoughts, physical feelings and behaviour. Read the information box on p. 31 on emotional labour.

Additionally, an individual service employee may practise questioning her/his opinions, looking at herself/himself objectively, observing how she/ he feels, taking responsibility for her/his feelings, paying attention to how she/he behaves, being positive and learning what motivates herself/himself to improve her/his emotional intelligence abilities (Hasson, 2017). The service employee may also practise being more approachable and cultivating curiosity for people she/he meets. Activity Watch the movie Inside Out.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2nckup Inside Out is an American 3D computer-animated comedy-drama film directed by Pete Docter, produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures in 2015. After watching the movie, think how this film may help you develop emotional intelligence skills and abilities. Particularly, think how the film may help you Continued Emotions and Developing Emotional Intelligence in Tourism

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regarding the following issues that you may encounter in both social life and at work, i.e. in tourism and hospitality settings: 1.  Managing your emotions. 2.  Becoming aware of and challenging your perceptions. 3.  Developing your empathy to build relationships. 4.  How transitions can help build new identities. 5.  How managers and leaders need to effectively manage people’s expectations when promoting change in their businesses. Additionally, the following movies may be watched to learn about and improve emotional intelligence abilities: •  Birdman (directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu) •  Whiplash (directed by Damien Chazelle) •  Boyhood (directed by Richard Linklater) •  Breathe (directed by Andy Serkis)

Along with life experiences, exercises aimed at increasing personal insight together with other training and education methods can develop emotional intelligence abilities (Goleman, 1998; Siskos et  al., 2011; Erasmus, 2013; Fariselli et al., 2018). Emotional intelligence can also be developed through a planned and consistent approach to building skills in social awareness, self-management and social skills, and through mindfulness training (Siegel, 2007). Hasson (2012, 2014) provides some practical strategies to improve emotional intelligence. Some of these strategies are explained in the box below.

Activity The following activity can help you understand aspects of emotions: physical feelings, thoughts and behaviour (adapted from Hasson, 2017). Think of situations (as in the example below) for each of the six basic emotions (i.e. anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise) and write down the sort of physical responses and possible cognitive (thought) and behavioural responses you may have. Discuss whether these aspects of emotion may be different for a different employee in your organization. Imagine you are faced with the following situation. Please write down what sort of physical responses and possible cognitive and behavioural responses you may have and consider whether they may be different for a counterpart of yours. Situation: You have been offered a promotion at work. Emotion: Joy Physical feelings: …............................................................................................ Thoughts: ………................................................................................................ Behaviour: ………...............................................................................................

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2.5.1  Perceiving and understanding emotions As explained above, perceiving emotions is about the ability to identify, decode and discern emotions in facial expressions, body language, voices and cultural artifacts. Koc and Boz (2018) showed that a brief online training session (lasting an average of 40 seconds, with photos showing different facial expressions and explanations) can improve the emotion/facial expression recognition abilities of tourism and hospitality employees significantly in terms of both ­accuracy and speed. In the first stage of the study, 398 tourism and hospitality service employees in Turkey were asked to identify (recognize/guess) the correct emotion/facial expression of a person whose photo they viewed (Koc and Boz, 2018). There were seven different photos of the same individual (Fig. 2.1) depicting six basic emotions/facial expressions (happiness, sadness, disgust, surprise, anger and fear) and a neutral expression. The photos were all selected from the Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces series database (which stores 4900 emotion/facial expression photos, for which ­validity and reliability have already been tested) (Lundqvist et al., 1998; Goeleven et al., 2008). In the second stage of the study, the service employees were asked to view seven photos of a different person showing the six basic emotions (happiness, sadness, disgust, surprise, anger and fear) and a neutral ­expression, and read brief explanations (containing one or two short sentences) underneath each photo, explaining/describing each emotion/facial expression (Fig. 2.2).

Afraid

Angry

Neutral

Disgusted

Sad

Happy

Surprised

Fig. 2.1.  Facial expressions the respondents were asked to recognize.

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Afraid

Angry

Neutral

Disgusted

Sad

Happy

Surprised

Fig. 2.2.  Emotion recognition training material.

Activity Visit the following web pages and study the facial expression photos and the information provided there:

https://listverse.com/2013/07/05/ten-compelling-origins-of-our-facial-expressions/

https://imotions.com/blog/facial-expression-analysis/

This second stage of the study was a brief emotion/facial expression recognition training session. The photos with facial expressions used in this stage were also selected from the Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces series database (Lundqvist et al., 1998). The findings showed that the 398 participants on average spent 40.40 seconds studying the training material 28

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(i.e. reading the explanations and viewing the sample facial expressions) provided in this stage. In the third stage of the study, the service employees were asked to repeat the first-stage emotion/facial expression recognition exercise (Fig. 2.1), i.e. the same facial expression photos of the same individual with the same questions they had been shown at stage one. Tables 2.5 and 2.6 show how this brief training (lasting on average 40.40 seconds) improved the emotion/facial expression abilities of service staff both in terms of the time they took to make a decision, i.e. the speed of recognition (Table 2.6) and in terms of a­ ccuracy (Table 2.7). Table 2.6.  Time taken for recognizing emotions. Mean (seconds) Emotion

Gender

Female Male Female Anger Male Female Disgust Male Female Happiness Male Female Neutral Male Female Sadness Male Female Surprise Male Fear

n

Before training After training

245 153 245 153 245 153 245 153 245 153 245 153 245 153

34.20 29.56 17.30 19.78 13.64 12.85 10.68 8.69 10.84 11.11 14.61 11.95 9.15 10.02

Difference Change (%) (seconds)

25.61 25.48 11.02 12.08 9.10 9.65 6.65 7.25 7.11 7.05 11.95 8.59 7.69 7.36

–8.58 –4.08 –6.28 –7.71 –4.54 –3.20 –4.04 –1.44 –3.73 –4.06 –2.66 –3.37 –1.46 –2.65

25.61 25.48 11.02 12.08 9.10 9.65 6.65 7.25 7.11 7.05 11.95 8.59 7.69 7.36

Table 2.7.  Emotion/facial expression recognition scores before and after the training. Before training Correct response score 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Total

After training

Frequency

%

2 3 3 9 91 277 13 398

0.5 0.8 0.8 2.3 22.9 69.6 3.3 100.0

Correct response score 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Total

Emotions and Developing Emotional Intelligence in Tourism

Frequency

%

0 0 5 10 45 230 108 398

0.0 0.0 1.3 2.5 11.3 57.8 27.1 100.0

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Activity Watch a 10–15 minute programme – a movie, drama, soap opera or debate on YouTube – with the sound turned down. Try to guess and write down the emotions of people in each scene you watch by considering their facial expression and body language. Then watch the same programme with the sound on and see whether you were able to correctly identify the emotions people had.

2.5.2  Using and managing emotions People with a higher level of emotional intelligence tend to have the ability to control their emotions to aid diverse cognitive activities such as thinking and problem-solving.

Activity Write down ten negative sentences such as ‘You have disappointed me’ or ‘You have made me angry’. Then rephrase them with sentences such as ‘I feel disappointed’ and ‘I feel angry’. This exercise will help you own your feelings rather than blaming others.

People can influence how they feel and how they interact with others by simply changing their posture (Hasson, 2017). For instance, an individual wanting to feel more confident can do a few of the following: ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●●

Standing or sitting straight. Keeping head level. Relaxing shoulders. Spreading weight evenly both on legs (if sitting, uncrossing legs, putting both feet flat on the floor). Keeping elbows on the arms of the chair, if sitting (rather than putting them tightly against the body). Holding hands palm down on the lap or on the table, if sitting. Making appropriate eye contact. Lowering the pitch of the voice. Speaking more slowly.

The above activities would not only make the individual appear to be confident but also would make her/him feel confident. People can also learn how to dial down their negative emotions. For instance, an individual service employee dealing with an extremely difficult customer may feel angry. In this situation, the service employee can manage her/his anger using strategies outlined in Table 2.8 (Hasson, 2017). 30

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Table 2.8.  Strategies for managing negative emotions. Things to do

Explanation

Focus on breathing

The following can be done: • Stop breathing for 5 seconds (to ‘reset’ your breath). •  Then, breathe in slowly for 3 seconds and breathe out more slowly for 5 seconds. •  Repeat this breathing exercise for a minute or so. When you are angry, you may be likely to do or say things you regret later. Write a note to make yourself stop and think, and stick it in a place where you can easily see it. When you are angry, you could go for a short walk. You could look at websites with funny jokes and cartoons or you could listen to comforting music. You could use sensations such as holding ice or taking a hot shower to distract yourself. You could sing aloud, or shout or scream where nobody can hear you. If appropriate, leave the scene of the event and go to a bathroom and wash your face. Think about the situation and try to think of ways to prevent you encountering the same situation again.

Engage your brain Distract yourself

Let it out Take time out Think ahead

As in the case of managing anger, service managers can also learn to manage their stress, disappointment, etc. This is known as emotional labour.

Emotional Labour Emotional labour is the process of managing feelings and expressions to meet the emotional requirements of a job. For instance, a waiter in a restaurant or a front desk member of staff at a hotel is required to do emotional work, such as smiling, active listening, being responsive and expressing positive emotions to co-workers and customers. This means that employees are expected to regulate and manage their emotions during their interactions not only with customers but also with peers and superiors (Koc, 2010, 2013). Emotional labour involves the suppression of feelings that are inappropriate and the expression of feelings that are appropriate (Hochschild, 1983). As the saying goes, ‘There is no market for your emotions. So never advertise your feelings, just display your attitude.’ According to Hochschild (1983), there are two types of emotional acting: surface acting and deep acting. Surface acting involves employees simulating emotions that are not actually felt, by changing their outward appearance (i.e. facial expression, gestures or voice tone) when exhibiting required emotions. Surface acting can be explained as a ‘faking’ process through which outward expressions are altered, yet internal feelings remain intact (Hochschild, 1983). For instance, a service employee at a hotel may force a smile despite not being in the mood to do so. On the other hand, in deep acting the service employee Continued Emotions and Developing Emotional Intelligence in Tourism

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exerts effort and changes his/her outward behaviour and his/her interaction with customers and co-workers. Research shows that surface acting compared with deep acting tends to be problematic for employee well-being, as surface acting frequently results in negative outcomes such as excessive stress and burnout syndrome (Grandey, 2003; Koc and Bozkurt, 2017). Research shows that emotional intelligence can be instrumental in coping with stress and burnout as it may be helpful in terms of eliminating the negative effects of emotional labour when service employees engage in surface acting and deep acting (Grandey, 2000; Grandey et al., 2005; Johnson and Spector, 2007; Chu et al., 2012).

In addition to the above activities to improve emotional intelligence abilities, individuals may choose to practise refraining from: complaining, being negative, dwelling on the past, selfishness, being overly critical, giving in to peer pressure and dramatizing events.

2.6 Conclusion This chapter has shown that emotional intelligence is significantly relevant for tourism and hospitality operations, and that individual service employees can develop their emotional intelligence abilities by training and doing the activities explained in this chapter. It is recommended that tourism and hospitality businesses recruit service employees with a high level of emotional intelligence and continuously monitor and train their staff to improve their level of emotional intelligence. The next chapter explains the importance of measuring the emotional intelligence of service staff and how this task can be implemented in an efficient and effective manner.

Questions 1.  What are the basic emotions people have? How do these emotions relate to service encounters, service failures and recovery? 2.  Explain and discuss the importance of recruiting staff with emotional intelligence and emotional labour in tourism and hospitality businesses. 3.  Explain the emotional intelligence abilities and their relevance for service encounters. 4.  Explain one activity for developing each emotional intelligence ability.

Further Reading Hasson, G. (2012) Brilliant Emotional Intelligence. Pearson, Harlow, UK. Hasson, G. (2014) Emotional Intelligence: Managing Emotions to Make a Positive Impact on Your Life and Career. Wiley, Chichester, UK. Hasson, G. (2017) Emotional Intelligence Pocketbook. Wiley, Chichester, UK. 32

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References Amaral, D.G., Price, J.L., Pitkanen, A. and Carmichael, T. (1992) Anatomical organization of the primate amygdaloid complex. In: Aggleton, J. (ed.) The Amygdala: Neurobiological Aspects of Emotion, Memory, and Mental Dysfunction. Wiley, New York, pp. 1–66. Arnold, M.B. (1960) Emotion and Personality. Columbia University Press, New York. Baker, D., Greenberg, C. and Hemingway, C. (2006) What Happy Companies Know: How the New Science of Happiness Can Change Your Company for the Better. Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. Bal, P.M., de Lange, A.H., Ybema, J.F., Jansen, P.G. and van der Velde, M.E. (2011) Age and trust as moderators in the relation between procedural justice and turnover: a large-scale longitudinal study. Applied Psychology 60(1), 66–86. Carson, K.D. and Carson, P.P. (1998) Career commitment, competencies, and citizenship. Journal of Career Assessment 6(2), 195–208. Chu, K.H., Baker, M.A. and Murrmann, S.K. (2012) When we are onstage, we smile: the effects of emotional labor on employee work outcomes. International Journal of Hospitality Management 31(3), 906–915. Crawford, N.C. (2000) The passion of world politics: propositions on emotion and emotional relationships. International Security 24(4), 116–156. Damasio, A. and Carvalho, G.B. (2013) The nature of feelings: evolutionary and neurobiological origins. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 14(2), 143–152. Darwin, C. (1872/1965) The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. Chicago University Press, Chicago, Illinois. Ekman, P. and Davidson, R.J. (1994) Affective science: a research agenda. In: Ekman, P. and Davidson, R. (eds) The Nature of Emotion: Fundamental Questions. Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 411–430. Elster, J. (1998) Emotions and economic theory. Journal of Economic Literature 36(1), 47–74. Erasmus, P. (2013) Relationship between emotional intelligence, study orientation in maths and maths achievement of middle adolescent boys and girls. In: Basri, M., Rahman, K.A., Salleh, M.S.M., Salleh, N. and Shahrol, S. (eds) GSE Journal of Education 2013. WorldConferences.net, Selangor, Malaysia, pp. 12–21. Fariselli, L., Ghini, M. and Freedman, J. (2018) Age and Emotional Intelligence. Six Seconds: the Emotional Intelligence Network. Available at: https:// prodimages.6seconds.org/media/WP_EQ_and_Age.pdf (accessed 9 March 2018). Fredrickson, B.L. (2001) The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. American Psychologist 56(3), 218–226. Goeleven, E., de Raedt, R., Leyman, L. and Verschuere, B. (2008) The Karolinska directed emotional faces: a validation study. Cognition and Emotion 22(6), 1094–1118. Goleman, D. (1996) Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. Bantam Books, New York. Goleman, D. (1998) Working with Emotional Intelligence. Bantam Books, New York. Goleman D. (2003) What makes a leader? In: Porter, L.W., Angle, H.L. and Allen, R.W. (eds) Organizational Influence Processes. Taylor & Francis, New York, pp. 229–241. Emotions and Developing Emotional Intelligence in Tourism

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Grandey, A.A. (2000) Emotion regulation in the workplace: a new way to conceptualize emotional labor. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 5(1), 95–110. Grandey, A.A. (2003) When ‘the show must go on’: surface acting and deep acting as determinants of emotional exhaustion and peer-rated service delivery. Academy of Management Journal 46(1), 86–96. Grandey, A.A., Fisk, G.M. and Steiner, D.D. (2005) Must ‘service with a smile’ be stressful? The moderate role of personal control for American and French employees. Journal of Applied Psychology 90(5), 893–904. Hasson, G. (2012) Brilliant Emotional Intelligence. Pearson, Harlow, UK. Hasson, G. (2014) Emotional Intelligence: Managing Emotions to Make a Positive Impact on Your Life and Career. Wiley, Chichester, UK. Hasson, G. (2017) Emotional Intelligence Pocketbook. Wiley, Chichester, UK. Hawkins, J. and Blakeslee, S. (2004) On Intelligence. Times Books, New York. Hochschild, A. (1983) The Managed Heart. University of California Press, Berkeley, California. Johnson, H.A.M. and Spector, P.E. (2007) Service with a smile: do emotional intelligence, gender, and autonomy moderate the emotional labor process? Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 12(4), 319–333. Kahneman, D. and Tversky, A. (1979) Prospect theory: an analysis of decisions under risk. Econometrica 47(2), 263–292. Koc, E. (2010) Services and conflict management: cultural and European integration perspectives. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 34(1), 88–96. Koc, E. (2013) Power distance and its implications for upward communication and empowerment: crisis management and recovery in hospitality services. International Journal of Human Resource Management 24(19), 3681–3696. Koc, E. (2017) Service Failures and Recovery in Tourism and Hospitality: a Practical Manual. CAB International, Wallingford, UK. Koc, E. and Boz, H. (2014) Psychoneurobiochemistry of tourism marketing. Tourism Management 44, 140–148. Koc, E. and Boz, H. (2018) Development of emotion/facial expression recognition abilities and emotional intelligence of tourism and hospitality employees. Working paper, Bandirma Onyedi Eylul University, Turkey. Koc, E. and Bozkurt, G.A. (2017) Hospitality employees’ future expectations: dissatisfaction, stress, and burnout. International Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Administration 18(4), 459–473. Kuppens, P., Realo, A. and Diener, E. (2008) The role of positive and negative emotions in life satisfaction judgement across nations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 95(1), 66–75. Loo, P.T. and Boo, H.C. (2017) Customer attribution in service failures and recovery. In: Koc, E. (ed.) Service Failures and Recovery in Tourism and Hospitality: a Practical Manual. CAB International, Wallingford, UK, pp. 70–82. Lundqvist, D., Flykt, A. and Öhman, A. (1998) The Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces – KDEF. Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. Marsh, A.A. and Ambady, N. (2007) The influence of the fear facial expression on prosocial responding. Cognition and Emotion 21(2), 225–247. Marsh, A.A., Ambady, N. and Kleck, R.E. (2005) The effects of fear and anger facial expressions on approach-and avoidance-related behaviors. Emotion 5(1), 119–124. 34

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Mayer, J.D. and Salovey, P. (1997) What is emotional intelligence? In: Salovey, P. and Sluyter, D.J. (eds) Emotional Development and Emotional Intelligence: Educational Implications. HarperCollins, New York, pp. 3–34. Mayer, J.D., Salovey, P. and Caruso, D.R. (2008) Emotional intelligence: new ability or eclectic traits. American Psychologist 63(6), 503–517. McDonald, J.F. (1998) Transposable elements, gene silencing and macroevolution. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 13(3), 94–95. Mercer, J. (1996) Approaching emotion in international politics. Paper Presented at the International Studies Association Annual Convention, San Diego, California. Patterson, P.G., Cowley, E. and Prasongsukarn, K. (2006) Service failure recovery: the moderating impact of individual-level cultural value orientation on perceptions of justice. International Journal of Research in Marketing 23(3), 263–277. Plutchik, R. (1984) Emotions: a general psychoevolutionary theory. In: Scherer, K. and Ekman, P. (eds) Approaches to Emotion. Lawrence Erlbaum and Associates, Hillsdale, New Jersey, pp. 197–219 Robinson, J.M. (2004) Emotion: biological fact or social construction? In: Solomon, R.C. (ed.) Thinking About Feeling: Contemporary Philosophers on Emotions. Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 28–43. Siegel, D. (2007) The Mindful Brain: Reflection and Attunement in the Cultivation of Well-being. W.W. Norton & Co., New York. Siskos, B.N., Papaioannou, A.G. and Proios, M.K. (2011) Causal effects between emotional intelligence and a perceived caring classroom climate in physical education. International Journal of Physical Education, 48(1), 7–17. Salovey, P. and Mayer, J.D. (1990) Emotional intelligence. Imagination, Cognition and Personality 9(3), 185–211. Scherer, K.R. (2003) Vocal communication of emotion: a review of research paradigms. Speech Communication 40(1–2), 227–256. Servidio, R. and Ruffolo, I. (2016) Exploring the relationship between emotions and memorable tourism experiences through narratives. Tourism Management Perspectives 20, 151–160. Solomon, R.C. (2000) The philosophy of emotions. In: Lewis, M. and Haviland-­ Jones, J.M. (eds) Handbook of Emotions, 2nd edn. The Guilford Press, New York. Verduyn, P. and Lavrijsen, S. (2014) Which emotions last longest and why: the role of event importance and rumination. Motivation and Emotion 39(1), 119–127.

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3

Measuring Emotional Intelligence in Tourism and Hospitality Hakan Boz and Erdogan Koc

Learning Objectives After reading this chapter you should be able to: ●● Understand the development of the concept of emotional intelligence. ●● Understand the main theories of emotional intelligence. ●● Understand how emotional intelligence can be measured and the main measurement tools. ●● Explain the difference between self-report and performance-based measures of emotional intelligence. ●● Understand the main disadvantages of self-report measures of emotional intelligence.

3.1 Introduction Chapters 1 and 2 (this volume) explained the role and potential of emotional intelligence for tourism and hospitality businesses from the perspective of managing service operations in an efficient and effective manner. Based on the observation by the management guru Peter Drucker that ‘you cannot manage what you cannot measure’, this chapter explains how emotional intelligence can be measured. Some cynics go even further and say that what cannot be measured does not exist. Thus, the tourism and hospitality sector needs good measurement systems to measure emotional intelligence for all human resource management processes such as planning, recruitment and selection, orientation and training, performance appraisal and management, and pay and reward management.

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© CAB International 2019. Emotional Intelligence in Tourism and Hospitality (ed. E. Koc)

3.2  Development of the Concept of Emotional ­Intelligence Although the concept of emotion was first mentioned in Darwin’s early work, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (Darwin, 1872/1965), it was Thorndike who formed the basis of emotional intelligence and coined the term social intelligence in 1920 (Thorndike, 1920). In 1940, David Wechsler explained the influence of non-intellective factors on intelligent behaviour and argued that models of intelligence would be incomplete without sufficient explanation of these factors (Wechsler, 1940). Later, in 1983, Gardner introduced the notion of multiple intelligences in his work Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences and discussed the importance of both interpersonal intelligence, which is the ability to understand the intentions, motivations and desires of other people, and intrapersonal intelligence, which is the ability to understand oneself, to be aware, and to appraise and appreciate one’s feelings, fears and motivations (Gardner, 1983). According to Gardner, the traditional types of intelligence, such as intelligence quotient (IQ), were not sufficient to explain cognitive ability in a comprehensive manner. Thus, the term ‘emotional intelligence’ was first coined by Wayne Payne in his doctoral thesis (Payne, 1985). Later, the concept of emotional intelligence was structured, modelled and popularized by the works of Goleman (1990) and Salovey and Mayer (1990).

3.3  Theories and Measurement of Emotional Intelligence The Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology (Spielberger, 2004) proposes three major models of emotional intelligence. These are: (i) Mayer and Salovey’s model, which explains emotional intelligence as the ability to perceive, understand, manage and use emotions to facilitate thinking (Mayer and Salovey, 1997; Mayer et al., 2000); (ii) Goleman’s model, which defines emotional intelligence as a combination of competences and skills that foster successful managerial performance (Goleman, 1998; Boyatzis et al., 2000; Goleman, 2002); and (iii) the Bar-On model, which explains emotional intelligence as a series of interrelated emotional and social competences and skills influencing intelligent behaviour (Bar-On, 1997, 2000, 2010). The emotional intelligence theories and measurement tools can be categorized into two broad, distinct categories: performance-based tests and self-report inventories (Brackett et al., 2006).

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Activity Please visit the following page and take the brief 15-question emotional intelligence test. Based on the explanations given, evaluate your weaknesses and strengths relating to emotional intelligence.

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/ei-quiz.htm

3.3.1  Ability models Ability models, such as those described by Mayer et al. (2000), consider emotional intelligence as a set of skills that can be measured with performance tests. The mental ability model focuses on emotions themselves and their interactions with thought (Mayer and Salovey 1997). Developed by Mayer et al. (1999), the Multifactor Emotional Intelligence Scale (MEIS) was the first comprehensive performance test of emotional intelligence. Later, a shorter version of the test was produced as the Mayer–Salovey–Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT), followed by a second version (Mayer et al., 2002). The MSCEIT consists of 141 items with a Likert-type scale from 1 (not at all present/not at all effective) to 5 (very much present/effective) and takes 30–45 minutes for a person to complete. MSCEIT provides 15 main scores overall: a total emotional intelligence score, two area scores, four branch scores and eight task scores. The model proposes four main types of emotional ability or branches of emotional intelligence: perceiving emotions, facilitating thought, understanding emotions and managing emotions. Each of the four types is measured through two subscales. Perceiving emotions involves the measurement of the ability to recognize emotions shown in facial expressions and abstract pictures. Facilitating thought involves the measurement of how certain moods may facilitate thinking processes and the comparison of emotions to sensations, such as colour, light and temperature. The understanding emotions branch contains two subscales to do with blending emotions and acknowledging how emotions may change and develop. The managing emotions branch contains two subscales, which rate which emotional strategy would be most appropriate to manage certain emotions for oneself and with respect to using emotions in interpersonal relationships. The ability models have been criticized for lacking face and predictive validity in the workplace. 38

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3.3.2  Mixed models The mixed model was first introduced by Daniel Goleman and defines emotional intelligence as a wide range of competences and skills that drive leadership performance. The four tenets of this model are self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management. Mixed model approaches, usually referred to as personality or trait approaches, are mainly based on popular descriptions of emotional intelligence (e.g. Goleman, 1990). Table 3.1 compares the ability models and the mixed models. The measurement tools for mixed models of emotional intelligence use three groups of constructs: perceived emotional (and other) abilities, competences and personality traits (Brackett et al., 2006). Mixed models use self-report inventories to measure emotional intelligence (Bar-On, 1997; Schutte et al., 1998; Boyatzis et al., 2000; Petrides and Furnham, 2003). The Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i) of Bar-On (1997) and Self-Report Emotional Intelligence Test of Schutte et al. (1998) are relatively strongly correlated (Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient, rs = 0.50–0.70) with Table 3.1.  A comparison of ability and mixed models of emotional intelligence.

Models/scales Measures

Advantages

Main criticisms

Ability (performance-based) models

Mixed (trait) models

MEIS/MSCEIT/MSCEIT v2.0 Perception of emotions Facilitation of emotions Understanding of emotions Management of emotions Theory developed out of emotion and cognition research Rooted in intelligence domain (meets three criteria) Relatively weak correlations with personality

EQ-i/ECI Affect Motivation Personality Social abilities They are easy to use, and can be quickly and cheaply administered They tend to have stronger correlations with performance than the ability models (when personality is not controlled) Any construct related to positive outcomes is included in measures (i.e. not based on specific theory or conceptualization) There is a high degree of similarity with the personality and dispositional trait tests

There are problems with the measurement (i.e. the right answer can be highly dependent on the situation). There is also a lack of, or inconsistent, criterion-related validity

ECI, Emotional Competence Inventory; EQ-i, Emotional Quotient Inventory; MEIS, Multifactor Emotional Intelligence Scale; MSCEIT, Mayer–Salovey–Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test.

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depression, neuroticism and well-being indices (Newsome et al., 2000; Parker et al., 2001; Brackett and Mayer, 2003). Activity Take part in the following self-report and performance-based emotional intelligence tests and compare your scores. If there are discrepancies, consider why they may have occurred. Self-report Test

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/tests/personality/emotional-intelligence-test Performance-based Test MSCEIT™

https://www.mhs.com/MHS-Talent?prodname=msceit

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/ei-quiz.htm

In addition to various social and personal issues, the predictive validity of the MSCEIT is relatively high for workplace studies such as stress management, leadership potential, and coping with anxiety and depression (Janovics and Christiansen, 2002; Mayer et al., 2004; David, 2005). Studies show that MSCEIT’s correlation with the EQ-i and the Self-­ Report Emotional Intelligence Test is rather low (rs = 22). This means that self-report measures of emotional intelligence may produce rather different 40

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results for the same person (Brackett et al., 2006). As a performance-based measure of emotional intelligence, the MSCEIT is less susceptible to response bias, is reliable and has a factor structure congruent with the theory on which it is based (Lopes et al., 2003; Mayer et al., 2003; Lumley et al. 2005). A study by Koc and Boz (2018) showed that there were marked differences between self-report claims and the actual abilities of service employees to recognize the emotions or facial expressions of customers. Most commonly used emotional intelligence tests or scales include a significantly high number of questions on emotion/facial expression recognition. Salovey and Mayer’s (1990) emotional intelligence test/scale contains a total of 28 questions of which seven are about the appraisal of emotions in others (Koc and Boz, 2018). In other words, 25% of all questions in Salovey and Mayer’s (1990) emotional intelligence test/scale are about measuring the ability to recognize emotion/facial expression. In another frequently used emotional intelligence test by Schutte et al. (1998), 39% of all items (13 out of 33) are aimed at measuring emotion/facial expression recognition. In the emotional intelligence tests developed by Ciarrochi et al. (2001), Wong and Law (2002) and Petrides et al. (2004), the number of questions aimed at measuring emotion/facial expression recognition abilities is rather high as well. In these emotional intelligence tests, questions on the the ability to recognize emotion/facial expression form 30% (ten questions out of a total of 30), 50% (eight questions out of a total of 16), and 18% (24 questions out of a total of 133), respectively (Koc and Boz, 2018). Kruger and Dunning (1999) identified that people who performed poorly in a particular field or lacked skills in that particular field usually tended to exaggerate their abilities (self-efficacy) and performance. The inability of people to recognize their abilities and evaluate their level of performance occurred because they lacked metacognition, metamemory, metacomprehension and self-monitoring skills (Folk, 2016). People who are incompetent in terms of skills and abilities in a particular field are also unable to make correct judgements as they lack the skills to recognize correct judgement (Kruger and Dunning, 1999; Folk, 2016). In Kruger and Dunning’s studies, the lowest-performing participants often inflated or overestimated their skills and competences (Kruger and Dunning, 1999; Folk, 2016), while high-performing participants tended to underestimate their abilities and performance. Dunning–Kruger syndrome, or having inflated self-efficacy beliefs, causes people to allocate fewer resources (e.g. time, energy and effort) and they may be less likely to engage in self-development and training exercises to develop particular skills. Additionally, the overconfidence these employees have may cause them to have a simpler view of their tasks, attach less ­importance to the tasks they carry out and take more uncalculated risks (Powers, 1991; Carver and Scheier, 2000; Vancouver and Day, 2005; Fakehy, 2013). Moreover, people who are incompetent in terms of certain skills and Measuring Emotional Intelligence in Tourism and Hospitality

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abilities are less likely to recognize competence or expertise in others (Kruger and Dunning, 1999). Based on Boz and Koc’s (2018) study and the above explanations, it can be put forward that people may have inflated self-efficacy beliefs, and selfreport measures may produce results far from the reality. Hence, practitioners are recommended to use performance-based tests, rather than self-report measures, for measuring the level of emotional intelligence of service employees and prospective service employees. Moreover, in line with the growing interest in psychoneurobiochemistry (Koc and Boz, 2014) and the extensive use of psychophysiological or neuromarketing research tools by scholars, emotions are increasingly measured using these tools. Psychophysiological tools or devices such as EEG (electroencephalogram), eye trackers, fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging), heart rate, GSR (galvanic skin response) and various face-recognition software tools can be used to measure emotions and emotional intelligence (Boz and Kose, 2018). As explained above, emotion/facial expression recognition constitutes a significant proportion of many of the emotional intelligence scales. The use of a combination of these tools may ensure data triangulation and would be expected to strengthen the objectivity and validity of the findings (Koc and Boz, 2014; Boz and Yilmaz, 2017).

3.4 Conclusion This section has explained the main groups of emotional intelligence measurement tools. The explanations show that, compared with self-report measures, performance- or ability-based measures are superior in terms of correctly assessing an employee’s level of emotional intelligence. Self-report measures, in addition to their inherent problems relating to the correct measurement of emotional intelligence, may also cause a number of negative outcomes. Self-report measures may result in unrealistically high emotional intelligence scores, and high scores may cause individuals to develop inflated or high self-efficacy beliefs.

Questions 1.  What are the main self-report and performance-based measures of emotional intelligence? 2.  What are the main advantages of performance-based measures of emotional intelligence? 3.  What is the relationship between self-report measures, inflated self-efficacy beliefs and Dunning–Kruger syndrome? 4.  What are the main negative outcomes of having inflated self-efficacy beliefs? 5. What are the main psychophysiological tools that can be used in measuring emotions and emotional intelligence? 42

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Further Reading Brackett, M.A., Rivers, S.E., Shiffman, S., Lerner, N. and Salovey, P. (2006) Relating emotional abilities to social functioning: a comparison of self-report and performance measures of emotional intelligence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 91(4), 780–795. Conte, J.M. (2005) A review and critique of emotional intelligence measures. Journal of Organizational Behavior 26(4), 433–440. Goldenberg, I., Matheson, K. and Mantler, J. (2006) The assessment of emotional intelligence: a comparison of performance-based and self-report methodologies. Journal of Personality Assessment 86(1), 33–45. Law, K.S., Wong, C.S. and Song, L.J. (2004) The construct and criterion validity of emotional intelligence and its potential utility for management studies. Journal of Applied Psychology 89(3), 483–496.

References Bar-On, R. (1997) The Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i): Technical Manual. MultiHealth Systems, Toronto, Canada. Bar-On, R. (2000) Emotional and social intelligence: insights from the emotional quotient inventory (EQ-i). In: Bar-On, R. and Parker, J.D.A. (eds) Handbook of Emotional Intelligence. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, California, pp. 363–388. Bar-On, R. (2010) Emotional intelligence: an integral part of positive psychology. South African Journal of Psychology 40(1), 54–62. Boyatzis, R.E., Goleman, D. and Rhee, K. (2000) Clustering competence in emotional intelligence: insights from the emotional competence inventory (ECI). In: Bar-On, R. and Parker, D.A. (eds) Handbook of Emotional Intelligence. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, California, pp. 343–362. Boz, H. and Koc, E. (2018) Tourism and hospitality employees’ inflated self-efficacy beliefs and Dunning–Kruger syndrome: emotion/facial expression recognition abilities. Tourism Management Perspectives. Unpublished working paper. Boz, H. and Kose, U. (2018) Emotion extraction from facial expressions by using artificial intelligence techniques. BRAIN: Broad Research in Artificial Intelligence and Neuroscience 9(1), 5–16. Boz, H. and Yilmaz, O. (2017) An eye tracker analysis of the influence of applicant attractiveness on employee recruitment process: a neuromarketing study. Ecoforum Journal 6(1), 354–361. Brackett, M.A. and Mayer, J.D. (2003) Convergent, discriminant, and incremental validity of competing measures of emotional intelligence. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 29(9), 1147–1158. Brackett, M.A., Rivers, S.E., Shiffman, S., Lerner, N. and Salovey, P. (2006) ­Relating emotional abilities to social functioning: a comparison of self-report and ­performance measures of emotional intelligence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 91(4), 780–795. Carver, C.S. and Scheier, M.F. (2000) On the structure of behavioural self-regulation. In: Boekaerts, M., Pintrich, P.R. and Zeidner, M. (eds) Handbook of Self-Regulation. Academic Press, San Diego, California, pp. 41–84. Measuring Emotional Intelligence in Tourism and Hospitality

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Ciarrochi, J., Chan, A.Y. and Bajgar, J. (2001) Measuring emotional intelligence in adolescents. Personality and Individual Differences 31(7), 1105–1119. Darwin, C. (1872/1965) The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. Chicago University Press, Chicago, Illinois. David, S.A. (2005) Emotional intelligence: developmental antecedents, psychological and social outcomes. PhD thesis, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia. Fakehy, M.Y. (2013) Exploring the possible negative effects of self-efficacy upon performance. PhD thesis, Bangor University, Bangor, UK. Folk, A. (2016) Academic self-efficacy, information literacy, and undergraduate course-related research: expanding Gross’s imposed query model. Journal of Library Administration 56(5), 540–558. Gardner, H. (1983) Frames of Mind: the Theory of Multiple Intelligences. Basic Books, New York. Goleman, D. (1990) Emotional Intelligence. Bantam Books, New York. Goleman, D. (1998) Working with Emotional Intelligence. Bantam Books, New York. Goleman, D. (2002) Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence. Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, Massachusetts. Janovics, J. and Christiansen, N.D. (2002) Emotional intelligence in the workplace. Paper presented at the 16th Annual Conference of the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, San Diego, California. Koc, E. and Boz, H. (2014) Psychoneurobiochemistry of tourism marketing. Tourism Management 44, 140–148. Koc, E. and Boz, H. (2018) Development of emotion/facial expression recognition abilities and emotional intelligence of tourism and hospitality employees. Unpublished working paper, Bandirma Onyedi Eylul University, Turkey. Kruger, J. and Dunning, D. (1999) Unskilled and unaware of it: difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77(6), 1121–1134. Lopes, P.N., Salovey, P. and Straus, R. (2003) Emotional intelligence, personality, and the perceived quality of social relationships. Personality and Individual Differences 35(3), 641– 659. Lumley, M.A., Gustavson, B.J., Partridge, R.T. and Labouvie-Vief, G. (2005) Assessing alexithymia and related emotional ability constructs using multiple methods: interrelationships among measures. Emotion 5(3), 329–342. Mayer, J.D. and Salovey, P. (1997) What is emotional intelligence? In: Salovey, P. and Sluyter, D. (eds) Emotional Development and Emotional Intelligence: Implications for Educators. Basic Books, New York, pp. 3–31. Mayer, J.D., Caruso, D.R. and Salovey, P. (1999) Emotional intelligence meets traditional standards for an intelligence. Intelligence 27(4), 267–298. Mayer, J.D., Salovey, P. and Caruso, D.R. (2000) Models of emotional intelligence. In: Sternberg, R.J. (ed.) Handbook of Intelligence. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 396–420. Mayer, J.D., Salovey, P. and Caruso, D. (2002) The Mayer–Salovey–Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT), Version 2.0. Multi-Health Systems, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Mayer, J.D., Salovey, P., Caruso, D. and Sitarenios, G. (2003) Measuring emotional intelligence with the MSCEIT V2.0. Emotion 3(1), 97–105.

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Mayer, J.D., Salovey, P. and Caruso, D. (2004) Emotional intelligence: theory, findings, and implications. Psychological Inquiry 15(3), 197–215. Newsome, S., Day, A.L. and Catano, V.M. (2000) Assessing the predictive validity of emotional intelligence. Personality and Individual Differences 29(6), 1005–1016. Parker, J.D.A., Taylor, G.J. and Bagby, R.M. (2001) The relationship between alexithymia and emotional intelligence. Personality and Individual Differences 30(1), 107–115. Payne, W.L. (1985) A study of emotion: developing emotional intelligence: self integration; relating to fear, pain and desire (theory, structure of reality, problem-solving, contraction/expansion, tuning in/coming out/letting go). PhD thesis, The Union Institute, Cincinnati, Ohio. Petrides, K.V. and Furnham, A. (2003) Trait emotional intelligence: behavioral validation in two studies of emotion recognition and reactivity to mood induction. European Journal of Personality 17(1), 39–57. Petrides, K.V., Frederickson, N. and Furnham, A. (2004) The role of trait emotional intelligence in academic performance and deviant behaviour at school. Personality and Individual Differences 36(2), 277–293. Powers, W.T. (1991) Commentary on Bandura’s ‘human agency’. American Psychologist 46(2), 151–153. Salovey, P. and Mayer, J.D. (1990) Emotional intelligence. Imagination, Cognition, and Personality 9(3), 185–211. Schutte, N.S., Malouff, J.M., Hall, L.E., Haggerty, D.J., Cooper, J.T., Golden, C.J. and Dornheim, L.L. (1998) Development and validation of a measure of emotional intelligence. Personality and Individual Differences 25(2), 167–177. Spielberger, C. (ed.) (2004) Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology. Elsevier Academic Press, San Diego, California. Thorndike, R.L. (1920) Intelligence and its uses. Harper’s Magazine 140, 227–235. Vancouver, J.B. and Day, D.V. (2005) Industrial and organisation research on self-regulation: from constructs to applications. Applied Psychology 54(2), 155–185. Wechsler, D. (1940) Non-intellective factors in general intelligence. Psychological Bulletin 37(7), 444–445. Wong, C.S. and Law, K.S. (2002) The effects of leader and follower emotional intelligence on performance and attitude: an exploratory study. The Leadership Quarterly 13(3), 243–274.

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4

Emotional Intelligence and Service Encounters Poh Theng Loo

Learning Objectives After reading this chapter you should be able to: ●● Understand the importance of service encounters in hospitality and tourism. ●● Explain the consequences of poor service encounters. ●● Explain the relationships between emotions and service encounters. ●● Understand the roles of emotional intelligence in service encounters. ●● Understand and explain the emotional intelligence skills of service ­employees in satisfactory service encounters.

4.1 Introduction In the competitive and dynamic markets of today, hiring service employees needs to be based not only on their task competences, but also on their abilities in performing person-to-person interactions (Chandon et al., 1997). Research studies have reported on the importance of the quality of interactions between customers and service employees in the overall evaluation of service quality and customer satisfaction (Bitner et al., 1990). Each interaction between customers and service employees contributes to the service quality perceived by customers. In fact, service employee behaviours are most likely to improve customer perceptions towards service quality (Farrell et al., 2001). Referring to the service quality dimensions, four out of the five dimensions are relevant to employee interactions with customers: reliability – the ability to accurately perform what was promised; assurance – the competence of service employees in both soft and hard skills; ­empathy – the care and individual attention given to customers; and responsiveness – the willingness to help and offer prompt service (Parasuraman et al., 1988). In delivering quality services, customers also play critical roles in communicating their needs and problems. Customers who have participated in service delivery and co-production tend not to care much about service failure; instead, they tend to stay with the company and are less likely to lodge complaints to the company management (Koc et al., 2017a). 46

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Service employees and customers are important in contributing to the quality service level and ensuring maximum customer satisfaction. The dyadic interactions between service employee and customer are called service encounters (Surprenant and Solomon, 1987). Each of the interactions involves performing promised standards as well as displaying desirable emotional expressions but not the actual feelings of employees (Ashforth and Humphrey, 1993). Nevertheless, displaying desirable emotions is challenging, especially during busy hours or when faced with difficult customers where service employees themselves could actually feel stressed, frustrated or even angry. Practising emotional intelligence skills and behaviours would help to enhance both the processes associated with decision-making and the outcome(s) of a decision (Hess and Bacigalupo, 2011). Therefore, emotional intelligence skills are necessary in helping service employees to understand their emotions and manage their emotions effectively in their decision-making while delivering services.

4.2  Service Encounters Bitner et al. (1990) define a service encounter as a period of time during which personal interactions between customer and employees occur. In the hospitality and tourism industry, the frequency of interactions between customers and service employees is high due to the complexity of the service delivery process. In fact, restaurants, hotels and airlines are categorized as high-contact services, which means there are many occasions of direct contact between customers and employees throughout the service delivery (Wirtz et al., 2013). Service encounters in hotels and restaurants can be highly complex because customers have to interact with many different employees throughout their stay or dining experiences. For instance, a hotel guest may need the valet parking service from the concierge, check-in at the front desk, additional towels or amenities from housekeeping, exercise in the fitness centre, or spa services. Even for a night’s stay, a hotel guest would definitely interact with more than one department’s employees. In a casual or fine-dining restaurant, after waiting at the front of a restaurant for seats, there will be seating, ordering, serving and payment. The service experience of a hotel guest or a customer dining at a restaurant consists of multiple service encounters that would influence his/her satisfaction with the stay or dining and intentions to visit again. Throughout the service experience, unavoidable mistakes could happen due to the intangible and heterogeneous nature of service characteristics. Service encounters can be ­ ­categorized into favourable (satisfactory) and unfavourable (unsatisfactory) incidents (Bitner et al., 1990). When service failure happens, the interactions between employee and customer are called service-failure encounters. The unsatisfactory incidents require recovery actions and the interactions between employee and customer during the recovery process are called service-recovery Emotional Intelligence and Service Encounters

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encounters (Loo and Boo, 2017). When service failures or failed recoveries happen, this may lead to customers switching behaviour (Keaveney, 1995). Therefore, it is necessary to understand both satisfactory and unsatisfactory service encounters and learn from both to improve in delivering a better service quality. Table 4.1 provides a summary of satisfactory and unsatisfactory responses by employees to customers in different service encounters (including service-failure encounters and service-recovery encounters) from the research study conducted by Bitner et al. (1990). Based on the reported findings of Bitner et al. (1990), favourable and ­unfavourable service encounters between customer and employee affect the customer’s overall satisfaction with the service experience. Besides the interactions between customers and employees, the interactions between employees themselves, and in particular the working group’s mood, influences their affective delivery (Lin and Lin, 2011). Positive interaction and positive emotions among service employees promote consistent service efforts in s­ ervice delivery. Activity List as many service encounters as possible for a hotel guest who stays in a luxury hotel or dines in a fine-dining restaurant. Discuss how each ­encounter could substantially affect customer satisfaction level.

4.3 Emotions Emotions can be recognized as ‘having evolved through their adaptive value in dealing with fundamental life tasks’ (Ekman, 1992, p. 169). In business transactions, emotions are acknowledged as the central role in the interaction ­between customer and employee (Mattila and Enz, 2002). Displayed emotions are considered a form of communication between customers and service employees, who can be the sender or the receiver during service encounters (Mattila and Enz, 2002). The authenticity of employees’ displayed emotions has a direct impact on customers’ emotions (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2006). The customers and employees can communicate their affective states to each other via non-verbal cues like displayed emotions. During the service encounter process, for example, an airline passenger displays positive emotions, expressed in his/her positive mood; thus, it is expected that the customer would evaluate the flight attendant who serves him/her positively as well. According to Ekman (1992), the main function of emotion is to enable people to deal quickly with essential interpersonal encounters. In 1955, Ekman proposed 22 elements under nine factors in emotion as demonstrated in Table 4.2. Later, Dietze (1963) proposed a hierarchical structure following Ekman’s matrix but with higher classes on top of the factors in emotion: acceptance, rejection and disturbance, as displayed in Table 4.3. 48

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Emotional Intelligence and Service Encounters

Table 4.1.  Examples of satisfactory and unsatisfactory responses by employees in three different types of service encounter. (Adapted from Bitner et al., 1990.) Type of service encounter

Type of employee response

Service delivery failure Response to unavailable When failures occur in service the service delivery Response to system, service unreasonably employees are slow service required to respond to customer complaints. The type of response Response to other core service affects customer failure satisfaction. Response to Customer needs and special needs requests customers When a customer requires a service Response to employee to fulfil customer his/her special needs, preferences the employee’s response determines Response to admitted customer satisfaction. customer error

Example of satisfactory response

Example of unsatisfactory response

Lost room reservation but manager provided VIP suite for same price.

Customer made reservations in advance for hotel room. Upon arrival, there was no room; no further recovery actions. Employees gave wrong information; a 1-hour delay turned into a 6-hour wait.

Customer did not make complaint about long wait, but the waitress kept apologizing and said the bill was on the house. One of the customer’s suitcases was badly Ordered shrimp cocktail but it was dented. Customer tried to make a claim for the half frozen; the waitress damage, but employee implied that the apologized and did not charge customer was lying. for the dinner. The flight attendant helped customer A young child was flying alone and was to calm and care for an airsick supposed to be assisted by the flight crew. child. However, in the airport the child was left alone without any staff escort to the connecting flight. The front desk clerk called around The employee refused to move a customer from and found tickets for customers a window table on a hot day because there to an opening game. was nothing left in the section. Customers missed a flight and the ground crew A customer lost a pair of glasses staff did not help to find an alternative airline. on the plane. The flight attendant found them and sent them to the hotel free of charge.

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Continued

50

Table 4.1.  Continued. Type of service encounter

Type of employee response

Example of satisfactory response

Response to potentially disruptive others

The manager kept an eye on a suspicious individual to ensure the person did not bother other customers. Attention paid to The employee provided royalty-like Unprompted and customer service. He really showed care unsolicited employee towards the customer. actions Customers who always travel with Incidents or behaviours Truly out-of-theteddy bears. When they got back ordinary of service employees to the hotel room, they saw the employee that are unexpected bears were carefully arranged. behaviour from the viewpoint of A busboy ran after customers to Employee customers, which return a $50 bill that they had behaviours in the lead to satisfaction or dropped under the table. context of dissatisfaction. cultural norms Gestalt evaluation Everything went smoothly and well. The whole experience was great.

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Performance under The counter agent was very adverse stressed, but he still kept his cool circumstances and performed professionally.

Example of unsatisfactory response The hotel staff did not take any action against noisy people in the hall at 3 a.m.

The employee was watching TV and paying more attention to the TV than to the hotel guests. Customer needed more time to decide on a dinner. The employee responded rudely.

The waiter at a luxury restaurant treated customers poorly because they were only high-school students. The flight was a nightmare for customers due to malfunction of facilities, a flight-attendant strike and an extremely rough landing. No example available.

Table 4.2.  Ekman’s matrix of emotions. (From Ekman, 1955.) Factors in emotion

Elements of emotion

Pleasure Discomfort Agitation Longing Animation Fear Affection Disgust Anger

Happy, glad Sad, depressed, desperate Restless, impatient, agitated, irritated Longing, want, desire Animated, gay Anxious, frightened Tenderness, affectionate Disgust, rancorous Angry, ireful

Table 4.3.  Hierarchical structure of Ekman’s (1955) similarity matrix of emotions. (Adapted from Dietze, 1963.) Acceptance

Rejection

Joy

Love

Happy Glad Gay Animated

Affectionate Angry Tenderness Ireful Benevolent

Anger

Disturbance

Disgust

Unrest

Discomfort Longing

Disgust Rancorous

Sad Longing Agitated Restless Depressed Want Impatient Desperate Desire Irritated Anxious Frightened

Employees’ displays of emotion are necessary and are considered part of the job task requirements. Employers believe that employees who display positive and desirable emotions will enhance the employee’s service performance (Koc et al., 2017b) and might bring more sales and profits in ­return (Briner, 1999). A flight attendant who always offers warm smiles ­regardless of busyness, while giving nice greetings and displaying enthusiasm in delivering services, would make flight passengers feel welcomed and well served. These good impressions are believed to lead customers to choose the same airline for their future trips. Referring to Table 4.3, in service encounters, the desirable emotions for both customers and employees are acceptance emotions such as joy and love. However, during the interactions in service encounters, conflicts and disagreements might occur when the expected services to be delivered are different from the actual delivery. Hence, emotions such as rejection and disturbance could be triggered. A service employee who accidentally pours hot soup on to a customer’s hand might lead to the customer being angry and frightened. When a customer shows his/her frustration and anger by shouting and scolding in public, the service employee might be restless, ­anxious and upset due to the mistakes made and the customer’s negative Emotional Intelligence and Service Encounters

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­ ehaviour. Subsequently, the emotional responses and recovery actions perb formed by service employees might affect the customer’s perceptions towards a company’s service quality level.

4.4  Emotions and Service Encounters There are studies that emphasize that service employees indeed play critical roles in influencing customers’ perceptions towards service encounters (­Farrell et al., 2001). In the study by Lin and Lin (2011), it was revealed that a service employee’s emotion has a positive relationship with affective ­delivery, as employees felt that affect/emotion has substantial influence on employees’ displayed emotions. In other words, the displayed positive emotions of service employees are positive when associated with positive customer’s affect/emotion following a service encounter. This certainly affects customer attitudes towards an organization and customer evaluations of service quality (Pugh, 2001). Moreover, customer emotional displays and states of mood have a substantial influence on companies, as these are related to customer satisfaction with the service encounter (Mattila and Enz, 2002). Mattila and Enz (2002) also proposed that the customer’s state of mood is evaluated instantly after a service encounter and that displayed emotions during the interactions are strongly associated with customer evaluation of the service encounter (Mattila and Enz, 2002). As a result, customers’ displayed emotions are a crucial indicator of how the overall service experience is going. This should enable employees to have a better understanding of how customers evaluate his/her performance. Furthermore, service e­ncounters also impact customer intentions to visit again. A study by Grace (2009) investigated the relationship between customer embarrassment and repatronage intentions in the context of emotional service encounters. The study was about embarrassment sources versus embarrassment stimuli scenario manipulations. The sources refer to the service provider, others and the customer themselves. The five embarrassment stimuli were violations of privacy, awkward acts, forgetfulness, image appropriateness and criticism. Violation of privacy means physical exposure or invasion through an intimate act, revealing private details or invasion of space. Awkward acts are improper acts such as clumsy and ungraceful acts, or verbal comments and expression of emotions. Another stimulus, forgetfulness, refers to the lack of knowledge or understanding of errors. Image inappropriateness relates to the presentation of one’s clothing, body or personal belongings such as handbags. Finally, criticism encapsulates verbal criticism (e.g. accusation, discrimination or stereotyping) and non-verbal criticism (e.g. rejections or ignoring). The researcher found significant relationships between the embarrassment source and repatronage intentions. The embarrassment caused by others in the service encounter or by the customer themselves, although still 52

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socially uncomfortable, does not influence the customers to avoid future ­encounters and their repatronage intentions. Nevertheless, when customers are being publicly criticized by employees or when employees display an ­improper image as well as violating a customer’s privacy, this would influence a customer’s decision to not return for more services. Customers tend not to revisit when they experience embarrassments that are supposed to be avoidable and controllable by service employees. Service encounters and emotions can be measured quantitatively as there is a model of service encounter emotional value (SEEVal) that has been introduced, which is also associated with antecedents and consequences (Bailey et al., 2001). In the model, with customer and service employee’s cognitive and ­affective elements, individual antecedents lead to emotional antecedents of SEEVal. The cognitive components of customer and service employees refer to their beliefs and expectations, attitudes, values and goals. Meanwhile, affective components consist of an individuals’ emotions and moods. Dyadic interactional antecedents are the specific relevant antecedents to service encounters. The emotional dyadic antecedents are emotional contagion, rapport, relationship quality and co-production of emotional labour. In this model, emotional contagion is described as the process of emotional states that are being transmitted, communicated and experienced by the sender and r­ eceiver. Rapport is the relationship between service companies/employees and customers. The relationship quality describes the importance of trust and satisfaction between the customer and employee whereby customers can trust the employee’s integrity and they have confidence in the service employee’s future performance, as well as reducing the uncertainty ­conditions. Together, all the antecedents have influences on the outcomes of SEEVal: customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, customer voluntary performance, employee job satisfaction, employee loyalty and employee organizational citizenship behaviour. Organizational citizenship behaviours refer to the behaviours that are not required and described in job descriptions. Bailey et al. (2001) have pointed out that this model is, again, to acknowledge the important role of emotions in service encounters. They also found that the emotional contributions of customers and employees have the same importance in the service process. Last but not least, this model covers both customer and employee perspectives and elements, which provide a better way for organizations to try to maximize SEEVal and offer a better understanding of SEEVal in the overall view. Undeniably, emotions have a great impact in service encounters on both customers and service employees. For example, although service-failure ­encounters are unavoidable, we can still focus on providing and delivering positive service experiences in service-recovery encounters. One of the greatest challenges for service employees is to display positive emotions, ­responses and behaviour, regardless of customers’ responses and behaviour. This is possible under the service-recovery paradox conditions whereby the customer’s post-failure satisfaction is greater than pre-failure satisfaction (McCollough and Bharadwaj, 1992). In this case, service employees are able Emotional Intelligence and Service Encounters

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to deliver excellent service recoveries, which can enhance customer satisfaction and repatronage intentions (Smith and Bolton, 1998). Nevertheless, the success of delivering excellent service recoveries under this condition is rare, but it could happen. Service failures and recovery encounters should not be taken as opportunities to impress customers with excellent services (Ok et al., 2007). Delivering service right the first time is the ideal situation in satisfactory service encounters. In fact, training, support and assistance should be given to service ­employees to help them learn to regulate and cope with their emotions, ­especially when dealing with some extreme, unexpected service encounters. The emotional intelligence of service employees is crucial in promoting satisfactory service ­encounters, which is explained further in section 4.5. Activity Choose a past service experience scenario. It can be related to a service-failure encounter or service-recovery encounter, or both. Describe how your emotions changed throughout the experience. Were your emotions affected by service employees? If yes, how? If no, why not? You can explain further.

4.5  Emotional Intelligence Behaviour and Skills for Satisfactory Service Encounters Performing satisfactory service encounters is closely related to emotional ­intelligence, as mentioned earlier, with the emotions displayed by customer and employee affecting each other. The emotional intelligence of employees should be accurate in appraising and expressing their emotions (Salovey and Mayer, 1990). In other words, when they are able to perceive and evaluate their own emotions accurately, they can respond a­ ccording to desirable emotions. Effective emotional intelligence should include the emotional intelligence behaviour, which is empathy, and the emotional intelligence behavioural competencies in decision-making. 4.5.1  Emotional intelligence behaviour – empathy In performing satisfactory service encounters, service employees should possess an essential characteristic of emotional intelligence behaviour, which is empathy. They are able to appraise and comprehend others’ feelings and to re-experience those feelings for themselves. Empathy is not only appraising others’ feelings but also appraising one’s own feelings. Hoffman (1984) has proposed six different modes of empathic arousal: 1.  Primary circular reactions: An infant cries in response to another infant’s crying, which can be explained as experiencing distress resulting from the cue of distress in others. 54

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2.  Classical conditioning: This is similar to primary circular reactions but requires the capabilities of perceptual discrimination. Responses result from observing others’ cues of affective experience and, at the same time, experiencing the same effect instantly. 3.  Direct association: This refers to when we observe others experiencing an emotion (e.g. voice, facial expression or any other body-language cues), which enables us to recall and associate with the past-experienced conditions, which may trigger our emotions. This mode does not require the immediate co-occurrence of cues of feelings from others. 4. Mimicry: This mode is when the observer imitates a person’s expressions and then creates internal kinaesthetic cues, which allow the observer to understand and have the same feeling of emotion. 5. Language-mediated association: This mode is like the third mode – direct association – but is communicating feelings directly through language. 6.  Role taking: This mode is the cognitive imagination of oneself in another person’s place.

The above six different modes of empathic arousal are applicable in different service encounters during the service delivery process. For instance, when a customer complains about his/her frustration with the long wait to be seated, the manager can respond with the language-mediated association and role-taking modes. In the language-mediated association mode, the manager’s response could be, ‘I understand the pain of a long wait.’ Furthermore, in the role-taking mode, the manager can think of and offer some services that can help the customer occupy their time while waiting, such as presenting the menu, taking an order and serving drinks. It is believed that in service employees with emotional intelligence, the application of empathic modes is naturally performed throughout the service encounter process. They are able to handle customer needs and complaints more effectively. Activity Discuss several possible or actual scenarios in which you can incorporate different modes of empathic arousal in the context of either a restaurant, a hotel or a flight. Describe examples of how these modes can be practised.

4.5.2  Emotional intelligence skills in decision-making Emotion intelligence skills are necessary in performing satisfactory service encounters. Emotional intelligence, in fact, is needed, as a higher level of emotional intelligence among service ­employees will promote desirable conditions for a positive service climate (Bardzil and Slaski, 2003). These authors have pointed out positive consequences of emotional intelligence related to service encounters, such as that emotional intelligence would help to minimize emotional problems in high levels of interpersonal interactions, especially in high-contact service environments like hotels, restaurants and airports. In addition, the positive impacts on individuals with higher-than-­average emotional intelligence are high levels of self-awareness and interpersonal skills. Emotional Intelligence and Service Encounters

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Emotional intelligence skills include perceiving emotion, using emotion, understanding emotion and managing emotion (Salovey and Grewal, 2005). Service employees and managers who possess higher-than-average emotional intelligence generally display a high level of self-awareness and interpersonal skill. These types of employee are empathic, capable of coping with pressure, and experience less stress and better health and well-being (Bardzil and Slaski, 2003). They are also able to acquire better self-understanding and have better health, quality of work life and morale, as well as being capable of building closer working relationships among themselves. As displayed in Table 4.4, the Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i) scales and subscales that were developed by Bar-On (1997) for emotional intelligence assessment are relevant to positive service encounters. Service employees and managers can make better decisions by practising emotional intelligence skills throughout the service delivery process. A crucial criterion of practising the emotional intelligence skills is that the service employee has to understand their own emotions, which helps increase effectiveness in managing emotions in the process of decision-making (Hess and Bacigalupo, 2011). Emotionally intelligent employees are able to help themselves and others by avoiding the use of negative emotions, such as anger, in decision-making; they also have better speed and quality of decision-making (Sy and Côté, 2004). For example, when an angry hotel guest launches a complaint, an anxious service employee might feel lost and worried and could fail to recover the service failure effectively, compared with a calm service employee who can make quicker and better decisions in responding to complaints and take effective recovery actions. Furthermore, emotionally intelligent employees are able to adjust unpleasant emotions and enhance pleasant ­emotions when they are utilizing the right strategies to alter their emotions. This is necessary and important, especially when dealing with service-failure and -recovery encounters in the hospitality and tourism industry. In 2011, Hess and Bacigalupo (2011) combined the work of Goleman (2001) and Boyatzis et al. (2000) and categorized emotional intelligence skills in decision-making into self-­awareness, social awareness, self-management and relationship ­management, as shown in Table 4.5. Practising these emotional Table 4.4.  EQ-i scales and subscales. (Adapted from Bar-On,1997.) Adaptability Intrapersonal Subscales Reality testing Problemsolving Flexibility

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Interpersonal

General mood

Stress management

Optimism Impulse Assertiveness Empathy Happiness control Emotional self- Social Stress responsibility awareness tolerance Interpersonal Selfactualization relationships Self-regard Independence

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Table 4.5.  Four dimensions of emotional intelligence and related behavioural competencies. (Adapted from Hess and Bacigalupo, 2011.) Self-awareness

Social awareness Self-management

Emotional selfawareness Accurate selfassessment

Empathy Service orientation Organizational awareness

Self-control Trustworthiness Conscientiousness Adaptability Achievement drive Initiative

Relationship management Developing others Influence Communication Conflict management Leadership Change catalyst Building bonds and teamwork Collaboration

intelligence skills might help service employees and customers have satisfactory service encounters. Self-awareness and self-management skills enable emotionally intelligent employees to determine if they have sufficient self-confidence and the requisite orientation to evaluate their own decision-making skills and handle a problem. The application of both skills to decision-making situations can be learned and practised as a process. Several key points of these skills for emotionally intelligent employees to use as a guide and follow are: ●● Emotionally intelligent employees should be honest in self-assessment of skills and aware of the differences in their behaviours and abilities. ●● Self-awareness is more than having the confidence to identify the strengths of others in decision-making. It is also recognizing one’s own weaknesses. ●● Employees must be able to suppress their own desires and interests for the common good. ●● Patience is needed to have desirable decision outcomes. ●● Openly admit to one’s own mistakes, which enables the connection with others to occur genuinely with honesty and humility. ●● Emotionally intelligent leaders are able to pass their control to followers when they develop commitment, capabilities and maturity level. ●● When mistakes are made by followers, emotionally intelligent leaders are willing to share good and bad consequences together, regardless of their agreement with the decisions. The emotional intelligence skills of social awareness and their behavioural components of e­ mpathy, service orientation and organizational awareness enable service employees to judge the impacts of their decisions as well as the manner in which the decisions are made. Employees who practise social awareness skills, in particular empathy, will practise the servant philosophy for better quality of decisions. However, there is the emotional intelligence skill of relationship management, which covers conflict management, communications, Emotional Intelligence and Service Encounters

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leadership, building bonds and teamwork, developing others, influence, change catalyst and collaboration. The relationship management skills help to enhance the communication and relationships both internally (among employees themselves) and externally (between employees and customers) in decision-making for satisfactory service encounters. A few guidelines for the application of social awareness and relationship management skills are: ●● Employees are able to consider the consequences and possible outcomes before making decisions. ●● Employees who are socially aware should be capable of assessing the organizational culture to decide which are appropriate actions. ●● With the emotional intelligence decision-making process, employees should look forward and backward to assess possible consequences of decisions to be made. This includes reflecting on past decisions and contemplating future actions. ●● Emotionally intelligent employees view communication as an opportunity to develop and ­enhance relationships with customers and colleagues. ●● Emotionally intelligent leaders practice regular and consistent communication and continue to support a delegated decision in all aspects of communications. ●● Emotionally intelligent employees tend to listen more than talk while managing conflict. They also seek opportunities to hear the opinions of others. In short, all four different emotional intelligence skills would help service employees to ­enhance employee–employee as well as employee–customer interactions, which will lead to more satisfactory service encounters and better service quality. Activity Reflect on yourself by going through the emotional intelligence skills above. Jot down the emotional intelligence skills that you are practising, and the skills that you need to improve or practise further.

4.6 Conclusion In the rapidly changing service environment, emotional intelligence plays a crucial role in helping and enhancing better service-quality delivery and satisfactory service encounters. Service encounters go beyond interacting face to face and delivering promised standards to customers. They include the expression of emotions, which could affect both the customer and employee. Service encounters and emotions are closely related and measurable. Service encounters are important in the service industry, as they affect the perception of customers towards service quality, as well as influencing their repatronage ­intentions. 58

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Service encounters can happen in many forms and in different situations throughout the service delivery process. In hospitality and tourism organizations, service failure and service recovery encounters are challenging aspects, which require service employees to practise and apply more emotional intelligence skills in order to perform satisfactory service encounters. The crucial emotional intelligence skills include the emotional intelligence behaviour of empathy, and also emotional intelligence skills in decision-making, which would help service employees to have better interactions with customers, as well as enhancing their perceived service quality subsequently. In a nutshell, managers should acknowledge the importance of service encounters and emotions in delivering good service quality. They also should consider hiring service employees who possess emotional intelligence skills or have the potential to be trained and are willing to learn and practise emotional intelligence skills in order to deliver a good quality of services.

Questions 1.  What is a service encounter? Describe the consequences of good and poor service encounters. 2.  What are the roles of emotions in service encounters? How do emotions affect service encounters between customer and employee? 3.  What is the service encounter emotional value model (SEEVal)? Discuss any contributions of this model to organizations. 4.  Empathy is important in satisfactory service encounters. Explain the possible reasons for its importance. 5.  Explain the six different modes of empathic arousal with relevant examples in hospitality and tourism. 6.  Discuss the four types of emotional intelligence skills in decision-making. Choose any two to explain further how these skills can be helpful in improving the quality of service encounters.

Further Reading Hess, J.D. and Bacigalupo, A.C. (2011) Enhancing decisions and decision-making processes through the application of emotional intelligence skills. Management Decision 49(5), 710–721. Hoffman, M.L. (1984) Interaction of affect and cognition in empathy. In: Izard,C.E., Kagan, J. and Zajonc R.B. (eds.) Emotions, Cognition, and Behavior. Cambridge University Press, New York, pp. 103–131. Salovey, P. and Grewal, D. (2005) The science of emotional intelligence. Current Directions in Psychological Science 14(6), 281–285.

References Ashforth, B.E. and Humphrey, R.H. (1993) Emotional labor in service roles: the ­influence of identity. Academy of Management Review 18(1), 88–115. Emotional Intelligence and Service Encounters

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Bailey, J.J., Gremler, D.D. and McCollough, M.A. (2001) Service encounter emotional value. Services Marketing Quarterly 23(1), 1–24. Bardzil, P. and Slaski, M. (2003) Emotional intelligence: fundamental competencies for enhanced service provision. Managing Service Quality: An International Journal 13(2), 97–104. Bar-On, R. (1997) The Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-I): Technical Manual. Multi-­ Health Systems, Toronto, Canada. Bitner, M.J., Booms, B.H. and Tetreault, M.S. (1990) The service encounter: diagnosing favorable and unfavorable incidents. Journal of Marketing 54(1), 71–84. Boyatzis, R., Goleman, D. and Rhee, K. (2000) Clustering competence in emotional intelligence: insights from the emotional competence inventory (ECI). In: Bar-On, R. and Parker, J.D.A. (eds) Handbook of Emotional Intelligence. Jossey-­Bass, San Francisco, California. Briner, R.B. (1999) The neglect and importance of emotion at work. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology 8(3), 323–346. Chandon, J.-L., Leo, P.-Y. and Philippe, J. (1997) Service encounter dimensions – a dyadic perspective: measuring the dimensions of service encounters as perceived by customers and personnel. International Journal of Service Industry Management 8(1), 65–86. Dietze, A.G. (1963) Types of emotions or dimensions of emotions? A comparison of typal analysis with factor analysis. Journal of Psychology: Interdisciplinary and Applied 56(1), 143–159. Ekman, G. (1955) Dimensions of emotions. Nordisk Psykologi 7(3–4), 103–112. Ekman, P. (1992) An argument for basic emotions. Cognition and Emotion 6(3–4), 169–200. Farrell, A.M., Souchon, A.L. and Durden, G.R. (2001) Service encounter conceptualisation: employees’ service behaviours and customers’ service quality perceptions. Journal of Marketing Management 17(5–6), 577–593. Goleman, D. (2001) Emotional intelligence: perspectives on a theory of performance. In: Chermiss, C. and Goleman, D. (eds) The Emotionally Intelligent Workplace. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, California. Grace, D. (2009) An examination of consumer embarrassment and repatronage intentions in the context of emotional service encounters. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 16(1), 1–9. Hennig-Thurau, T., Groth, M., Paul, M. and Gremler, D.D. (2006) Are all smiles created equal? How emotional contagion and emotional labor affect service relationships. Journal of Marketing 70(3), 58–73. Hess, J.D. and Bacigalupo, A.C. (2011) Enhancing decisions and decision-making processes through the application of emotional intelligence skills. Management Decision 49(5), 710–721. Hoffman, M.L. (1984) Interaction of affect and cognition in empathy. In: Izard, C.E., Kagan, J. and Zajonc, R.B. (eds.) Emotions, Cognition, and Behavior. Cambridge University Press, New York, pp. 103–131. Keaveney, S.M. (1995) Customer switching behavior in service industries: an ­exploratory study. Journal of Marketing 59(2), 71–82. Koc, E., Ulukoy, M., Kilic, R., Yumusak, S. and Bahar, R. (2017a). The influence of customer participation on service failure perceptions. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence 28(3–4), 390–404.

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Koc, E., Aydin, G., Ar, A.A. and Boz, H. (2017b) Emotions and emotional abilities in service failures and recovery. In: Koc, E. (ed.) Service Failures and ­Recovery in Tourism and Hospitality: a Practical Manual. CAB International, Wallingford, UK, pp. 42–55. Lin, J.-S. C. and Lin, C.-Y. (2011) What makes service employees and customers smile: antecedents and consequences of the employees’ affective delivery in the service encounter. Journal of Service Management 22 (2), 183–201. Loo, P.T.B. and Boo, H.C. (2017) Customer attribution in service failures and recovery. In: Koc, E. (ed.) Service Failures and Recovery in Tourism and Hospitality: a Practical Manual. CAB International, Wallingford, UK, pp. 70–82. Mattila, A.S. and Enz, C.A. (2002) The role of emotions in service encounters. Journal of Service Research 4(4), 268–277. McCollough, M.A. and Bharadwaj, S.G. (1992) The recovery paradox: an examination of consumer satisfaction in relation to disconfirmation, service quality, and attribution-based theories. Marketing Theory and Applications 3, 119. Ok, C., Back, K.-J. and Shanklin, C.W. (2007) Mixed findings on the service ­recovery paradox. Service Industries Journal 27(6), 671–686. Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V.A. and Berry, L.L. (1988) SERVQUAL: a multiple-item scale for measuring consumer perceptions of service quality. Journal of Retailing 64(1), 12–40. Pugh, S.D. (2001) Service with a smile: emotional contagion in the service encounter. Academy of Management Journal 44(5), 1018–1027. Salovey, P. and Grewal, D. (2005) The science of emotional intelligence. Current Directions in Psychological Science 14(6), 281–285. Salovey, P. and Mayer, J.D. (1990) Emotional intelligence. Imagination, Cognition and Personality 9(3), 185–211. Smith, A.K. and Bolton, R.N. (1998) An experimental investigation of customer ­reactions to service failure and recovery encounters: paradox or peril? Journal of Service Research 1(1), 65–81. Surprenant, C.F. and Solomon, M.R. (1987) Predictability and personalization in the service encounter. Journal of Marketing 51, 86–96. Sy, T. and Côté, S. (2004) Emotional intelligence: a key ability to succeed in the matrix organization. Journal of Management Development 23(5), 437–455. Wirtz, J., Chew, P. and Lovelock, C. (2013) Essentials of Services Marketing. Pearson Education South Asia Pte Ltd., Singapore.

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5

Development of Personal Expertise in Tourism and Hospitality Professions: Cognitive Knowledge, Personality and Learning Style Beverley R. Wilson-Wünsch and J.N. Patrick L’Espoir Decosta

Learning Objectives After reading this chapter you should be able to: ●● Explain the link between cognitive knowledge and performance in tourism and hospitality professions. ●● Discuss personality traits as factors for success in tourism and hospitality professions. ●● Demonstrate the connection between learning style and tourism and hospitality job performance.

5.1 Introduction Tourism and Hospitality managers, like all other managers, are faced with numerous challenges, requiring a number of decision-making strategies in order to come up with the correct solution to problems. Having the right skills and knowledge to be able to effectively address these problems are central to effectively managing these businesses. (Wilson-Wünsch, 2016)

Professional success in tourism and hospitality is often tied to a person’s ability to create economic as well as social outcomes in the job. Put simply, evaluating success in this industry involves judging professional performance. It is for that reason that it is important to establish a profile of the

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competencies that make tourism and hospitality managers successful. Profiling effective tourism and hospitality managers is especially critical because the characteristics of this industry are constantly changing. For example, the volume and rate at which new products and services are developed, ­designed and delivered in the market make career lifespans relatively short. Subsequently, skills and competencies that were needed in management by the end of 2015 look very different from those that will be needed in 2020. This problem, in the form of constantly changing needs, is exacerbated by perceived shortfalls in skilled workers in that sector in many developed and developing countries. In the UK, for example, the British Hospitality Association (BHA) fears that the combination of tightened i­ mmigration controls anticipated with Brexit, along with the country’s economy approaching full employment, is likely to cause a shortfall of 60,000 skilled workers annually (Ahmed, 2017). Similarly, in Australia, according to ­ Austrade (2014), a key challenge for this crucial economic sector is the lack of knowledgeable, skilled and trained management-level staff capable of dealing with the unique challenges of the sector. As a consequence, it is incumbent upon the industry to provide training and education to enhance the skills and expert capabilities of their managers to ensure they have the tools to cope with an increasingly demanding business environment. According to Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1986) and Alexander (2003), ­expertise in a domain can only be achieved after years of formal schooling, followed by extensive practical experience. Acquiring such expert knowledge, however, is not a linear process. To Ericsson (2004), expert knowledge requires an organization that differs significantly from basic or novice knowledge. In fact, the mechanism that builds expert knowledge rests on a restructuring of knowledge. Knowledge can be considered factual, conceptual (principles that provide a basis to a domain) or procedural (imperative knowledge about steps and sequencing of procedures, as well as the application of critical and analytical thinking that promote understanding of the limitations of specific solutions). Apart from a cognitive restructuring of knowledge that fosters the mastery of factual, conceptual and procedural knowledge, expert knowledge requires deliberate practise. In other words, the unique characteristics, competencies and knowledge that an expert ­acquires through practise over time also require their reflective capabilities when dealing with problems and applying solutions. This means that managers need to develop self-awareness and the ability not only to self-assess but also to understand and act upon the ways they learn, towards acquiring expertise (Koc et al., 2017). However, this requires managers to be aware of their own assumptions, responsibilities, approaches and ability to identify, consider and analyse their learning. Simply put, in addition to knowledge and critical and analytical skills, managers need metacognitive skills to ­effectively enhance their expertise and decision-making. Thus, in line with Bakx et al. (2006), this chapter considers sources of knowledge that will influence decision-making and facilitate self-regulated Development of Personal Expertise in Tourism and Hospitality Professions

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learning. We cannot ignore managers’ beliefs and assumptions about knowledge when they apply knowledge and skills to identify and solve problems. We take a micro-perspective to explain the development of professional ­expertise through training and education by looking at the intricacies involved in the development of personal skills and competence in the hospitality and tourism sector. Thus, we investigate the factors, such as personality, affecting learning and development of skills, including how these factors can predict success in hospitality professions. In that respect, we delve into the role that cognitive knowledge and personality play in professional performance in hospitality and discuss how different learning styles impact the performance and success of hospitality managers.

5.2  Cognitive Knowledge The pace of change in the work environment, including digital transformation, demographic changes in the workforce, the need for alignment of talent with work and re-training the workforce, are all coexisting challenges that complicate the jobs of policy makers. Models of management success in hospitality can provide useful guidance on managing in times of change. Ackoff (1979, p. 93) sees the need for managers to be well-equipped to manage change and describes the task of the manager as follows: Managers are not confronted with problems that are independent of each other, but with dynamic situations of complex systems of changing problems that interact with each other. I call these situations messes…. Problems are abstractions extracted from messes by analysis; they are to messes as atoms are to tables and charts…. Managers do not solve problems…they manage messes. (Ackoff, 1979, p. 93)

It is therefore important to provide managers with the skills and capabilities to identify, extract and address the chaos that often exists within their organizations. As problem identifiers and solvers, tourism and hospitality managers thus require a broad spectrum of knowledge to help them complete their daily tasks. It is theorized that managers use both declarative and procedural knowledge in the problem identification and solving process (Flavell, 1978). Declarative knowledge has more to do with both cognitive and formal domain knowledge and is based on one’s approach and understanding of these types of knowledge in the formation of beliefs, hypotheses and assumptions about the problem. Declarative knowledge provides context to extant knowledge in the analysis of existing evidence to ascertain the problem to be tackled and therefore refers to knowledge regarding the problem to be solved. Procedural knowledge is distinguishable by the tactical process, the strategic decisions, and the process of selection and execution of solutions employed to solve the problem at hand. Arts et al. (2006a) 64

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is of the opinion that prior knowledge, along with information gathered in the business environment, when properly interpreted after the application of critical and analytical thinking, results in new knowledge. This new knowledge is what forms the basis for solving problems (Arts, 2007).

5.3  Expert Knowledge: Structure of Cognitive ­Managerial Knowledge According to cognitive development theory on expertise development, when tourism and hospitality managers face problems in their organizations, they need managerial knowledge in order to be effective. This managerial knowledge constitutes cognitive units of managerial facts, managerial concepts and managerial inferences. Managerial facts, according to Van Dijk and Kintsch (1983), are higherorder complex units of information. These complex units are critical information connected to, and highly relevant for, analysing and solving problems (Arts, 2007). For example, a hotel manager, if faced with a problem of staff retention, should ideally start by collecting data and evidence. The data should include factual labour market information about the labour pool from which potential employees can be drawn before developing a solution to the problem. Managerial concepts generally enable the reduction and characterization of managerial phenomena into powerful and short labels (Arts, 2007). In the example above, a hotel manager assessing the labour market would probably narrow down the causes of the problem using labels such as low unemployment, unskilled labour, and low or high labour turnover. These are indications that a manager is able to recognize and accurately label managerial situations using the jargon of practice. Managerial inferences link several bits of information to a new statement (Arts, 2007). They indicate the ability to identify, analyse, interpret and transform facts into meaningful statements by applying different levels of skills applied to prior knowledge (Van Dijk and Kintsch, 1983). Therefore, the number and quality of inferences can be considered an indicator of understanding and applying domain-specific knowledge or expert knowledge of the profession (Arts et al., 2006a,b). These types and levels of knowledge structures, which are consistent with Krathwohl’s (2002) revision of Bloom’s taxonomy of cognitive processes in learning, are used to help managers collect and process information in order to solve problems. Successful managers possess high-quality cognitive units that combine different levels of knowledge and skills to help them solve problems on a daily basis. However, managers in the hospitality sector need more than just different levels of knowledge and skills in order to be effective. ­Research has consistently shown that employers and employees alike identify personality, learning capacity and learning styles as major determining factors of successful careers in hotel management (Downey et al., 2006). Development of Personal Expertise in Tourism and Hospitality Professions

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5.4  Personality Traits as Predictors of Success The literature on human resources development and planning strategies in the hospitality sector is quite eclectic (Wilson-Wünsch et al., 2016). However, there is a common emphasis on the importance of ‘soft skills’ (Kay and Moncarz, 2004) or personality as predictors of job success (Phelan and Mills, 2010). In her study of competencies needed for success in managing hotels, Ladkin (1999) found that managers consider an outgoing personality, as expressed in effective communications, a prerequisite for success in hotel jobs. These same managers, however, were sceptical as to whether education could explain the difference between successful and mediocre hotel managers, even though they believe that the quality of education to which hotel managers have been exposed can determine their professional success or failure. In studies on the importance of personality traits and general mental abilities in managers’ hiring decisions (see Tews et al., 2011), a significant conclusion is that the five basic traits of human personality – namely agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, emotional stability and intellect – are also often used to predict performance in hospitality professions (Wilson-Wünsch et al., 2016). According to Goldberg (2001), agreeable individuals tend to be cooperative and warm. People who show conscientiousness tend to be organized, hardworking, dependable and persevering. Highly extraverted persons are gregarious, assertive and sociable, whereas emotionally stable individuals are calm, self-confident and secure. Finally, those who are intellectual are open to experiences, curious, willing to learn new things, creative and c­ ultured. Interestingly, in their study on the assessment of the influence of success factors and career determinants in hospitality management, Wilson-Wünsch et al. (2016) found that only some aspects of personality exhibited a correlation with managerial problem-solving abilities. In the inferential statistical analyses included in their study, they found a significant negative relationship between the personality traits of extraversion, recall concepts and recall inference. Extrovert personality traits were substantially negatively correlated to expert problem-solving concepts. Intellect also significantly negatively correlated to recall concepts and problem-solving facts. All of the other traits tested, namely agreeableness, emotional stability and conscientiousness, showed no relationship to management problem-solving abilities. Yet Tews et al. (2011) found that personality plays a critical role in success and in hiring decisions in the hospitality industry. Selection practices based on personality testing are not embedded in an explicit theory of performance. This may be one reason for the ascendancy of personality testing in the selection process and the sector’s efforts to improve the ways in which such tests are used in selecting managers. Since personality has been linked to both positive and detrimental ­behaviour, it is important that managers and students alike are aware of their own personality traits. Generally, personality tests such as the Myers–Briggs 66

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Type Indicator (MBTI; https://www.myersbriggs.org) and the Big Five (factors) Personality Test (https://www.truity.com/view/tests/big-five-personality) are overarching assessments of an individual’s personality. Although these tests lack explicit support from any theory of performance, they do require the individuals to undertake some serious self-reflection and understanding of how they act, react and make decisions in particular circumstances. Such self-awareness and an understanding of their own approach to life in  general highlight their personal approach, ability and limitations in ­developing their competencies. By extrapolation, we can advance that personality ­ impacts upon the way one learns to acquire knowledge and develop skills.

https://www.myersbriggs.org

https://www.truity.com/view/tests/big-five-personality

Activity Complete the Big Five Personality Test online (see above) and then answer the questions below. 1.  Before attempting this test, what were your assumptions about personality tests? 2.  How do the results compare with your initial assumptions? 3.  How do the traits the test reveals contribute to your professional development and expertise? 4.  Which one trait would be the most helpful in your professional development? Why? 5. Which one trait would hinder you most in your professional development? Why? What would you do to compensate for that weakness?

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5.5  Connecting Learning Styles with Hospitality ­Performance The way in which individuals prefer to process and organize information is known as their cognitive style (Peterson et al., 2005, p. 12). This is at the core of theoretical explanations of the learning process, including learning styles and strategies adopted by a person prior to training. Learning style, or an individual’s preferred way of learning, has been studied by a number of ­researchers (Honey and Mumford, 1982; Kolb, 1999; Peterson et al., 2005) and significantly underlies the andragogy of teaching and learning in continuous education for adults. Style comprises a combination of environmental, emotional, sociological, physical and psychological elements that permit individuals to receive, store and use knowledge or abilities. It is not surprising that organizations that provide professional development training to their employees have sought to understand learning strategies and styles as a major stepping stone to fostering organizational effectiveness (Riding and Sadler-Smith, 2001). A major premise in most learning-style research is that individuals learn differently (Duff, 2004). Based on the significance of this difference, Biggs (1987) developed within the tertiary education domain the Study Process Questionnaire (SPQ) to measure a student’s use of learning approaches. Biggs (1987) identified three approaches to learning, each combining different levels of motivation and actions. In the surface approach to learning, for example, the learner is merely interested in the bare essentials needed to pass the course, rather than learning and understanding, and as such would seek specific answers to questions that lead to a task-oriented and specific-structure approach to follow. The deep learner, on the other hand, is intrinsically motivated to learn and is driven by curiosity or simple interest in the topic or subject. In so doing, the learner focuses on maximizing knowledge and skills ­related to the topic/subject and is eager to acquire the ability to explain and critically discuss topical concepts and to reflect on different perspectives, with the goal of connecting and relating ideas to previous knowledge and other topics. The deep learner thus takes a thematic and conceptual ­approach to learning about the domain. The strategic or achieving learner, by comparison, is motivated more by achievement, rewards and recognition for themselves. To those ends, the learner would optimize time and effort to effectively strategize to accomplish tasks. One such strategy may include using assessment criteria to estimate the learning effort required to achieve a particular grade or to organize space and time to complete tasks required. It is important for hospitality organizations to understand these learning styles so that their human resources development and training efforts can foster organizational effectiveness (Riding and Sadler-Smith, 2001). ­Another assessment of learning style is Kolb’s (1999) Learning Style Inventory, which is a survey prevalent in business organizations to determine how individuals 68

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differ in their learning behaviour. In the domain of hospitality management, Honey and Mumford (1982) classified people into four learning styles: activist, reflector, theorist and pragmatist. Are you an activist who shows flexibility, open-mindedness and optimism? Do you welcome new challenges and experiences? Or are you a reflector who is careful, thoughtful and thorough. Are you a good listener? Do you seek out learning opportunities? If you are a theorist, you are logical, rational and objective. As a theorist, you can make sense out of patterns. Pragmatists are regarded as practical, realistic and business-like, and solve problems through experimenting. Using Honey and Mumford’s (1982) 80-item Learning Style Questionnaire, Wilson-Wünsch et al. (2016) assessed novice and expert managers to see how well their learning styles correlated with their ability to solve problems. A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) as well as regression analyses found that only the theorist learner showed significant positive correlation with managerial problem solving. The activist, reflector and pragmatist showed no correlation at all. A possible explanation for this finding is that, as per definition, theorist learners are more likely to recall and tap into managerial concepts and facts to make inferences (Honey and Mumford, 1982), a skill that comes in handy when evaluating potential solutions to workplace problems. It should be noted, however, that to the cognitive psychologist, learning style has no raison d’etre because there is no empirical evidence to support the theoretical claim that learning is enhanced when the teaching strategy mirrors the student’s or trainee’s learning style (An and Carr, 2017). To the cognitive educationalist, the very term ‘style’ presupposes that learning is ‘static’ and that, for example, the visual learner will probably never employ a tactile learning approach. In other words, the learning style shows how a learner is, rather than pointing to what the learner needs to develop and acquire. For these reasons, this chapter has relied more on the works of Biggs (1987) and Honey and Mumford (1982), given their meso-descriptions of styles or inventories, which are more encompassing and less ‘labelling’ than terms such as ‘visual’, ‘auditory’ and ‘kinaesthetic’.

Activity Complete the Learning Style Questionnaire developed by Honey and Mumford (1982) to assess your own learning preference and determine whether you are an activist, a theorist, a reflector or a pragmatist. Then answer the questions below: 1.  What were your assumptions about learning style before you read this chapter? 2.  What was your attitude towards the test while attempting it? 3.  To what extent do you believe the result actually reflects what you think your learning style is? 4.  How do you think knowing about how you learn will actually help you in the development of your professional expertise?

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5.6  Working Environment and Job Performance The quality of the learning experiences of hospitality managers at work is of paramount importance to their success, as well as that of their organizations. Assessing and evaluating the daily critical incidents of managers are valid ways to measure how these incidents contribute to learning. Debriefing as part of a review process of those incidents becomes a learning moment and creates awareness of how the incidents also detracted from the learning ­experiences of managers. This evidence-based approach forms the basis for research conducted by Wilson-Wünsch (2016) in which she followed, over a period of 4 years, 23 hotel managers working in different positions in the hospitality industry in Europe and assessed them using the Dimensions of Learning Organization Questionnaire (DLOQ) developed by Marsick and Watkins (2003). The 55 questions consisted of seven dimensions of learning, namely continuous learning, inquiry and dialogue, collaboration, embedded systems, empowering people, systems connections and strategic leadership. A hospitality case study developed by Gore and Riley (2005) was used to measure expert performance among these managers. Qualitative data extracted from the verbal critical incidents that they encountered in their workplace, along with their cluster profiles on the dimensions of the learning questionnaire, showed that the work environment, including the formal processes in place, played a role in learning and improved performance at work. The managers working in environments with a perceived high learning culture reported opportunities in which learning was embedded in all systems in the workplace; they were empowered and provided continuous learning opportunities in the workplace. On the other hand, managers who perceived the work environment as less positive mentioned that they received less support in the workplace. Evidence showed that managers recognize the need for learning in order to improve their performance in the workplace. It is clear that the perception managers have of the work environment exerts a significant influence on job performance. When managers believe that their work environment provides continuous, supportive learning and development opportunities, they are motivated to learn and perform better. The findings suggest that the ways in which managers engage in practice enhance their performance and keep them ‘alert’, i.e. actively and deeply involved in their organizational and individual career development. In that sense, career planning becomes an important tool to maintain stability in a job in the tourism and hotel sector (Lyons, 2010). In fact, the volatile labour context in which the tourism and hospitality professional operates makes predictable career patterns rare. The tourism and hospitality labour ­environment is dominated by a mobile, casual and part-time workforce with minimal interest in remaining in the sector for an extended period of time (Lyons, 2010). This is primarily because the sector is characterized by shortterm labour contracts and high turnover (Brown et al., 2015). The way in

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which the sector is structured (e.g. low pay, long working hours, strong organizational hierarchy and a lack of clear career paths) makes it difficult for employees to progress over time. One might conclude that strong, long-­ term strategic planning is necessary in order to ensure staff employability and eventually effective job performance in tourism and hospitality ­organizations. As such, employability and career planning motivate employees to ­become multi-skilled while taking responsibility for their own development in the workplace. However, employability goes beyond identifying the skills of the profession and developing those skills accordingly (see Van der ­Heijde and Van der Heijden (2006) for more information on the research in that domain). Skills should be continuously updated to incorporate new ­competencies.

5.7 Conclusion This chapter builds upon two major publications by Wilson-Wünsch on the professional development of hospitality managers and the factors that ­impact their expertise development. Relying on a critical articulation of the research evidence, this chapter has shown that: (i) knowledge is an important element in the performance of hospitality management tasks; and (ii) only some aspects of personality and learning style are generally considered by practitioners as important success factors and career determinants in hospitality management. The chapter has also emphasized the role of metacognition in the development of expert knowledge based on the fact that only through self-awareness and deep reflection, as applied to critical analysis, can knowledge be acquired and skills developed and applied to become learning moments. This chapter also has implications for tourism and hospitality education. Tourism and hospitality schools should not downplay practice. Internship programmes and work-integrated learning, based on solid and engaging relationships between schools and industry at the level of course components and assessments, should be fostered as a tool for knowledge acquisition and creation and skills development, all necessary in management decisions. Such engaging interactions with experts and a formal integration of feedback loops should be a prerequisite for learners’ reflections on their performance, along with a sense of how they will use the ­acquired knowledge and skills in the future. Another implication for hospitality education programmes is the need to revisit the existing framework of teaching and learning to actively incorporate elements of evidence-based practice. This approach is currently at an embryonic level in business schools, but the recent paradigm shifts in approaching truth and the rise of fake news and emotion-based decisions, as reflected at the macro-political level in the Western world, have highlighted the need for business education to revisit, question and revamp its existing education model.

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Further Reading Austrade (2014) Tourism employment plans. Australian Trade and Investment Commission (Austrade), Australia. Available at: https://www.austrade.gov.au/Australian/ Tourism/Policy-and-Strategy/Labour-and-Skills/Tourism-Employment-Plans/ tourism-employment-plans (accessed 15 October 2018).

References Ackoff, R.L. (1979) The future of operational research is past. Journal of the Operational Research Society 30(3), 189–199. Ahmed, K. (2017) Hotels, restaurants and tourism may face staff shortages. Available at: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-39448424 (accessed 15 October 2018). Alexander, P.A. (2003) The development of expertise: the journey from acclimation to proficiency. Educational Researcher 32(8), 10–14. An, D. and Carr, M. (2017) Learning styles theory fails to explain learning and achievement. Personality and Individual Differences 116, 410–416. Arts, J.A.R. (2007) Expertise development in managerial sciences: the use of knowledge types in problem-solving. Dissertation, University of Maastricht, Maastricht, The Netherlands. Arts, J.A.R., Gijselaers, W.H. and Boshuizen, H.P.A. (2006a) Understanding managerial problem-solving, knowledge use, and information processing: investigating stages from school to the workplace. Contemporary Educational Psychology 31(4), 387–410. Arts, J.A.R., Gijselaers, W.H. and Segers, M.R.S. (2006b) From cognition to ­instruction to expertise: measurement of expertise effects in an authentic, computer supported, and problem-based course. European Journal for Psychology of Education 21(1), 71–90. Austrade (2014) Tourism employment plans. Australian Trade and Investment Commission (Austrade), Australia. Available at: https://www.austrade.gov.au/ Australian/Tourism/Policy-and-­S trategy/Labour-and-Skills/Tourism-­ Employment-Plans/tourism-employment-­plans (accessed 15 October 2018). Bakx, A.W.E.A., Van der Sanden, J.M.M., Sijtsma, K., Croon, M.A. and Vermetten, Y.J.M. (2006) The role of students’ personality characteristics, self-perceived competence and learning conceptions in the acquisition and development of social communicative competence: a longitudinal study. Higher Education 51(1), 71–104. Biggs, J.B. (1987) Student Approaches to Learning and Studying. Australian Council for Educational Research, Camberwell, Victoria, Australia. Brown, E., Thomas, N. and Bosselman, R. (2015) Are they leaving or staying: a qualitative analysis of turnover issues for Generation Y hospitality employees with a hospitality education. International Journal of Hospitality Management 46, 130–137. Downey, L., Godfrey, J., Hansen, K. and Stough, C. (2006) The impact of social desirability and expectation of feedback on emotional intelligence in the workplace. E-Journal of Applied Psychology: Emotional Intelligence 2(2), 12–18. Dreyfus, H.L. and Dreyfus, S.E. (1986) Mind Over Machine: the Power of Human Intuition and Expertise in the Era of the Computer. Free Press, New York. 72

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Duff, A. (2004) The revised approaches to studying inventory (RASI) and its use in management education. Active Learning in Higher Education 5(1), 56–72. Ericsson, K. (2004) Deliberate practice and the acquisition and maintenance of expert performance in medicine and related domains. Academic Medicine 79(10), S70–S81. Flavell, J.H. (1978) Metacognitive development. In: Scandura, J.M. and Brainerd, C.J. (eds) Structural Process Theories of Complex Human Behaviour. Sijthoff & Noorddhoff, Alphen aan den Rijn, The Netherlands, pp. 34–78. Goldberg, L. (2001) Possible questionnaire format for administering the 50 Big-Five Markers. Available at: https://ipip.ori.org/New_IPIP-50-item-scale.htm#Sample Questionnaire (accessed 23 October 2018). Gore, J. and Riley, M. (2005) Recruitment and selection in hotels: experiencing cognitive task analysis. In: Montgomery, H., Lipshitz, R. and Brehmer, B. (eds) How Professionals Make Decisions. Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah, New Jersey, pp. 343–350. Honey, P. and Mumford, A. (1982) The Manual of Learning Styles. Honey Press, Maidenhead, UK. Kay, C. and Moncarz, E. (2004) Knowledge, skills, and abilities for lodging management success. Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly 45(39), 285–298. Koc, E., Aydin, G., Ar, A.A. and Boz, H. (2017) Emotions and emotional abilities in service failures and recovery. In: Koc (ed.) Service Failures and Recovery in Tourism and Hospitality: a Practical Manual. CAB International, Wallingford, UK, pp. 42–55. Kolb, D.A. (1999) Learning Style Inventory, Version 3: Technical specifications. TRG Hay/McBer, Training Resources Group, Boston, Massachusetts. Krathwohl, D.R. (2002) A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy: an overview. Theory into Practice 41(4), 212–218. Ladkin, A. (1999) Hotel general managers: a review of prominent research themes. International Journal of Tourism Research 1(3), 167–193. Lyons, K. (2010) Room to move? The challenges of career mobility for tourism education. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Education 22(2), 51–55. Marsick, V.J. and Watkins, K.E. (2003) Demonstrating the value of an organization’s learning culture: the dimensions of the learning organization questionnaire. Advances in Developing Human Resources 5(2), 132–151. Peterson, E.R., Deary, I.J. and Austin, E.J. (2005) Are intelligence and personality related to verbal imagery and holistic-analytic cognitive styles? Personality and Individual Differences 39(1), 201–213. Phelan, K.V. and Mills, J. (2010) An exploratory study of knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) needed in undergraduate hospitality curricula in the convention industry. Journal of Human Resources Management in Hospitality & Tourism 10(1), 96–116. Riding, R. and Sadler-Smith, E. (2001) A reply to Reynolds’s critique of learning style. Management Learning 32(3), 291–304. Tews, M.J., Stafford, K. and Tracey, B.J. (2011) What matters most? The perceived importance of ability and personality for hiring decisions. Cornell Hospitality Quarterly 53(2), 94–101. Van der Heijde, C.M. and Van der Heijden, B.I.J.M. (2006) A competence-based and multi-dimensional operationalization and measurement of employability. Human Resources Management 45(3), 449–476. Development of Personal Expertise in Tourism and Hospitality Professions

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Van Dijk, T.A. and Kintsch, W. (1983) Text Comprehension and Production: Strategies of Discourse Comprehension. Academic Press, New York. Wilson-Wünsch, B.R. (2016) The making of hospitality managers: understanding individual differences, learning culture and workplace influences. PhD thesis, University of Maastricht, Maastricht, The Netherlands. Wilson-Wünsch, B., Beausaert, S., Tempelaar, D. and Gijselaers, W. (2016) Expertise development of hospitality students: do personality, emotional intelligence and learning style matter? Journal of Tourism and Hospitality Education 28(3), 155–167.

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6

Emotional Intelligence and its Relationship with Personality, Gender, Age and Culture in Tourism and Hospitality David Rivera, Jr

Learning Objectives After reading this chapter you should be able to: ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●●

Classify types of soft skills associated with emotional intelligence. Identify the various components of emotional intelligence. Describe the relevance of emotional intelligence to the hospitality ­industry. Compare and contrast personality and emotional intelligence. Examine differences in emotional intelligence based on gender. Describe the impact that age has on emotional intelligence. Discuss the relationship between emotional intelligence and culture.

6.1 Introduction Technical, conceptual and human relations skills are typically discussed when evaluating talent acquisition within the hospitality and tourism ­industry. Often, talent in hospitality and tourism is evaluated on technical or hard skill merit. Hard skills are typically defined as specific, teachable abilities that can be defined and measured. Examples of hard skills within the hospitality and tourism industry include the following: answering guest calls, checking guests in and out, running reports, scheduling ­employees, taking beverage orders, cleaning tables, preparing and cooking food, counting money and budget preparation. If an individual is employed within the hospitality and tourism industry, they are typically trained in these areas to provide a level of service to both internal and external ­customers.

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Soft skills, however, are not as easy to measure or develop and are typically not taught or trained for within the hospitality and tourism industry. Soft skills are typically defined as the interpersonal, human, people or behavioural skills needed to apply technical skills and knowledge in the workplace (Weber et al., 2013). Four key managerial soft skills are leadership/people/relationship skills, communication, management/organization, and cognitive skills and knowledge (Weber et al., 2013). These types of skills are not tied to one profession but are seen as skills that are transferrable across many disciplines and provide an increased level of human ­relation. A specific soft skill that has been associated with employee and managerial success is emotional intelligence. Increased levels of emotional intelligence are often associated with managerial and leadership success (Băeşu and Bejinaru, 2015; Phipps and Prieto, 2017). It is said that managerial and leadership success is associated with increased levels of emotional intelligence because higher levels of emotional intelligence enable managers and leaders within an organization to have enriched interpersonal skills, provide meaningful feedback to employees and promote creativity among individuals within an organization, and are an integral part of the conflict management process (Phipps and Prieto, 2017). Being able to deliver excellent customer service is essential and relies on individuals within the hospitality and tourism industry having high levels of both hard and soft skills. However, what typically separates one establishment from another is not the hard skills displayed but the connections employees are able to make with their customer base. Having increased levels of emotional intelligence allows frontline employees to build those special relationships that keep loyal customers returning again and again. Having emotional intelligence allows employees within the hospitality and tourism industry to create an emotional connection and accentuate positive emotions such as happiness and excitement. On the other hand, with ­increased emotional intelligence, hospitality and tourism employees are able to identify negative emotions such as anger, frustration and disappointment, and possibly better handle the situation and turn a potentially disastrous experience into a moment of truth that creates a happy and loyal customer to the establishment. This chapter will examine how personality, gender, age and culture ­potentially relate to emotional intelligence.

Activity Create a list of five skills that you would consider hard skills. Then create a list of five skills that you would consider soft skills. Have a discussion with your classmates as to which sets of skills you feel you have. Also discuss with your ­classmates which skills you feel are easier to learn and develop.

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6.2  Emotional Intelligence Emotional intelligence has been described as one’s ability to be aware of, control and express emotions in a positive and constructive way. Based on this definition and the nature of the hospitality and tourism industry, one can see that having employees and management with high levels of emotional intelligence can be a valuable asset. The beginnings of understanding emotional intelligence can be traced back to roughly 1990. The framework of emotional intelligence is often described as a type of intelligence that i­ nvolves an individual’s ability to observe their own as well as others’ emotions and use this ­information as a discerning and behavioural compass (Mayer et al., 2004). Emotional intelligence is often broken into four areas: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management (ScottHalsell et al., 2008). These authors also found there is a strong relationship between a service worker’s overall emotional intelligence and customer satisfaction. Some behaviours that may be exhibited by those in the hospitality and tourism industry that involve higher levels of emotional intelligence ­include demonstration of empathy, being apologetic and assisting others. This relationship is a key component within the hospitality and tourism ­industry. 6.2.1 Self-awareness Personal growth and success are often synonymous with high levels of self-awareness. Daniel Goleman (2018) referred to self-awareness as the keystone of emotional intelligence. Self-awareness revolves around the concept of being conscious of one’s own character, feelings, motives and desires. Character ties into one’s virtues, values and traits, and is tied to individual thoughts and actions. Character and emotional intelligence both deal with how one manages one’s own thoughts and actions. Feelings are the emotional states and reactions to various stimuli. Increased emotional intelligence a­ ssists with the formulation and regulation of various feelings in different situations (Mayer and Salovey, 1995). Being aware of one’s feelings, and what may trigger those feelings in various situations within the hospitality and tourism industry, could impact the overall customer satisfaction with an establishment and directly impact the bottom line. Motivation is typically the concept associated with the internal feeling people have when pursuing certain goals. One of the primary goals of the hospitality and tourism industry is to provide great customer experiences. When individuals are properly motivated, they often feel more fulfilled when achieving their goals. Goleman (1995) inferred a connection between motivation and emotional intelligence that can be directly applied to the hospitality and tourism industry. He suggested that high levels of emotional intelligence drive motivation because individuals have personal drives to improve and achieve, are committed to achieving their goals, display high levels of initiative, and are often optimistic and resilient. Each of these characteristics Emotional Intelligence and its Relationship with Personality, Gender, Age and Culture 77

is essential for the success of frontline employees and management when delivering customer service within the hospitality and tourism industry. As a hospitality and tourism professional, having this level of insight could be the difference between providing a special moment for an internal or external guest, or providing a substandard experience. Being self-aware is an essential component of emotional intelligence; however, one finds that many people are not as self-aware as they should be. Increasing self-awareness is important to hospitality and tourism professionals because it allows individuals to have a greater sense of self and understanding. An increased sense of self can lead to providing an enhanced experience and increased revenues for hospitality and tourism ­organizations, as research has shown that a high level of self-awareness is one of the strongest predictors of overall success (Zuckerman et al., 2018). Activity This activity involves self-reflection and awareness: •  Please take out a piece of paper and write the numbers from 1 to 10 down the left-hand side of the page. Now place a word next to each number that you feel best describes yourself. •  After you have placed a word next to each number, share the paper with someone in the class. Have that person examine your ten answers. Then discuss with that person which characteristics allow for better interactions with guests within a hospitality and tourism operation. Discuss which characteristics may impede the delivery of high service quality within the hospitality and tourism industry. •  After engaging in individual discussion, discuss with the entire class which characteristics are the most desirable among hospitality and tourism employees.

6.2.2 Self-management The second area of emotional intelligence is self-management. Self-management is described as the knowing of oneself and is a necessary component of leading others (Steyn and van Staden, 2018). With increased levels of emotional intelligence, one should find that one has increased levels of self-­management. The areas of self-management that should improve as one’s emotional intelligence improves are: being able to identify how you are feeling; being able to ­assess what is causing you to feel the way you are feeling; and then taking the proper action to gain control of your emotional state so that you do not behave in an adverse manner. Self-management also typically involves characteristics such as honesty, integrity, trustworthiness and reliability (Botha and Musengi, 2012). Self-management is an important part of the hospitality and tourism industry. Given that many services ­related to hospitality and tourism take place out of the sight of guests, it is important that employees of the hospitality and tourism industry conduct themselves in an ethical manner. A high level of self-management regarding emotional intelligence is important because it helps 78

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employees and managers alike avoid pitfalls such as being influenced negatively by others, being overly critical of themselves, taking on too much responsibility and not delegating tasks. This last behaviour could result in individuals ­becoming overly stressed and providing poor customer service encounters. 6.2.3  Social awareness A third area of emotional intelligence is social awareness. Social awareness is one’s ability to focus more on the other person than on oneself. This aspect of emotional intelligence is crucial to the hospitality and tourism industry. If an individual working within the hospitality and tourism industry conveys a message that they care more about themselves than about the customer, the perception of being uncaring and insensitive to customer needs changes the dynamic of the interaction and can result in the organization losing a potentially lifelong customer. In other words, can someone correctly identify the emotional state of someone they are interacting with and deliver an emotionally intelligent reaction? Focusing on the other person and their needs is an important aspect to the hospitality and tourism industry. Social awareness within the hospitality and tourism industry should revolve around the concepts of empathy and awareness of the organizational culture (Meinert, 2018). With customer satisfaction being such an important part of the service industry, having an understanding of the feelings of the customer could prove to be instrumental in creating an enhanced moment of truth for the hospitality and tourism operation (Goel and Hussein, 2015). Social awareness can be an integral part of creating a positive environment for both internal and external customers. By having a high level of social awareness, individuals working within the hospitality and tourism industry may be able to intercept a negative moment by reading a customer’s or co-worker’s emotional state (Momeni, 2009). Prime examples of being emotionally i­ ntelligent when it comes to social awareness are having service staff that can read the guest and suggestive sell menu items, frontline employees mentioning customers by name, or working with a manager who is very supportive of their co-workers. Activity Please read the following scenario: The management of a local hotel has decided that in order to increase revenues they will begin adding a service charge to all items charged directly to a guest room. Employees of the hotel have been instructed to ask all individuals purchasing items whether they would like the purchase charged to their room for convenience. The front desk has also been instructed that if a guest questions the convenience service charge, it may be removed. As a class, discuss the scenario. Do you think the hotel operation is exhibiting positive self-management practices? As you get involved in the discussion, please provide justification for your answers.

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6.2.4  Relationship management The fourth component of emotional intelligence is relationship management. Relationship management relates to interactions between individuals within the hospitality and tourism organization. These interactions are not limited to employee interactions but also include how employees interact and management relationships with customers. Typical behaviours that are often associated with relationship management include: coaching and mentoring, conflict management, influencing, providing inspirational leadership and promoting teamwork (Meinert, 2018). Coaching is an action designed to improve performance with an ­emphasis on addressing potential improvements immediately. Mentoring is more of a long-term approach and typically involves a more senior member of the organization entering into either a formal or an informal relationship in which knowledge and skills are transferred. Both coaching and mentoring are essential in the development of emotional intelligence within the hospitality and tourism industry. The focus of conflict management is to limit the negative effects of a situation while enhancing the potentially positive facets of that same situation. Again, this is an essential component in the development of one’s emotional intelligence abilities. Influencing is one’s ability to be an energy that drives people in a certain direction. Individuals who are highly emotionally intelligent are able to ­influence those around them in a positive way because they are able to identify their emotional states, gauge the emotional states of others and engage in behaviours that will move a given situation in a positive way. Inspirational leaders move individuals with their actions rather than just their words. Individuals with high emotional intelligence are able to inspire others with their behaviours and move others to increase their abilities when it comes to managing their emotions and the emotions of others. Promoting teamwork relies on having a high level of emotional intelligence. Components of promoting teamwork include providing good leadership, being able to communicate the objectives and goals of those involved with the team, being able to effectively engage in conflict resolution and delivering a message that will keep the team positive. Within the hospitality and tourism industry, working within a team is necessary, and increased levels of emotional intelligence can help all members of the team to be better teammates and provide better customer service. Each of the above-mentioned behaviours, when executed in a positive manner, promotes a positive work environment that in turn helps to create a positive environment for both internal and external customers of various hospitality and tourism operations.

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6.3  Emotional Intelligence and Personality Many hospitality and tourism organizations are always searching for individuals that display certain characteristics. Figure 6.1 displays personality traits that are associated with success. Often these characteristics are associated with personality traits (Ariyabuddhiphongs and Marican, 2015). ­Research has shown that one’s emotional intelligence can be related to personality (Kim and Agrusa, 2011). Within the hospitality and tourism industry, personality tests have gained popularity as an employment selection tool (Liu and Madera, 2013). Personality tests used as selection tools within the hospitality and tourism industry include the Myers–Briggs test, DISC assessment and True Colors assessment. The Myers–Briggs test has its association with emotional intelligence because it focuses on how an individual perceives the world and makes decisions. The Myers–Briggs test focuses not only on what you think about a given situation but why you behaved the way you did. These elements of the Myers–Briggs test are very similar to the elements of emotional intelligence in that emotional intelligence looks at why an individual is having the emotional reactions they are having, how they are interpreting the emotions of others and how an individual can better manage their ­actions after obtaining that information. An example of the Myers–Briggs personality profiles can be found in Fig. 6.2.

Decisiveness

Resilience

Integrity Personality traits needed for success

Interpersonal sensitivity

Influence Self-awareness

Motivation

Fig. 6.1.  Personality traits needed for success. (Adapted from Free Management Ebooks, 2018.)

Emotional Intelligence and its Relationship with Personality, Gender, Age and Culture 81

Interpretation

Displays levels of seeking harmonious relationships

Displays levels of innovation and creativity

Displays levels of being very action driven and taking things into their own hands

Displays levels of gentleness and creates an environment that is practical for all involved

Displays levels of ideal situations and focuses on internal growth and development

Displays levels of creativity in solving various types of problems

Displays levels of mediation between individuals to help solve problems

Displays levels of sound judgement and enjoys helping others in ways that can easily be measured

Displays levels of enthusiasm for engaging in new and innovative projects

Displays levels of being accepting of new challenges

Displays levels of authority and completing tasks in a very organized manner

Displays levels of high energy, providing happiness to others, and being active and productive

Displays levels of strong communication with those around them to create a strong connection

Displays levels of being able to organize groups to complete long-term plans and goals

Reasoning

Uses intuition

Extroverted behaviour

Opinion formation

Level of instinct Displays levels of care to others

Introverted behaviour

Opinion formation

Awareness Displays levels of sincerity and very analytical

Reasoning

Fig. 6.2.  Description of the various personality types that may influence e ­ motional intelligence. (Adapted from Myers et al., 1998.)

The DISC assessment focuses on personality type associated with certain behaviours. This personality assessment also finds itself closely associated with emotional intelligence in that the DISC assessment looks at behaviours and what motivates people to behave in certain ways given certain situations. The True Colors assessment is a variation on the Myers–Briggs test and also focuses on how personality types will behave in certain situations. An example of the DISC personality profiles can be found in Fig. 6.3. The True Colors assessment is designed to help individuals better understand themselves and the behaviours of others, which is very similar to the concept of emotional intelligence. The True Colors assessment focuses on knowing oneself and others to improve interactions within an organization. The True Colors assessment has been known to help individuals within an organization increase their conflict resolution skills, assist with increasing respect and trust within an organization, and encourage employees to be more active in the workplace. These traits/behaviours are very similar to those found in people with high levels of emotional intelligence and are the types of traits/behaviours that should be exhibited by frontline employees and 82

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Dominance

Influence

This factor is associated with control. Dominance individuals focus on achievement and power over others and the environment.

This factor is associated with an outgoing personality. Influence individuals focus on being very sociable and using their highly developed social skills to manage various situations.

D

I

C

S

Conscientiousness

Steadiness

This factor is typically associated with policy, procedure and rules. Conscientiousness individuals typically have certain codes of conduct that they follow in all situations.

This factor is associated with a very calculated and steady approach. Steadiness individuals are rare in comparison with other factors of the DISC. Steadiness individuals typically display a high level of patience.

Fig. 6.3.  Description of the DISC assessment personality profiles that may impact an individual’s emotional intelligence. (Adapted from Peoplekeys, 2018.)

managers within hospitality and tourism operations. An example of the True Colors personality profiles can be seen in Fig. 6.4. However, a personality assessment tool that has a long-standing history of being used to assess potential employees, and an extensive research history associated with emotional intelligence, is the Five-Factor Model (Liu and Madera, 2013). This Big Five model is closely related to emotional ­intelligence. Personality characteristics within the Big Five model can impact an individual’s emotional intelligence in several ways (Hampson et al., 2016). One area where the Big Five model and emotional intelligence differ according to the research is that many consider personality traits to be generally set at an early age, with emotional intelligence being strengthened and developed as we age (Joseph et al., 2015). Research by Brown et al. (2016) suggests that the hospitality and tourism industry could use personality and emotional intelligence in tandem to help employees further develop their emotional intelligence levels, therefore developing a stronger connection with other employees and guests. An example of personality traits found in the Big Five model can be seen in Fig. 6.5. One aspect that highlights how personality and emotional intelligence are tied is that increased levels of emotional intelligence can be linked to how well a person is able to use their personality traits when handling the Emotional Intelligence and its Relationship with Personality, Gender, Age and Culture 83

GREEN

ORANGE

This True Color personality type is typically associated with being analytical. Characteristics of Green personality types include being drawn to challenges in their careers, entering relationships using their head instead of their heart, and as children focusing on asking questions from authority figures.

This True Color personality type is typically associated with being prompt and punctual. Characteristics of Gold personality types include providing organization and helping to maintain stability at work, maintaining conservative views or relationships, and as children typically following all policies, procedures, rules and regulations set.

This True Color personality type is typically associated with being spontaneous. Characteristics of Orange personality types include being bored at work with routine, seeking relationships with people with shared interests, and as children finding difficulty with the academic environment that did not involve experiential learning.

This True Color personality type is typically associated with being in tune with one’s emotions and the emotions of others. Characteristics of Blue personality types include helping coworkers lead more significant lives, harmony in relationships, and as children growing up being extremely imaginative and encouraging.

GOLD

BLUE

Fig. 6.4.  The True Colors assessment personality profiles. (Adapted from True Colors International, 2018.) Limited Restrictions

Mood, level of anxiousness

Careful or vigilant Personality Traits

Level of warmth and friendliness

Level of outgoing

Fig. 6.5.  An example of personality traits found in the Big Five model (From Cherry, 2018)

emotions of themselves and others. Handling a difficult situation where emotions may flare up within the hospitality and tourism industry is an essential element in successful service recoveries. However, despite the ­ ­research that discusses the positive relationship between personality traits 84

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and emotional intelligence, one criticism of emotional intelligence is that it is simply a reformulation of personality traits (Joseph et al., 2015), and some suggest that using personality tests are all that is necessary for talent assessment within the hospitality and tourism industry. Activity Go online to find and complete a free personality assessment. Then find and complete a free emotional intelligence assessment online. Review your results. Compare the results of each assessment. Compare your results with those of your classmates. Discuss the following questions with your classmates: 1.  Do you agree with the results of your personality assessment? 2.  Do you agree with the results of your emotional intelligence assessment? 3.  Do you see the need to take both assessments for employment, or do you feel taking one assessment is enough? 4.  Discuss whether one assessment is enough.

6.4  Emotional Intelligence and Gender Do emotional intelligence differences exist based on gender? The answer is not as simple as yes or no. When it comes to gender, much research has examined differences that may occur between men and women in a multitude of areas. Emotional intelligence research is no different. Roxburgh (1996) found that many studies had been conducted examining gender differences in how each gender participates in the workplace and handles its burdens. Research findings from the early 1990s found varying results with regard to differences that may exist between gender emotional intelligence levels (Salman and Nasreen, 2012). Based on the research of Salman and Nasreen (2012), some studies found no differences, whereas others found differences (see Table 6.1). This level of inconsistency in results was also found by Meshkat and Nejati (2017) who found that no statistical differences occurred between men and women with regard to overall emotional intelligence, but women did have higher overall scores within the USA. Even though statistically significant differences in overall emotional intelligence were not evident, differences in certain areas of emotional intelligence were visible. What is being explored and reported more often now is that certain areas of emotional intelligence are more prevalent based on gender. A specific area where an emotional intelligence difference level is evident is in empathy. For instance, in the literature review conducted by Meshkat and Nejati (2017), women were found to be more skilful at emotional intelligence areas related to interpersonal skills. Females were also found to be more empathic and better at emotion-related perceptions. These findings are supported by the research findings of Goleman (2018). This difference is Emotional Intelligence and its Relationship with Personality, Gender, Age and Culture 85

Table 6.1.  Emotional intelligence and gender strengths. Gender

Strengths

Male

Stress tolerance Self-regard Social responsibility Empathy Interpersonal relationships

Female

vital and important to note because, according to ODell (2016), empathy is the key to great customer service. Other areas where men and women differed with regard to emotional intelligence was around the concepts of dealing with and understanding their own emotions and their expression of emotions. Meshkat and Nejati (2017) found that females were more skilled at understanding and expressing their own emotions. This difference could be attributed to the feelings in many societies that men should not express emotions as it could be interpreted as a sign of weakness. One emotional intelligence area in which men outscored their female counterparts was in the area related to effective leadership. However, when it came to the emotional intelligence area of self-management, it was found that women scored higher than men with regard to ethical behaviour. With regard to controlling one’s emotions, men outscored women in this area and men also overestimated how emotionally intelligent they really were. These gender differences could be pivotal for hospitality and tourism organizations moving forward because, according to Schoffstall (2015), there are approximately twice as many females enrolled in hospitality and tourism management programmes as men. Having a potentially large employment pool with an emotional intelligence competence that is potentially related to improved customer service experiences could prove to be very beneficial to the hospitality and tourism organization’s bottom line. Hospitality organizations should encourage empathy as an attitude because showing empathy could directly impact the bottom line of an organization (ODell, 2016).

6.5  Emotional Intelligence and Age Individuals in different age groups react differently to various situations. According to the Center for Generational Kinetics (2015), there are five different generational types currently engaging with each other in various workforce settings causing unprecedented workplace issues. Factors that have led to this phenomenon of multiple generations working together ­include: (i) better healthcare resulting in people living longer and healthier lives; (ii) individuals not having the financial resources to exit the workforce; (iii) older generations being forced to stay in the workforce longer to help support older children that have not been able to gain financial freedom; (iv) and some individuals just feeling the need to stay in the workforce longer. 86

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The generations that are currently working together in various industries around the world are: traditionalist, baby boomers, Generation X, millennials/Generation Y and Generation Z. Traditionalist typically refers to those born before 1945. Baby boomers typically refers to those born between the years 1946 and 1964. Individuals that are part of Generation X were typically born between the years of 1965 and 1976. Millennials or Generation Y refers to those born between the years of 1977 and 1995, and Generation Z refers to those born after 1996. Each of the generations has their own unique way of interacting and perceiving the world around them. See Table 6.2 for the differences that exist between these generations. Their reactions to various situations also can vary at times, leading each of the generations to conflict with each other based on personality and emotional intelligence differences. For example, traditionalists prefer formality, following a chain of command and basing decisions for the future on what has worked in the past. Traditionalists typically display a great ability to emotionally self-manage, as do baby boomers. Baby boomers are a generation that grew up respecting authority. Baby boomers also exhibit a high level of optimistic thinking and seek consensus when leading groups before making decisions. This boomer generation also places a high level of value on knowing self-worth and having an attitude that they could change the world. Generation X aspire to achieve more than previous generations but also crave a healthy work–life balance. They also exhibit a personality that is very different from the boomer generation in that they are very sceptical and tend to favour those that display competence when making decisions that will impact the workplace. Generation Y are considered the generation of excess and the generation of superior comfort with technology. Finally, Generation Z, which is one of the largest generations making up approximately 24% of the population according to the US Census estimates, have always lived life in a technology-driven environment, and are driven by social justice and sustainability issues. These differences in personality and world views could create issues within the workplace, especially when generational groups with wide age differences are working ­together. This potentially is an issue for hospitality and tourism organizations because many find themselves hiring very young workers. Based on information reported by Statistica (2018), over 40% of the restaurant industry in the USA is made up of workers 24 years of age and below. This poses a potential problem as emotional intelligence is not as developed at a younger age, ­although it may develop and increase with age (Esnaola et al., 2017).

Activity As a group, discuss issues that arise when you deal with individuals from different age/generational groups. Discuss what you may have been able to do to help the situation. What components of emotional intelligence do you feel are most prevalent in each age/generational group?

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Table 6.2.  Generational work differences. Topic

Traditionalist

Baby boomer

Generation X

Generation Y

Generation Z

Challenges

•  Does not go against the system •  Does not like conflict

•  Does not like conflict •  Sometimes puts more focus on the method than on the result •  Feels people who do not commit a lot of time to work are not dedicated to success

• Doubtful •  Does not trust authority •  Does not have strong attachment to leadership position •  Tries to complete tasks on own and does not delegate

•  Is naturally able to change jobs •  Wants a very relaxed and playful demeanor at work

•  Less likely to engage in civic activities

•  Desires feedback but not too much

•  Likes frequent, honest feedback

•  Likes immediate feedback

Insights

•  Does not like individuals who do not pay their dues •  Not as aware of cross-cultural lifestyles Communication •  Does not desire feedback, but wants to know if they are doing a good job

•  Sometimes seen as •  Looks to the internet for taking on too much information because of their gathering multi-tasking capabilities •  Prefers face-toface conversations with management

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6.6  Emotional Intelligence and Culture Cultural intelligence and understanding have become increasingly important to those in the hospitality and tourism industry because of how different cultures interact with one another. According to the World Tourism Organization (2018), international tourism increased 7% in 2017 and this growth is expected to continue into 2018. Regions that have been highlighted with regard to world travel include Europe, Asia and the Pacific, the Americas, Africa and the Middle East. With international tourism increasing from year to year, it is important that individuals working within the hospitality and tourism industries understand the differences that exist emotionally b ­ etween these vastly different cultures. The hospitality and tourism industry is also finding that individuals from different cultural backgrounds are working together (Scott-Halsell et al., 2013). A framework for cultural differences created by Hofstede (2015) outlines differences in culture that may have an influence on how different people from different cultures develop the skill of emotional intelligence (Taras et al., 2010). The cultural dimensions discussed and outlined by Hofstede include: (i) individualism versus collectivism; (ii) power distance; (iii) femininity versus masculinity; (iv) uncertainty avoidance; (v) pragmatic versus normative; and (vi) indulgence versus restraint. Individualism versus collectivism refers to the level of strength that exists in cultural societies’ ties to one another. A study conducted by Meshkat and Nejati (2017) found that a culture’s level of individualism/collectivism had significant implications on all areas of emotional intelligence, including overall emotional intelligence levels. Power distance is the level of inequality that exists and that is acceptable to those within a particular culture. Research has found that power distance does have an impact on the emotional state of individuals within an organization and can have a positive or negative impact on emotional labour depending on the level of power distance that exists (Rebekka et al., 2017). Femininity versus masculinity is referring to the cultural norms with regard to the roles that are acceptable to males and females. As discussed earlier in this chapter, gender has an impact on various areas of emotional intelligence. Uncertainty avoidance refers to a culture’s ability to deal with ambiguity or anxiety. Matsumoto (1989) found that cultures that have high levels of uncertainty avoidance are always stressful and worried about the stresses of everyday life and exhibit behaviours that are opposite to those with high levels of emotional intelligence. Pragmatic versus normative refers to a society’s desire or need to explain that which is considered unexplainable, such as religion. Having a high level of emotional intelligence is essential, especially when engaging in conversations in, or visiting, countries that have high levels of religion or nationalism ­because of the high levels of emotional attachment that exist among individuals in society and their dedication to their faith or patriotism for their country. Emotional Intelligence and its Relationship with Personality, Gender, Age and Culture 89

Table 6.3.  Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. Cultural dimension

Description

Individualistic/collectivistic

How individual goals and needs are prioritized compared with the goals and needs of the group The rules set forth for men and women in different societies How comfortable people are with following the preferred way of doing things One’s ability to accept the unequal distribution of power in society Long- versus short-term planning and perspectives Allowing for gratification and having fun versus limits of gratification and fun through strict social norms

Masculine/feminine Uncertainty avoidance Power distance Time perspective Indulgence/restraint

The final cultural variable offered by Minkov and Hofstede (2010) is the indulgence versus restraint paradigm. The indulgence/restraint dimension refers to an individual’s desire for self-gratification of drives and emotions (Koc, 2017; Koc, et al., 2017). This cultural dimension of Hofstede’s is closely related to emotional intelligence and how customer service is ­delivered (Table 6.3). Compared with high-restraint cultures, people in ­indulgence ­cultures may attach more importance to leisure and pleasure, which results in more hedonistic behaviours (Koc et al., 2017). Thus, both customers and employees from indulgence and restraint cultures may have different perceptions of tourism and hospitality activities and may show different behaviours. For example, in the USA, it is essential that customers see happiness on the faces of those who are serving them. One must have a high level of emotional intelligence in the USA if one wishes to portray that image despite having a very difficult and emotionally draining day. However, in cultural societies where indulgence is not the norm, the expression of happiness when happiness is not truly being felt by the customer service employee would be considered a fake and lacklustre hospitality and tourism experience. It is important that individuals involved in the hospitality and tourism industry understand both cultural and emotional intelligence because of the linkages that have been found to exist between the two competencies (­Rivera and Lee, 2016).

6.7 Conclusion This chapter outlined and explained the various aspects that may influence one’s emotional intelligence. It also showed that employees within the hospitality and tourism industry may be influenced by several factors that drive their emotional intelligence levels, but those within the industry that have a

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higher level of emotional intelligence can create memorable service encounters and increase their chances of career success. Information presented in this chapter shows that emotional intelligence is a measurable skill that may be developed over time and may be influenced by factors such as personality type, gender, age and cultural background. Hospitality and tourism businesses hoping to develop a positive environment for internal and external customers should recruit individuals with higher levels of emotional intelligence. It is also suggested that hospitality and tourism organizations monitor and invest in emotional intelligence development for their employees.

Questions 1.  What is the difference between hard skills and soft skills? How do these emotions relate to service encounters, service failures and recovery? 2.  How can emotional intelligence be measured? How many aspects of emotional intelligence are there? Which aspect of emotional intelligence is the most important for success within the hospitality and tourism industry? 3.  What are the components of emotional intelligence? How do they relate to service encounters, service failures and recovery? 4. How does personality influence one’s emotional intelligence? How does personality differ from emotional intelligence? How are personality and emotional ­intelligence similar? 5. Which gender has higher levels of emotional intelligence? How does one’s gender impact overall emotional intelligence? What components of emotional ­intelligence are impacted most by gender? 6. How does age influence emotional intelligence? What can the hospitality and tourism industry do to help younger individuals increase their emotional intelligence levels? 7.  How does one’s cultural background impact emotional intelligence? 8.  Discuss the importance of incorporating emotional intelligence principles in a hospitality and tourism recruitment, training and employee retention programme.

Further Reading Hofstede, G.J. (2015) Culture’s causes: the next challenge. Cross Cultural ­Management: an International Journal 22(4), 545–569. Kim, H.J. and Agrusa, J. (2011) Hospitality service employees’ coping styles: the role of emotional intelligence, two basic personality traits, and socio-demographic factors. International Journal of Hospitality Management 30(3), 588–598. Matsumoto, D. (1989) Cultural influences on the perception of emotion. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 20(1), 92–105. Meshkat, M. and Nejati, R. (2017) Does emotional intelligence depend on gender? A study on undergraduate English majors of three Iranian universities. SAGE Open 7(3).

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References Ariyabuddhiphongs, V. and Marican, S. (2015) Big five personality traits and turnover intention among Thai hotel employees. International Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Administration 16(4), 355–374. Băeşu, C. and Bejinaru, R. (2015) Innovative leadership styles and the influence of emotional intelligence. USV Annals of Economics & Public Administration 15(3), 136–145. Botha, S. and Musengi, S. (2012) Introduction to Business Management: Fresh Perspectives. Pearson, Cape Town, South Africa. Brown, T., Williams, B. and Etherington, J. (2016) Emotional intelligence and personality traits as predictors of occupational therapy students’ practice education performance: a cross-sectional study. Occupational Therapy International 23(4), 412–424. Center for Generational Kinetics (2015) Five generations of employees in today’s workforce: managers and leaders face an unprecedented challenge. Available at: http://genhq.com/five-generations-of-employees-in-todays-workforce/ (accessed 15 March 2018). Cherry, K. (2018) The Big Five Personality Traits: 5 Major Factors of Person­ality. Available at: https://www.verywellmind.com/the-big-five-personality-dimensions2795422 (accessed 28 January 2019). Esnaola, I., Revuelta, L., Ros, I. and Sarasa, M. (2017) The development of emotional intelligence in adolescence. Anales de Psicología 33(2), 327–333. Free Management EBooks (2018) Measuring emotional intelligence. Available at: http://www.free-management-ebooks.com/faqpp/measuring-01.htm (accessed 8 October 2018). Gardenswartz, L., Cherbosque, J. and Rowe, A. (2010) Emotional intelligence and diversity: a model for differences in the workplace. Journal of Psychological Issues in Organizational Culture 1(1), 74–84. Goel, T. and Hussein, T. (2015) Impact of emotional intelligence on performance of employees in service industry. Global Journal of Enterprise Information System 7(3), 49–53. Goleman, D. (2018) Psychology Today. Available at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/experts/dan-goleman-phd (accessed 8 October 2018). Goleman, D. (1995) Emotional intelligence. In: Crainer, S. and Dearlove, D. (eds) The Ultimate Business Library: the Greatest Books that Made Management. Wiley, Hoboken, New Jersey. Hampson, S.E., Edmonds, G.W., Barckley, M., Goldberg, L.R., Dubanoski, J.P. and Hillier, T.A. (2016) A big five approach to self-regulation: personality traits and health trajectories in the Hawaii longitudinal study of personality and health. Psychology, Health & Medicine 21(2), 152–162. Hofstede, G.J. (2015) Culture’s causes: the next challenge. Cross Cultural Management: an International Journal 22(4), 545–569. Joseph, D.L., Jin, J., Newman, D.A. and O’Boyle, E.H. (2015) Why does self-reported emotional intelligence predict job performance? A meta-analytic investigation of mixed EI. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100(2), 298–342. Kim, H.J. and Agrusa, J. (2011) Hospitality service employees’ coping styles: the role of emotional intelligence, two basic personality traits, and socio-demographic factors. International Journal of Hospitality Management 30(3), 588–598. 92

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Koc, E. (2017) Cross-cultural aspects of service failures and recovery. In: Koc, E. (ed.) Service Failures and Recovery in Tourism and Hospitality: a Practical Manual. CAB International, Wallingford, UK, pp. 197–213. Koc, E., Ar, A.A. and Aydin, G. (2017) The potential implications of indulgence and restraint on service encounters in tourism and hospitality. Ecoforum Journal 6(3), 1–11. Liu, Q. and Madera, J.M. (2013) General mental ability and personality selection tests: applicant perceptions of fairness and validity in the hospitality industry. Journal of Human Resources in Hospitality & Tourism 12(3), 259–272. Matsumoto, D. (1989) Cultural influences on the perception of emotion. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 20(1), 92–105. Mayer, J.D. and Salovey, P. (1995) Emotional intelligence and the construction and regulation of feelings. Applied and Preventive Psychology 4(3), 197–208. Mayer, J.D., Salovey, P. and Caruso, D.R. (2004) Emotional intelligence: theory, findings, and implications. Psychological Inquiry 15(3), 197–215. Meinert, D. (2018) Are you an emotional genius? HR Magazine 63(2), 17–19. Meshkat, M. and Nejati, R. (2017) Does emotional intelligence depend on gender? A study on undergraduate English majors of three Iranian universities. SAGE Open 7(3). Minkov, M. and Hofstede, G. (2010) The evolution of Hofstede’s doctrine. Cross Cultural Management: an International Journal 18(1), 10–20. Momeni, N. (2009) The relation between managers’ emotional intelligence and the organizational climate they create. Public Personnel Management 38(2), 35–48. Myers, I.B., McCaulley, M.H., Quenk, N.L. and Hammer, A.L. (1998) MBTI® Manual: a Guide to the Development and Use of the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator, 3rd edn. Consulting Psychologists Press, Palo Alto, California. ODell, A. (2016) Empathy is the secret to hospitality customer service - and sales. Available at: https://ehotelier.com/insights/2016/08/10/empathy-secret-­ hospitality-­customer-service-sales/ (accessed 8 October 2018). Peoplekeys (2018) DISC insights. Available at https://discinsights.com/disc-theory (accessed 8 October 2018). Phipps, S.T.A. and Prieto, L.C. (2017) Why emotional intelligence is necessary for effective leadership: know the four reasons! Leadership Excellence Essentials 34(6), 56–57. Rebekka, E., Erin, N., Joseph, A. and Steven, R. (2017) Regulating emotions in response to power distance in meetings. Journal of Management Development 36(10), 1247–1259. Rivera. D., Jr and Lee, J. (2016) Does hospitality diversity education make a difference in undergraduate students’ emotional intelligence. Journal of Teaching in Travel & Tourism 16(2), 143–159. Roxburgh, S. (1996) Gender differences in work and well-being: effects of exposure and vulnerability. Journal of Health and Social Behavior 37(3), 265–277. Salman, S. and Nasreen, B. (2012) Gender differences in trait emotional intelligence: a comparative study. IBA Business Review 7(2), 106–112. Schoffstall, D.G. (2015) A profile of hospitality program characteristics and the gender composition of students and faculty. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Education 27(2), 69–79. Scott-Halsell, S.A., Blum, S.C. and Huffman, L. (2008) A study of emotional intelligence levels in hospitality industry professionals. Journal of Human Resources in Hospitality & Tourism 7(2), 135–152. Emotional Intelligence and its Relationship with Personality, Gender, Age and Culture 93

Scott-Halsell, S.A., Saiprasert, W. and Yang, J. (2013) Emotional intelligence differences: could culture be the culprit? Journal of Teaching in Travel & Tourism 13(4), 339–353. Statistica (2018) Distribution of restaurant employees in the United States in 2014, by age group. Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/384042/ distribution-­of-restaurant-employees-by-age-group-us/ (accessed 25 March 2018). Steyn, Z. and van Staden, L.J. (2018) Investigating selected self-management competencies of managers. Acta Commercii 18(1), 1–10. Taras, V., Steel, P. and Kirkman, B.L. (2010) Examining the impact of culture’s consequences: a three-decade, multilevel, meta-analytic review of Hofstede’s cultural value dimensions. Journal of Applied Psychology 95(3), 405–439. True Colors International (2018) The True Colors Personality Assessment. Available at: https://truecolorsintl.com/assessments (accessed 8 October 2018). Weber, M.R., Crawford, A., Lee, J. and Dennison, D. (2013) An exploratory analysis of soft skill competencies needed for the hospitality industry. Journal of Human Resources in Hospitality & Tourism 12(4), 313–332. World Tourism Organization (2018) UNWTO Tourism Highlights: 2018 Edition. UNWTO, Madrid, Spain. Zuckerman, J.D., Friedman, A. and Castro, M. (2018) Self-awareness: the ladder to leadership success. Chief Learning Officer 17(2), 16–19.

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7

Developing Intercultural Sensitivity as an Emotional Ability Anna Irimiás and Mariangela Franch

Learning Objectives After reading this chapter you should be able to: Define intercultural service encounters with examples. Indicate the role of culture in tourism and hospitality. Explain the need for soft skills in tourism and hospitality. Summarize and comment on Bennett’s (1986) Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity stages. ●● Analyse the possible outcomes of intercultural sensitivity training in undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. ●● ●● ●● ●●

7.1  Introduction: Intercultural Service Encounters Tourism constitutes one of the largest and fastest-growing economic sectors in several countries and has become an increasingly cross-border and cross-continent business, with more than 1200 million international tourist arrivals globally per year (Martini, 2017; UNWTO, 2017). This global business has led to an unprecedented intensification of intercultural service encounters, i.e. interactions and exchanges between consumers and service providers from diverse cultures (Sharma et al., 2012). Service encounters are dyadic in nature, and therefore the cultural backgrounds of both customers and service providers should be taken into consideration in managing social interactions (Vassou et al., 2017). Employing a diverse workforce – when managed well – not only creates competitive advantage for businesses but is also an ethical and (sometimes) legal obligation. The tourism and hospitality industry employs a high proportion of immigrant workers, and tensions and misunderstandings can arise from cultural differences (Janta et al. 2011; Alberti, 2014; Irimiás and Michalkó, 2016). Many people are ethnocentric and tend to prefer service employees whose culture and appearance are similar to theirs (Sharma et al., 2009).

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Perceived cultural distance may mean that different cultural behaviour provokes discomfort or is even considered discriminative. Perceptions of service quality are also influenced by other factors such as international travel experiences, communication skills or cultural barriers (Sharma et al., 2009). As Pantouvakis and Renzi (2016) found in their study carried out at Rome’s Fiumicino Airport servicescape, aesthetic, functional, safety and social aspects of the airport facilities were perceived and evaluated differently by passengers of different nationalities. In short, past research shows that intercultural service encounters impact service performance and consumer satisfaction (Sharma et al., 2012; Michalkó et al., 2015; Koc, 2017). Consumers’ different perceptions, behaviours, expectations and communication styles need to be understood so that efficient services can be designed, and disappointments avoided, thereby generating competitive advantage through successful service encounters (Olson and Kroeger, 2001; Irimiás and Michalkó, 2016; Kenesei and Stier, 2016). Highly competent, professional staff are required to deal effectively with culturally overlapping situations, to solve the problems of guests from different countries and to respond to the changing needs and wants of consumers in general (Baccarani et al., 2010).

7.2  Cultural Dimensions in Tourism and Hospitality Although the concept of ‘culture’ is defined in myriad ways, shared elements of the different definitions include attitudes, beliefs, values, language and self-­ definition. Cultural standards – along with age, education, social class and, norms – profoundly influence individuals’ thoughts, judgements and behaviours (Hofstede, 1994). Culture can be seen as an orientation system that shapes socialization processes in specific cultural environments and provides a framework for generally accepted behaviours (Holzmüller and Stöttinger, 2001). Most people are accustomed to perceiving the world in a certain way and, naturally, are often convinced that their perception is correct (and sometimes uniquely so). Hofstede’s (2010) revised and updated description of cultural dimensions includes the relatively stable cultural values that guide individuals in a society to act in a certain way and to evaluate themselves, others, and past and future events. The six cultural dimensions most frequently applied by researchers to the study of cultural differences are (Koc, 2013; Maleki and De Jong, 2014; Koc, 2017): 1.  Power distance: the extent to which the less powerful members of a society/group accept that power distribution is unequal. In small-powerdistance cultures, inequality is considered wrong, whereas in those with a large power distance, it is seen as normal. 2.  Uncertainty avoidance: the extent to which individuals in a society handle uncertain, ambiguous or unstructured situations. In uncertainty-accepting societies, difference may be seen as curious and attractive, whereas in ­ ­uncertainty-avoiding cultures, it is considered dangerous and threatening. 96

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3.  Individualism versus collectivism: in cultures where the former is valued, social ties between individuals are loose and people feel they can only rely on themselves, whereas in collectivist cultures, social ties are strong and enduring and thus create a sense of cohesion and protection within the group/society. Communication within the group/society in individualist cultures needs to be specific/explicit, while in collectivist cultures many things are obvious/implicitly understood. 4.  Femininity versus masculinity: in some cultures, the so-called feminine characteristics – such as cooperation, empathy, quality of life and consensus – dominate, whereas in others the focus is on personal achievement, competition, heroism, etc. 5.  Long or short-term orientation of a society: whether members are primarily concerned with the future, or focus more on past and present virtues, traditions and customs. 6.  Indulgence versus restraint: do individuals allow themselves gratification – consumption, sex, leisure or travelling – or are feelings and desires controlled by strict social rules? Activity Discover more about Hofstede’s cultural dimensions by visiting his online course:

http://www.geerthofstede.nl/ Check the various cultural dimensions on world maps at:

https://geerthofstede.com/culture-geert-hofstede-gert-jan-hofstede/6d-model-­ofnational-culture/

Research on intercultural encounters in a business environment between individuals from the USA – where key cultural standards are individualist, action orientated, ‘easy going’ and patriotic – and Germany – where formality, performing one’s duty and frankness are highly valued – showed Developing Intercultural Sensitivity as an Emotional Ability

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that negative stereotyping and misunderstandings were frequent among international partners (Holzmüller and Stöttinger, 2001). Since each society has its own cultural standards and cultural orientation systems, different modes of behaviour (e.g. touching customers or joking during service provision) can lead to misunderstandings or inappropriate actions, and elicit feelings of discomfort, insecurity, frustration and powerlessness/inability to react (Irimiás and Michalkó, 2016). Such interculturally challenging situations are difficult to cope with. Customers from diverse cultural backgrounds have different expectations of tourism and hospitality service providers. Research shows that tourists from individualistic cultures, such as North Americans or the Dutch, expect error-free services and are more likely to complain when disappointed (Koc, 2017). In contrast, customers from collectivist cultures, like the Japanese or Chinese, value harmony and avoid direct complaining but tend to express their disappointment to family and friends (Zhao and Lin, 2014). In collectivist cultures, social rather than individual needs are emphasized, and the well-being of the group is considered more important than that of the individual (Irimiás, 2013). Consumers, especially those from emerging markets, usually with less experience of travelling and greater communication difficulties, may feel that employees are discriminating against them by providing inadequate services; in such cases, low satisfaction levels result (Sharma et al., 2009; Kenesei and Stier, 2016; Koc, 2017). European service providers now need to be ‘Chinese ready’ for the still emerging Chinese outbound tourism market (Irimiás, 2013). Take an ordinary service such as room allocation, for instance: respecting social values, the oldest Chinese traveller in a group should be offered the best room. Disposable slippers and toothbrushes, along with Chinese brand instant noodles and green tea – which are standard in all hotels in China and consequently taken for granted by Chinese tourists – should be provided in rooms to make Chinese tourists feel more at ease.

7.3  Training on Intercultural Sensitivity in Tourism and Hospitality Employees in the tourism and hospitality industry almost invariably need to be educated in cultural differences (Holzmüller and Stöttinger, 2001); training managers and service providers to understand and deal with the models and practices of different cultures, and to develop cross-cultural awareness, empathy and emotional acceptance, is key to staying competitive in this market. However, knowledge about cultural differences – a cognitive dimension – should be encompassed by emotional intelligence and affective competence. Ashkanasy and Humphrey (2011) have examined the important role of emotions in organizational behaviour using affective events theory to describe the momentary variations of emotions in the workplace. 98

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University-level education in the soft skills required to manage intercultural service encounters is thus becoming increasingly important (Lugosi and Jameson, 2017). Competences such as high empathy, social openness, positive conversational management skills and even high self-esteem ease intercultural encounters (Koc, 2017). Intercultural sensitivity, although often neglected in management studies and practices, strongly influences organizational behaviour and work performance (Baccarani, 2010; Irimiás and Michalkó, 2016). Finally, this is the only area of the service industry in which robots or artificial intelligence cannot replace people (Ivanov et al., 2017). Intercultural contacts in tourism and hospitality are associated with issues such as communication gaps, stereotyping, prejudice, ethnocentrism and discrimination (Sharma et al., 2009), and the complex tasks involved in the management of the service industry require a culturally sensitive approach (Alshaibani and Bakir, 2017). Intercultural sensitivity can be defined as one’s perceptions of, and responses to, cultural differences (Jackson, 2015), and the ability to shift cultural perspective and adapt one’s behaviour to common cultural characteristics and differences, with positive attitudes of people towards different cultures (Hammer, 2013). Intercultural sensitivity is affected by many emotional factors such as self-respect and empathy, cognitive competences such as the number of foreign languages spoken, and life experience (i.e. foreign travel). As Milton Bennett (1986, p. 179), an expert in intercultural communication, points out, ‘intercultural sensitivity is not “natural” to any single culture, the development of this ability demands new awareness and attitudes’. This means that intercultural sensitivity can be taught and developed through experiences and reflective learning (Fox, 2003). Intercultural sensitivity is strongly linked to emotional and cultural intelligence, both highly relevant concepts in management (Baccarani, 2010). Emotional intelligence has been defined by Goleman (2006) as an individual’s potential to develop effective skills around self- and social consciousness and self-management. Emotional intelligence requires the ability to combine one’s perceptions of the emotions of self and others, and to understand, use and manage them (Ashkanasy and Humphrey, 2011). The emotions play a key role in communication, and individuals tend to recognize them more accurately when they are expressed by people with a similar cultural background. Cultural intelligence, in turn, can be defined as the ability to develop adaptative and coping strategies and thus act effectively in culturally diverse environments – such as tourism and hospitality – thereby reducing discomfort and stress for all concerned (Irimiás and Michalkó, 2016; Kenesei and Kolos, 2016; Darvishmotevali et al., 2018). To communicate and be effective in service delivery with individuals from another culture, cultural differences must be acknowledged and understood. Interculturally competent people/individuals are able to modify their behaviour and communication and display emotions that respect the standards of other cultures. Having interculturally competent managers and personnel improves service quality, raises company Developing Intercultural Sensitivity as an Emotional Ability

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reputation and reduces service failures (Tse and Ho, 2009; Koc, 2010; Yurur et al., 2018). A certain degree of attention is paid to the development of soft skills, such as intercultural sensitivity, in contemporary tourism and hospitality management education. This is one of the reasons why exchange programmes such as Erasmus, Erasmus+ and summer schools abroad are promoted. However, findings show that, contrary to the general assumption of university administrations, such international experiences do not automatically lead to intercultural sensitivity or competence. In fact, students who, when abroad, associate almost exclusively with fellow nationals or react to different cultural behaviours with denial or defence, fail to capitalize on their international experience and, instead of becoming more interculturally competent, are often actually even more ethnocentric when they come home than they were when they left (Meyer-Lee, 2005; Szkudlarek, 2010; Jackson, 2012). Whether an international exchange programme leads to the development of intercultural sensitivity depends on the hosting community, the student’s personal traits and the acculturation strategies in place (Behrnd and Porzelt, 2012). Whether or not someone is prepared for culturally challenging situations in which their personal beliefs are threatened is also a relevant factor. Understanding cultural norms, attitudes and behavioural differences and the ability to study and/or work in a foreign cultural environment define intercultural competence. Such competence can be developed through students’ critical reflection on their experiences, interaction with culturally different people in which tasks are fulfilled without stress and discomfort, and other practices designed to engage students’ minds and emotions in a transformative process (Behrnd and Porzelt, 2012). For this reason, the key steps and activities to follow for a course within tourism and hospitality management programmes are summarized below.

7.4  Key Stages and Activities for Training in I­ntercultural Sensitivity Ideally, this course should be designed for students with previous international experience (study or residence abroad, participation in Erasmus or similar international exchange programmes, volunteering, internships, educational travel) who have had direct experience of foreign environments that can be recalled and built upon during the course. However, since the course activities are based on critical self-reflection and willingness to learn about other cultures, students without any direct foreign experience can also benefit. Before the course begins, it is essential to know who the participants are and to measure some of their specific cognitive and affective characteristics in order to assess their actual levels of intercultural sensitivity (Jackson, 2015). The Critical Incident Questionnaire and the Multicultural Personality 100

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­ uestionnaire are useful research tools to measure individual and social Q intercultural competence (Behrnd and Porzelt, 2012). In structuring the course, Bennett’s (1986) Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS) and its updated version, the Intercultural Development Continuum (Hammer, 2011), are considered useful guides to monitor students’ intercultural development through reflective learning and active engagement with cultural differences. The aim is to make students open to intercultural differences, to decrease their sense of discomfort when in culturally diverse and challenging situations, to develop their empathy towards culturally different individuals and to raise their tolerance of ambiguity. In DMIS, Bennett (1986) defines six stages of development from adaptation and integration towards the acquisition of intercultural sensitivity (Table 7.1). These stages show how people construe, experience and think about cultural differences. The aim is to overcome cultural isolation since minimal or non-existent interaction with difference can lead to negative stereotyping and a belief in the unquestioned superiority of one’s own culture (Hammer et al., 2003). To cite Holzmüller and Stöttinger (2001, p. 602), ‘Participants need to realize that misunderstandings are not a result of personality or character but are due to the unreflective transfer of home-country cultural patterns.’ Three stages of ethno-relativism can be identified: acceptance, adaptation and integration (Table 7.2). In Western cultures, the golden rule is to ‘treat others as you would wish to be treated’. This rule, however, does not necessarily recognize that cultural values, and thus the perceived benefits of certain behaviours, differ; it often operates according to ethno-relative values and perspectives (what I/my culture consider(s) to be appropriate). An individual’s shift from an ethnocentric to an ethno-relativist perspective involves cognitive effort and deep reflection on difference: on both their own cultural identity and that of others. In this process, affective competences, such as a positive attitude towards foreign cultures and a willingness to free one’s mind from prejudice, stereotyping and negative evaluations, should be developed alongside the cognitive aspects involved (Behrnd and Porzelt, 2012). Ethnocentrism, social inhibition and rigid behaviour in Table 7.1.  Stages of the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS). (Adapted from Bennett, 1986; Hammer, 2011.) Stages Denial Defence Minimization Acceptance Adaptation Integration

Ethnocentric stages when one’s culture is perceived as central to reality. To be ethnocentric means that you make life choices and act based on the assumption that your worldview is superior. Ethno-relative stages when one’s culture is perceived in the context of other cultures. Ethno-relativism assumes that behaviour can only be understood within a cultural context.

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Table 7.2.  Training in intercultural sensitivity – students’ DMIS levels accounted for. (Adapted from Bennett, 1986; Olson and Kroeger, 2001; Hammer et al., 2003.) DMIS stage

Description

Training activities to develop intercultural sensitivity

Denial, parochialism

People in this phase are isolated and have very limited contact with cultural differences. For example, people who say that ‘Asians are different from Westerners’ operate with wide categories and deny any differences between Asian cultures. Cultural differences are perceived, but these differences are seen to threaten one’s own worldview. Defence is a reaction to perceived threat. Denigration of other cultures and a sense of superiority/ excessive pride in one’s own culture dominate.

•• Organization of ‘cultural nights’, (e.g. a Korean, Chinese or Japanese night where music, dance, costumes and food are exhibited). •• Discussions on travelogues (e.g. on the Dutch author Cees Nooteoom’s essays and travelogues on Japan), and history lectures.

Defence, negative stereotyping

Minimization

Individuals at this stage are less judgemental but minimize differences and assume that ‘really, we are all the same’. Cultural differences are often trivialized.

•• Discussions on what is ‘good’ about one’s own culture, accompanied by the discussion of ‘good’ things about other ­cultures aimed at positive comparison and the mitigation of conflict. •• Lessons in the traditional dances of minority groups. •• Trying out typical breakfasts from all around the world followed by discussions of eating habits. •• Creative use of non-didactic literature for intercultural training (travel books such as Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad) or watching ethnographic films (like Tanna (2017), set in the South Pacific). •• Multicultural group discussions on different power distances, or masculine or feminine cultural dimensions. •• Simulating incidents in reallife settings (e.g. establishing contact with a foreign person to solve a problem set by the instructor). Continued

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Table 7.2. Continued. DMIS stage

Description

Acceptance

Individuals realize that one’s •• Reading non-didactic literature such as George Orwell’s own worldview is a Burmese Days (1934). relative cultural construct •• Interactive simulations (e.g. and different cultural critical incidents), listening to norms are viable. Value accounts of personal and behaviour differences experiences, other illustrations are respected but not of substantial cultural evaluated. differences in the interpretation of behaviour. •• Simulations of problematic situations in which the different emotional displays of (culturally) different participants need to be understood. Individuals at this stage are •• Actual face-to-face situations to communicate with participants cross-culturally aware: from different cultures. they can empathize with •• Outside assignments such as individuals from other interviewing people from cultures and can different cultures. intentionally shift their frames of cultural reference and behaviour. People at this stage work on •• Construction of the trainee’s personal ethic. the integration of multiple aspects of their identity into a coherent whole in order to avoid (the effects of) culture shock. Individuals develop healthy self-concepts and high self-esteem.

Adaptation

Integration

Training activities to develop intercultural sensitivity

­ ncertain or ambiguous situations all hinder the development of interculu tural sensitivity and competence. The students’ evolution is guided by lectures, readings, writings, discussions, interactive role simulations and field experiments; since ‘fiction is an excellent vehicle for portraying values’ (Fox, 2003, p. 121), interculturally relevant films and literature are very effective at unlocking students’ emotions, enabling them to empathize with fictional characters and to reflect on their own experiences. As students become more interculturally sensitive,

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they forge intercultural communication skills. Individuals at the ethno-­ relativist stage do not feel the need to defend their culture and are therefore less discriminative. Curiosity about other cultures increases, and self- and social consciousness develop through a heightened ability to decode different cultural behaviours and greater knowledge of one’s own culture. It is suggested that students at the last – integration – stage of DMIS should work on their personal ethics. Having understood that different cultures have different ethical codes, a clear awareness of one’s own personal ethics is crucial. Such an awareness should – it is hoped – help to reduce unethical behaviour within the service industry and lead to more responsible working practices (Dimitriou and Ducette, 2018).

7.5 Conclusion This chapter has investigated the role of intercultural sensitivity in service encounters and the importance of training to develop interculturally competent individuals. Intercultural sensitivity is not a natural human quality; most people are inclined to fear difference and to rely on their own culture values. In the service industry, managers’ and employees’ attitudes and behaviours are sometimes determined by whether they belong to a dominant or a minority culture (Sharma et al., 2009). It is suggested that, in order to increase the service satisfaction of guests from different cultural backgrounds and to maintain international competitiveness, members of dominant host cultures need to adopt customer-oriented management practices and invest in the d ­ evelopment of intercultural sensitivity. Intercultural sensitivity includes open-mindedness, resistance to stereotyping, complex thinking and perspective consciousness – all key competences for future managers (Olson and Kroeger, 2001; Baccarani, 2005). The understanding of, and sensitivity to, cultural difference leads to less stressful cross-cultural interactions. Intercultural sensitivity training is particularly relevant for contemporary tourism and hospitality management education, in several contexts: ●● Universities aiming to internationalize their campuses by attracting foreign students whose attitude, behaviour and worldview need to be understood. ●● International exchange programmes; these are promoted as beneficial in developing new competences, but without reflective learning on intercultural sensitivity may only have a limited impact on personal development. ●● University courses aiming to train students to be competent in a globalized world; in this process, soft skills such as intercultural sensitivity can play a significant role. Although the course activities have been designed primarily for students with international and intercultural experiences, students with limited international experience should nevertheless also benefit from them. 104

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Questions 1.  Which of the dimensions mentioned in the course/module texts are considered important in studying cultural differences? Explain. 2.  Explain why, in order to be able to respond to the different sensibilities and requirements of tourists from different cultures, it is necessary that a willingness to free one’s mind from prejudice, stereotyping and negative evaluations should be developed alongside cognitive aspects. 3.  Indicate three types of tourism service in which intercultural sensitivity needs to be considered by the management (services offered for South Koreans, or Spaniards, for example). 4.  Based on the model elaborated by Bennett (1986) and Hammer (2011), indicate three possible training activities to develop intercultural sensitivity in a university faculty with a high number of students from the Caucasus and China. 5.  Describe what the major obstacles may be to the implementation of the training activities proposed in question 4.

Further Reading Bennett, M. (1986) A developmental approach to training for intercultural sensitivity. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 10(2), 179–196. Darvishmotevali, M., Altinay, L. and De Vita, G. (2018) Emotional intelligence and creative performance: looking through the lens of environmental uncertainty and cultural intelligence. International Journal of Hospitality Management 73, 44–54. Jackson, J. (2015) Becoming interculturally competent: theory to practice in international education. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 48, 91–107. Koc, E. (2013) Power distance and its implications for upward communication and empowerment: crisis management and recovery in hospitality services. International Journal of Human Resource Management 24(19), 3681–3696.

References Alberti, G. (2014) Mobile strategies, ‘mobility differentials’ and ‘transnational exit’: the experiences of precarious migrants in London’s hospitality jobs. Work, ­Employment and Society 28(6), 865−881. Alshaibani, E. and Bakir, A. (2017) Reading a cross-cultural service encounter: exploring the relationship between cultural intelligence, employee performance and service quality. Tourism and Hospitality Research 17(3), 249–263. Ashkanasy, N.M. and Humphrey, R.H. (2011) Current emotion research in organizational behaviour. Emotion Review 3(2), 22−30. Baccarani, C. (2005) Diario di viaggio sul treno che non va in nessun posto. Riflessioni per chi vive l’impresa. Giappichelli, Torino, Italy. Baccarani, C. (2010) Complessità e intelligenza manageriale. Sinergie 81, 97–111. Developing Intercultural Sensitivity as an Emotional Ability

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Baccarani, C., Ugolini, M. and Bonfati, A. (2010) A conceptual service quality map: the value of a wide opened perspective. In: Proceedings of the 13th Toulon– Verona Conference on ‘Organizational Excellence in Services’. University of Coimbra, Portugal, pp. 873–892. Behrnd, V. and Porzelt, S. (2012) Intercultural competence and training outcomes of students with experiences abroad. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 36(2), 213–223. Bennett, M. (1986) A developmental approach to training for intercultural sensitivity. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 10(2), 179–196. Darvishmotevali, M., Altinay, L. and De Vita, G. (2018) Emotional intelligence and creative performance: looking through the lens of environmental uncertainty and cultural intelligence. International Journal of Hospitality Management 73, 44–54. Dimitriou, C. and Ducette, J.P. (2018) An analysis of the key determinants of hotel employees’ ethical behaviour. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management 24, 66–74. Fox, F.F. (2003) Reducing intercultural friction through fiction: virtual cultural learning. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 27(1), 99–123. Goleman, D. (2006) Intelligenza emotiva. Rizzoli, Milan, Italy. Hammer, M.R. (2011) Additional cross-cultural validity testing of the Intercultural Development Inventory. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 35(4), 474–484. Hammer, M.R. (2013) A Resource Guide for Effectively Using the Intercultural ­Development Inventory (IDI). IDI, LLC, Berlin, Maryland. Hammer, M.R., Bennett, M.J. and Wiseman, R. (2003) Measuring intercultural sensitivity: the intercultural development inventory. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 27(3), 421–443. Hofstede, G. (1994) Cultures and Organizations. HarperCollins, London. Hofstede, G. (2010) Dimension data matrix. Available at: https://geerthofstede.com/ research-and-vsm/vsm-2013/ (accessed 4 May 2018). Holzmüller, H.H. and Stöttinger, B. (2001) International marketing managers’ cultural sensitivity: relevance, training requirements and a pragmatic training concept. International Business Review 10(6), 597–614. Irimiás, A. (2013) Traveling patterns of Chinese immigrants living in Budapest. Journal of China Tourism Research 9(2), 180–190. Irimiás, A. and Michalkó, G. (2016) Hosting while being hosted: a perspective of Hungarian migrant hospitality workers in London, UK. Travel and Hospitality Research 16(2), 172–183. Ivanov, S., Webster, C. and Berezina, K. (2017) Adoption of robots and service automation by tourism and hospitality companies. Revista Turismo & Desenvolvimento 27/28, 1501–1517. Jackson, J. (2012) Education abroad. In: Jackson, J. (ed.) The Handbook of Language and Intercultural Communication. Routledge, London, pp. 229–463. Jackson, J. (2015) Becoming interculturally competent: theory to practice in international education. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 48, 91–107. Janta, H., Lugosi, P., Brown, L. and Ladkin, A. (2011) Migrant networks, language learning and tourism employment. Tourism Management 33(2), 431−439. Kenesei, Z. and Kolos, K. (2016) Az érzelmek és az észlelt kontroll szerepe a vállalati panaszkezelés során. Vezetéstudomány 47(9), 15–25. 106

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Kenesei, Z. and Stier, Z. (2016) Managing communication and cultural barriers in intercultural service encounters: strategies from both sides of the counter. Journal of Vacation Marketing 23(4), 307–321. Koc, E. (2010) Services and conflict management: cultural and European integration perspectives. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 34(1), 88–96. Koc, E. (2013) Power distance and its implications for upward communication and empowerment: crisis management and recovery in hospitality services. International Journal of Human Resource Management 24(19), 3681–3696. Koc, E. (2017) Cross-cultural aspects of service failures and recovery. In: Koc, E. (ed.) Service Failures and Recovery in Tourism and Hospitality: a Practical Manual. CAB International, Wallingford, UK. Lugosi, P. and Jameson, S. (2017) Challenges in hospitality management education: perspectives from the United Kingdom. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management 31, 163–172. Maleki, A. and De Jong, M. (2014) A proposal for clustering the dimensions of ­ national culture. Cross-cultural Research 48(2), 107–143. Martini, U. (ed.) (2017) Management e marketing delle destinazioni turistiche ­territoriali. Metodi, approcci e strumenti. McGrawHill Education, Milan, Italy. Meyer-Lee, E. (2005) Bringing it home: follow-up courses for study abroad r­ eturnees. In: Internationalizing Undergraduate Education: Integrating Study Abroad into the Curriculum. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, pp. 114–116. Michalkó, G., Irimiás, A. and Timothy, D. (2015) Disappointment in tourism: perspectives on tourism destination management. Tourism Management Perspectives 16, 85–91. Olson, C.L. and Kroeger, K.L. (2001) Global competency and intercultural sensitivity. Journal of Studies in International Education 5(2), 116–137. Orwell, G. (1934) Burmese Days. Harper & Brothers, New York. Pantouvakis, A. and Renzi, M.F. (2016) Exploring different nationality perceptions of airport service quality. Journal of Air Transport Management 52, 90–98. Sharma, P., Tam, J.L.M. and Kim, N. (2009) Demystifying intercultural service ­encounters: toward a comprehensive conceptual framework. Journal of Service Research 12(2), 227–242. Sharma, P., Tam, J.L.M. and Kim, N. (2012) Intercultural service encounters (ICSE): an extended framework and empirical validation. Journal of Services Marketing 26(7), 521–534. Szkudlarek, B. (2010) Reentry: a review of the literature. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 34(1), 1–21. Tse, E.C. and Ho, S.C. (2009) Service quality in the hotel industry: when cultural context matters. Cornell Hospitality Quarterly 50(4), 460–474. UNWTO (2017) UNWTO Tourism Highlights, 2017 Edition. Available at: http://www2. unwto.org/publication/unwto-tourism-highlights-2017 (accessed 18 October 2018). Vassou, C., Zoptiatis, A. and Theocharous, A.L. (2017) Intercultural workplace relationships in the hospitality industry: beyond the tip of the iceberg. International Journal of Hospitality Management 61, 14–25. Yurur, S., Koc, E., Taskin, E. and Boz, H. (2018) Factors influencing intercultural sensitivity of hospitality employees. International Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Administration (in press). Zhao, D.F. and Lin, I.Y. (2014) Understanding tourists’ perception and evaluation of inter-cultural service encounters: a holistic mental model process. International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research 8(3), 290–309. Developing Intercultural Sensitivity as an Emotional Ability

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Service Quality and Emotional Intelligence Melissa A. Baker

Learning Objectives After reading this chapter you should be able to: ●● Understand service quality and the SERVQUAL model. ●● Develop an understanding of how emotional labour and emotional intelligence are related to service quality. ●● Apply the principles of SERVQUAL to emotional intelligence and emotional labour in service experiences.

8.1 Introduction Service quality is the overall excellence of a service encounter (Parasuraman et al., 1988). Some firms are known for delivering higher overall service excellence, such as Ritz Carlton or Four Seasons, whereas other firms offer lowerquality overall service. Emotional intelligence enables employees to better understand, perceive and manage their own and customers’ emotions as they co-create the service experience (Walsh et al., 2015), which in turn leads to higher levels of customer perceptions of service quality and satisfaction. Research finds that emotional intelligence and the ability to read the emotional cues of others enhances leadership (Elfenbein et al., 2007) and is critical to service performance. In other words, an employee’s ability to better understand and perceive customers’ emotions can lead to delivering service experiences that more effectively align with the expectations and perceptions of each specific customer. This will in turn lead to higher perceptions of service quality and higher levels of customer satisfaction during the service experience. In many service settings, such as hospitality and tourism, the quality of the service is tied to the frontline service provider (Kim and Baker, 2017). Multiple encounters and considerable interaction with customers are distinctive characteristics of the hospitality and tourism industry (Tsaur and Ku, 2017). Because of increasing competition in the hospitality industry, firms place greater emphasis on service performance elements to maximize customer service quality and satisfaction (Tsai and Lee, 2014), so employees who can more effectively read customers through higher levels of emotional labour can be a strategic advantage. 108

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Therefore, this chapter first discusses service quality and the key models used to measure service quality. Next it discusses how service quality relates to both emotional intelligence and emotional labour. Thirdly, the chapter provides an in-depth application of the SERVQUAL service quality model to emotional intelligence and labour. Through this chapter, individuals should develop a better understanding of how service quality is critical in hospitality and tourism customer experiences and be able to apply service quality through the emotional intelligence and emotional labour of the frontline employees to improve the service experience and customer–employee interactions.

8.2  Service Quality Service quality is defined as the overall excellence of a service encounter (Parasuraman et al., 1988). Customers in all service settings, including hospitality and tourism, evaluate all the various elements during the service experience and judge each element of quality individually and as a whole. Understanding the customer experience and the customer journey is critical for firms as customers interact with firms through a myriad of touchpoints (Koc, 2006; Lemon and Verhoef, 2016). A key element of managing the customer experience, and how the customer will judge the quality of the experience, is to identify all the touchpoints throughout that individual customer’s journey (Baker, 2016). During a hotel stay, for example, a customer has hundreds of touchpoints and interactions during the experience including pre-arrival interactions with employees, valet parking, front desk check-in, room service, housekeeping, dining, entertainment, concierge and throughout the physical servicescape. The customer experience encompasses every aspect of a firm’s offerings, especially the quality of the service and quality of the product (Lemon and Verhoef, 2016). Therefore, determining how a firm can maximize all the elements of service quality through the customer journey is critical. One of the key ways a company can influence perceptions of service quality is through the interactions between the frontline employees and the target market segments, and the investigation of the servicescape (Baker and Magnini, 2016), which is the entire physical environment in which the service experience occurs. Service quality is somewhat abstract due to the unique characteristics of service including intangibility, heterogeneity, inseparability and perishability (Parasuraman et al., 1988). In this sense, service quality is more difficult to define compared with product quality. Firstly, although service quality does possess some tangible components, it also includes many intangible components. Secondly, due to the fact that there is such variability among employees and the service they deliver, there is a high amount of heterogeneity or variability in the service delivery. For example, even though a chain restaurant such as McDonald’s has standards for the service delivery, the actual service a customer receives at one location versus another can be widely different. Service Quality and Emotional Intelligence

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As such, service quality is widely discussed in academia and in practice as a significant antecedent to customer satisfaction and customer loyalty and, although difficult to achieve and standardize, it is vital to the success of service firms, especially those in hospitality and tourism.

8.3  Measuring Service Quality Much of the discussion of service quality focuses on the disconfirmation paradigm, which suggests that quality results from a comparison of perceived expectations with actual performance (Gronroos, 1984; Parasuraman et al., 1988). The gap (or disconfirmation) between the expectations and the reality of the actual performance is shown on both the Nordic and the SERVQUAL models as shown in Fig. 8.1. Of the various models, the SERVQUAL model is the marketing theory that is most frequently used in theory and practice (Roberts et al., 2014). As  shown in Table 8.1, the SERVQUAL model breaks down the major ­dimensions of service quality into the tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, (a)

Perceived service quality Expected service

Perceived service

(b)

Reliability Responsiveness

Image

Perceived service

Empathy Assurances

Technical quality

Functional quality

What?

How?

Tangibles

Expected service

Perceived service quality

Fig. 8.1.  (a) Nordic model and (b) SERVQUAL model. (From Gronroos, 1984; Parasuraman et al., 1988.) Table 8.1.  Dimensions of the SERVQUAL model. (From Parasuraman et al., 1988.) Dimension

Definition

Tangibles

Appearance of physical facilities, equipment, personnel and communication material Ability to perform the promised service dependably and accurately Willingness to help customers and provide prompt service Knowledge and courtesy of employees and their ability to inspire trust and confidence Caring, individualized attention the firm provides its customers

Reliability Responsiveness Assurance Empathy

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Service quality

Physical environment quality

Interaction quality

Attitude

R

S P

E

Behaviour

Expertise

R

R

S P

E

S P

E

Ambient condition R

S P

E

Outcome quality

Social factors

Design

R

S P

E

R

S P

E

Waiting time R

S P

E

Tangibles

R

S P

E

Valence

R

S P

E

R = reliability; SP = responsiveness; E = empathy

Fig. 8.2.  Hierarchical model of service quality. (From Brady and Cronin, 2001.)

a­ ssurance and empathy. The tangibles refer to the appearance of all elements in the servicescape including the facility, decorations, lights, colours and employee appearance such as attractiveness and clothing. Reliability refers to the ability to perform the promised service dependably and accurately. ­Responsiveness deals with employees’ willingness to provide prompt and appropriately timed services and willingness to be responsive in helping customers. Assurance refers to both the knowledge and the courtesy of employees and their ability to provide confidence and trust in the service. F ­ inally, empathy refers to the caring, individualized attention that the firm provides to its customers. Although the SERVQUAL model is one of the most used ways to measure service quality, other measures exist. A second significant model (Fig. 8.2) focuses on the primary dimensions of service quality: interaction, environment and the outcome (Brady and Cronin, 2001). In other words, this hierarchical model brings in key elements of the service experience including the interactions between the employees and customers, the servicescape and the customer perceived outcomes. All elements of the SERVQUAL model can be affected by an employee’s level of emotional intelligence and emotional labour. Therefore, this chapter will discuss the key elements from the original SERVQUAL model as it relates to the key service quality elements including the interaction quality, servicescape, social factors and tangibles as outlined in the hierarchical model.

8.4  Service Quality and Emotional Intelligence Emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive, understand, regulate, control and manage emotions adaptively in the self and in others (Salovey and Mayer, 1990). Emotional intelligence is utilized in jobs that contain a high Service Quality and Emotional Intelligence

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level of emotional demand and involve many interactions with customers, such as those in hospitality and tourism. The primary concept of emotional intelligence refers to the individual’s ability to consider one’s own and others’ emotions, discriminating between them and using this information to control one’s own and others’ thoughts and actions (Salovey and Mayer, 1990). Service employees communicate with customers through both verbal elements and non-verbal elements (Baker, 2016). Non-verbal elements can include elements of appearance and body language, whereas verbal elements include the words spoken, tone, pace and emotions exhibited (Koc et al., 2017; Baker and Kim, 2018). As emotional intelligence reflects abilities to join intelligence, empathy and emotions to enhance thought and understanding of interpersonal dynamics (Mayer et al., 2008), emotional intelligence can be critical in an employee’s ability to deliver higher-quality service interactions from both the verbal and non-verbal standpoint. Studies show that approximately 60% of success in a wide variety of sectors can be attributed to emotional intelligence. A significant proportion of people (90%) who show outstanding success and performance tend to have a high level of emotional intelligence (Bradberry and Greaves, 2006). Emotional intelligence is a significant and effective antecedent of job-related attitudes such as organizational citizenship behaviour, job satisfaction, safety behaviour and deviant workplace behaviour (Vratskikh et al., 2016). Emotional intelligence also significantly affects work-related outcomes such as innovation, service recovery, profitability and creativity (Tsai and Lee, 2014; Vratskikh et al., 2016). Other research finds that people with high empathy are more sensitive to the needs of others and are perceived as more emotionally intelligent (Chu et al., 2012). In addition, individuals with higher emotional intelligence can sense emotion-based information, as well as understand and manage their own and others’ emotions, thereby enhancing both their personal and social competence (Walsh et al., 2015). Taken together, emotional intelligence is the employee’s ability to consider a customer’s emotions and use this information to better understand interpersonal interactions. Therefore, employees can effectively use emotional intelligence to read the customer’s emotions, understand what they want in the service experience and deliver higher-quality service that matches the customer’s expectations. In this way, emotional intelligence and service quality can become a powerful competitive advantage in hospitality and tourism management.

8.5  Service Quality and Emotional Labour The concept of emotional labour originated with Hochschild (1983) who defined emotional labour as the management of feelings to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display. In other words, emotional labour is the 112

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labour or effort involved in showing the proper facial and body language displays as dictated by a firm. During most interactions, frontline employees are expected to smile and be cheerful, regardless of personal feelings or ­emotions, and hospitality employees are particularly vulnerable given service credos that require them to deliver service with a smile (Chu et al., 2012). This shows the labour involved with delivering the proper service with a smile. Emotional labour is related to all service occupations and is relevant to marketing, human resources, management, organizational psychology, hospitality and tourism. Hochschild’s (1983) conceptualization of emotional labour is based on a service acting paradigm, which compares service to a ‘show’, the service employee to the ‘actor’, the customer to the ‘audience’ and the work setting to the ‘stage’. Hospitality employees smile because it is expected, because they are almost always onstage (Chu et al., 2012). Communication between a service provider and a customer is divided into verbal and non-verbal communications (Baker, 2016). Employees often present such positive attitudes through facial expressions, body language or tone of voice (Chu et al., 2012). In order to display the proper facial expressions, body language and language spoken, employees engage in three main types of acting strategies: surface acting, deep acting and genuine acting. Surface acting is the act of displaying emotions that are not felt by simulating emotions to change the outward appearance such as expressions, voice or tone (Chu et al., 2012). Deep acting actively invokes thoughts, images or memories to display a certain positive emotional expression (Hochschild, 1983). Genuine acting is displaying and genuinely feeling the emotions an employee expresses (Bono and Vey, 2005). Furthermore, two main schools of thought exist regarding the job-­ focused and employee-focused approach to emotional labour. The job-­ focused approach emphasizes the presence of emotional labour in an employee’s job, examining the frequency of the emotional display, the variety of emotions expressed and the emotional dissonance experienced (Morris and Feldman, 1997). The employee-focused approach examines the internal emotion management process such as the different acting methods required by employees to change and control the outward appearance compared with the inner emotional state (Chu et al., 2012). Emotions are bound with other people, and one of the most powerful emotional contexts is work (Rafaeli and Worline, 2001). When employees express emotions that they do not feel, they experience emotional dissonance (Baker et al., 2012). It is also critical to examine emotions during service failures. Customer emotions are often heightened during service failures, with customers often becoming emotional and angry (Baker et al., 2012). In other words, there is an emotional cost to dealing with service failures and dysfunctional service encounters. Therefore, an employee’s ability to display the proper emotional labour significantly affects customer’s perceptions of the quality of service in service experiences. Service Quality and Emotional Intelligence

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8.6  Application of SERVQUAL to Emotional Intelligence and Labour Hospitality marketing focuses on the guest–host relationship (Baker and Magnini, 2016). During the service encounter, both tangible and intangible aspects are essential in how customers judge the service experience (Kim and Baker, 2017). A key tenet of hospitality is the provision of a friendly and hospitable service in which interactional marketing is the interactions between the frontline service providers and the target market segments (Baker and Magnini, 2016). As frontline employees have high levels of interaction with the customers (Baker and Magnini, 2016), understanding the role the employee plays during the interaction is critical as this can significantly affect service quality and perceptions of the experience (Chu et al., 2012). Therefore, this next section discusses how the key elements of SERVQUAL, namely reliability, assurance, tangibles, empathy and responsiveness, are ­applied to emotional intelligence and emotional labour. 8.6.1 Reliability Reliability is the ability to perform the promised service dependably and accurately. Self-awareness is having a deep understanding of one’s emotions, strengths, weaknesses, needs and drives, as well as the effect of these on others (Goleman, 2006). Self-awareness is linked to reliability in the capacity to understand one’s abilities and deliver consistent service experiences to customers. Motivation is another critical element of emotional ability characterized by a strong desire to achieve, and strong organizational commitment to service quality and maintaining a strong image of the service business. As such, individuals who possess high emotional intelligence are able to deliver the service more reliably and consistently. Individuals with higher emotional intelligence are able to sustain themselves in service-based work, and thus are more reliable as they can maximize positive moods and also resist deteriorating influences of negative events (Walsh et al., 2015). As such, they can provide a more reliable service as they experience lower turnover intentions (Joseph and Newman, 2010). 8.6.2 Assurance Assurance is the knowledge and courtesy of employees and their ability to convey trust, confidence and competence (Parasuraman et al., 1988). From a courtesy perspective, employee courtesy is defined as employee activities demonstrating respect and consideration for customers. Courtesy is one of the most important attributes for firm–customer relationships (Kim and Baker, 2017). A service provider’s politeness and courteousness make 114

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c­ustomers feel that they are being treated respectfully (Kim and Baker, 2017), and courteous behaviour is necessary for developing employee– customer rapport that leads to firm outcomes such as increased perceptions of service quality and satisfaction (Kim and Baker, 2017). Employees who have higher levels of emotional intelligence are more adept at creating ­rapport. From a competence perspective, employing competent employees can lead to higher levels of assurance, which can increase service quality and result in better financial performance (Shum et al., 2018). Appearance is one of the critical factors that guests use to assess employee assurance (Magnini et al., 2013). Research finds that appearance elements such as facial hair, smiles and attractiveness all affect customers’ perceptions of assurance. In other words, those with no facial hair, employees displaying genuine smiles and employees that are highly attractive are seen to have higher levels of assurance than those with facial hair, displaying no smile or those that are unattractive (Magnini et al., 2013). Whereas emotional intelligence refers to the potential ability to display emotionally competent behaviours, emotional competence indicates the extent to which people actually realize that potential (Delcourt et al., 2016). Employees’ emotional competence refers to the manifestation of emotionally competent behaviours. Employees’ competence in responding to customers’ emotions can affect customer evaluations, such as service quality, and future behavioural intentions. It is critical to examine emotional competence, as simply having high emotional intelligence does not necessarily guarantee displaying high emotional competence. Cultural intelligence is an individual’s ability to act effectively in culturally diverse environments and refers to an individual’s ability and skill to work in multicultural settings quickly, comfortably and effectively (Darvishmotevali et al., 2018). Cultural intelligence is unique in that it describes individuals’ cultural ability and knowledge to adapt their interactions with people or other cultures (Darvishmotevali et al., 2018). As such, cultural intelligence is related to an employee’s ability and competence to interact effectively with diverse cultures and thus affects the assurance dimension of SERVQUAL. 8.6.3 Tangibles Tangibles refer to the physical facilities, equipment, personnel and materials within a firm. According to the constituency model of hospitality marketing (Baker and Magnini, 2016), hospitality firms need to plan for top-rate interactions by asking questions such as whether the employees possess the verbal and non-verbal skills necessary to deliver exceptional service. Effective interpersonal interaction includes specific displays of body language, smiles, emotions displayed and language used during the service Service Quality and Emotional Intelligence

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interaction (Baker and Kim, 2018). As it aligns with a customer-driven perspective, managers should consider employees’ actual, tangible displays of emotions. Customer cues about the service employee including non-verbal attributes such as appearance, emotion and behaviour all affect customer perceptions of the s­ ervice experience (Kim and Baker, 2017). So, employees that are able to perceive customer emotions can more effectively display genuine smiles or deep acting, which communicate higher levels of service quality. In addition, research finds that customers prefer to interact with employees who have positive aesthetic attributes (Magnini et al., 2013). In other words, people prefer to interact and build relationships with people who are physically attractive (Kim and Baker, 2017) and thus the appearance of employees is a tangible element that can affect service quality. ­Employees that can use their emotional intelligence to interpret tangible appearance elements from the customer, such as body language and facial expressions, can modify their service delivery to have higher levels of service quality. Other important tangible components that affect the service experience and service quality are the elements within the servicescape and atmospheric cues (Baker and Magnini, 2016). In other words, the servicescape design and elements of the atmosphere affect not only the customer’s perception of the service quality but also how the employee is able to deliver the service ­experience by nature of the servicescape. 8.6.4 Empathy Empathy is caring, individualized attention that the firm provides to its customers. Displaying positive emotions assists firms in establishing increased customer–employee rapport, satisfaction and loyalty intentions (Baker and Magnini, 2016). A key element in the implementation of interactional marketing is the focus on interpersonal relationships that build emotional bonds between hosts and guests (Baker and Magnini, 2016). Emotional contagion theory finds that people compare and adopt others’ moods and emotions (Barsade, 2002). Because of this, employees should seek to interact with customers hospitably, in a positive, warm, friendly and welcoming way (Chu et al., 2012). Individuals with high emotional intelligence are able to create pleasant feelings and enhance positive feelings in customers. However, ­research finds that many customer-contact employees lack the skills, abilities or motivation to interact effectively with customers (Baker and Magnini, 2016), hence the reason the investigation of service quality and empathy in emotional intelligence is so important. One of the critical dimensions in emotional intelligence and competence is the ability to perceive emotions, which refers to the accuracy with which employees identify emotions in themselves and others (Mayer and Salovey, 1997). People with high 116

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emotional intelligence tend to behave in ways that encourage positive emotional experiences in which they express emotions that please others ­ (Modassir and Singh, 2008). Demonstrating empathy can be a way for employees to exhibit emotional competence, such as demonstrating compassion or being empathic (Delcourt et al., 2016), or a way of developing rapport. Employee–customer rapport involves two dimensions: an enjoyable interaction and a personal connection. In this way, an employee’s emotional intelligence can be used to increase the empathy shown to the customer, thereby increasing the service quality. This can also be critical when dealing with service failures and dysfunctional customers. Dealing with dysfunctional customers or difficult service failures can impact employees on a deeper emotional level including role stress and emotional labour (Baker et al., 2012). In other words, dealing with dysfunctional customer behaviour leads to higher levels of feigned emotional displays, or surface acting, most often to pacify aggressive customers. As such, it is also important to consider how dysfunctional, aggressive or disruptive customers affect employees’ emotions and the emotions they must express. Dealing with difficult customers can cause employees to be less empathic, and thus decrease the perceived service quality for all the customers in the servicescape. 8.6.5 Responsiveness Responsiveness is the willingness to help customers and provide prompt service. Employees with higher emotional intelligence can use appropriate emotions and strategies to respond to customers, understand their needs and facilitate a better service experience. Accurate recognition of a customer’s emotions can give employees a better sense of what the customer is looking for in the service interaction. In this vein, the employees can be more responsive to the individual customer’s preferences. Emotional intelligence also helps employees connect with others and implement adaptive strategies to read and engage with other customers, which is why those with higher emotional intelligence perform better in providing a service and being responsible in recovering from failures (Walsh et al., 2015). Cultural intelligence describes individuals’ cultural ability to adapt their interactions with people of other cultures (Darvishmotevali et al., 2018). As customers come from different countries and cultures, it is critical for employees to act responsively, to show awareness of the different cultures and to adapt themselves quickly, based on the customer’s culture, to provide the highest-quality service (Koc, 2017). Research on cultural intelligence shows that individuals with higher cultural intelligence can be more responsive and perform in-the-moment modifications when dealing with cross-cultural contexts (MacNab, 2012). Service Quality and Emotional Intelligence

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Activity Think of two different types of customers you have interacted with in your job. 1. How were you able to use emotional intelligence to perceive, understand and adapt to the two different customers? What cues from them did you use? 2. Discuss how you could deliver higher-quality service in terms of the five elements of SERVQUAL based on the two different customers.

8.7 Conclusion Emotional intelligence can be strengthened through training and experience (Elfenbein, 2006). Emotional intelligence is integral to the development of positive social relationships, with both co-workers and customers, and those who have high emotional intelligence can deliver higher levels of service quality related to reliability, assurance, tangibles, empathy and responsiveness. This chapter has discussed how emotional intelligence and emotional labour are related to service quality and can be used to more effectively deliver higher levels of service quality in terms of reliability, assurance, tangibles, empathy and responsiveness.

Questions 1.  Explain and discuss the relationship between service quality and emotional intelligence. 2.  Explain how each element of SERVQUAL may relate to emotional intelligence. 3.  Explain the implications of emotional labour for emotional intelligence.

Further Reading Chu, K.H., Baker, M.A. and Murrmann, S.K. (2012) When we are onstage, we smile: the effects of emotional labor on employee work outcomes. International Journal of Hospitality Management 31(3), 906–915. Lemon, K.N. and Verhoef, P.C. (2016) Understanding customer experience throughout the customer journey. Journal of Marketing 80(6), 69–96. Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V.A. and Berry, L.L. (1988) SERVQUAL: a multiple-item scale for measuring consumer perceptions. Journal of Retailing 64(1), 12–40.

References Baker, M.A. (2016) Managing customer experiences in hotel chains. In: Ivanova, M., Ivanov, S. and Magnini, V.P. (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Hotel Chain Management. Routledge, New York, pp. 240–250. 118

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Baker, M.A. and Kim, K. (2018) The role of language, appearance, and smile on perceptions of authenticity versus rapport. International Journal of Hospitality Management 74, 171–179. Baker, M.A. and Magnini, V.P. (2016) The evolution of services marketing, hospitality marketing and building the constituency model for hospitality marketing. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management 28(8), 1510–1534. Baker, M.A., Magnini, V.P. and Perdue, R.R. (2012) Opportunistic customer complaining: causes, consequences, and managerial alternatives. International Journal of Hospitality Management 31(1), 295–303. Barsade, S.G. (2002) The ripple effect: emotional contagion and its influence on group behavior. Administrative Science Quarterly 47(4), 644–675. Bono, J.E. and Vey, M.A. (2005) Toward understanding emotional management at  work: a quantitative review of emotional labor research. In: Hartel, C., Ashkanasy, N.M. and Zerbe, W. (eds) Emotions in Organizational Behavior. Psychology Press, New York, pp. 224–244. Bradberry, T. and Greaves, J. (2006) The Emotional Intelligence Quick Book: Everything You Need to Know to Put Your EQ to Work. Fireside, New York. Brady, M.K. and Cronin, J.J. Jr (2001) Some new thoughts on conceptualizing perceived service quality: a hierarchical approach. Journal of Marketing 65(3), 34–49. Chu, K.H., Baker, M.A. and Murrmann, S.K. (2012) When we are onstage, we smile: the effects of emotional labor on employee work outcomes. International Journal of Hospitality Management 31(3), 906–915. Darvishmotevali, M., Altinay, L. and De Vita, G. (2018) Emotional intelligence and creative performance: looking through the lens of environmental uncertainty and cultural intelligence. International Journal of Hospitality Management 73, 44–54. Delcourt, C., Gremler, D.D., van Riel, A.C. and van Birgelen, M.J. (2016) Employee emotional competence: construct conceptualization and validation of a customer-based measure. Journal of Service Research 19(1), 72–87. Elfenbein, H.A. (2006) Learning in emotion judgments: training and the cross-cultural understanding of facial expressions. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 30(1), 21–36. Elfenbein, H.A., Foo, M.D., White, J., Tan, H.H. and Aik, V.C. (2007) Reading your counterpart: the benefit of emotion recognition accuracy for effectiveness in negotiation. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 31(4), 205–223. Goleman, D. (2006) Emotional Intelligence. Bantam Books, New York. Gronroos, C. (1984) A service quality model and its marketing implications. European Journal of Marketing 18(4), 36–44. Hochschild, A. (1983) The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. University of California Press, Berkeley, California. Joseph, D.L. and Newman, D.A. (2010) Emotional intelligence: an integrative metaanalysis and cascading model. Journal of Applied Psychology 95(1), 54–78. Kim, K. and Baker, M.A. (2017) How the employee looks and looks at you: building customer–employee rapport. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research 43(1), Koc, E. (2006) Total quality management and business excellence in services: the implications of all-inclusive pricing system on internal and external customer satisfaction in the Turkish tourism market. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence 17(7), 857–877. Service Quality and Emotional Intelligence

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Koc, E. (2017) Cross-cultural aspects of service failures and recovery. In: Koc, E. (ed.) Service Failures and Recovery in Tourism and Hospitality: a Practical Manual. CAB International, Wallingford, UK, pp. 197–213. Koc, E., Aydin, G., Ar, A.A. and Boz, H. (2017) Emotions and emotional abilities in service failures and recovery. In: Koc, E. (ed.) Service Failures and Recovery in Tourism and Hospitality: a Practical Manual. CAB International, Wallingford, UK, pp. 42–55. Lemon, K.N. and Verhoef, P.C. (2016) Understanding customer experience throughout the customer journey. Journal of Marketing 80(6), 69–96. MacNab, B.R. (2012) An experiential approach to cultural intelligence education. Journal of Management Education 36(1), 66–94. Magnini, V.P., Baker, M. and Karande, K. (2013) The frontline provider’s appearance: a driver of guest perceptions. Cornell Hospitality Quarterly 54(4), 396–405. Mayer, J.D. and Salovey, P. (1997) What is emotional intelligence? In: Salovey, P. and Sluyter, D. (eds) Emotional Development and Emotional Intelligence. Basic Books, New York, pp. 3–31. Mayer, J.D., Roberts, R.D. and Barsade, S.G. (2008) Human abilities: emotional intelligence. Annual Review of Psychology 59, 507–536. Modassir, A. and Singh, T. (2008) Relationship of emotional intelligence with transformational leadership and organizational citizenship behavior. International Journal of Leadership Studies 4(1), 3–21. Morris, J. and Feldman, D. (1997) Managing emotions in the workplace. Journal of Managerial Issues 9(3), 257–274. Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V.A. and Berry, L.L. (1988) SERVQUAL: a multiple-item scale for measuring consumer perceptions. Journal of Retailing 64(1), 12–40. Rafaeli, A. and Worline, M. (2001) Individual Emotion in Work Organizations. Sage, Thousand Oaks, California. Roberts, J.H., Kayande, U. and Stremersch, S. (2014) From academic research to marketing practice: exploring the marketing science value chain. International Journal of Research in Marketing 31(2), 127–140. Salovey, P. and Mayer, J.D. (1990) Emotional intelligence. Imagination, Cognition and Personality 9(3), 185–211. Shum, C., Gatling, A. and Shoemaker, S. (2018) A model of hospitality leadership competency for frontline and director-level managers: which competencies matter more? International Journal of Hospitality Management 74, 57–66. Tsai, C.T. and Lee, Y.J. (2014) Emotional intelligence and employee creativity in travel agencies. Current Issues in Tourism 17(10), 862–871. Tsaur, S.H. and Ku, P.S. (2017) The effect of tour leaders’ emotional intelligence on tourists’ consequences. Journal of Travel Research 58(1), 63–76. Vratskikh, I., Masadeh, R., Al-Lozi, M. and Maqableh, M. (2016) The impact of emotional intelligence on job performance via the mediating role of job satisfaction. International Journal of Business and Management 11(2), 69–91. Walsh, K., Chang, S. and Tse, E.C.Y. (2015) Understanding students’ intentions to join the hospitality industry: the role of emotional intelligence, service orientation, and industry satisfaction. Cornell Hospitality Quarterly 56(4), 369–382.

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Service Failures, Recovery and Emotional Intelligence Heejung Ro and Eric D. Olson

Learning Objectives After reading this chapter you should be able to: ●● Understand the four dimensions of emotional intelligence and apply them to service failure and recovery. ●● Explain the role of customer emotional intelligence in service failure and recovery. ●● Explain the role of employee emotional intelligence in service failure and recovery.

9.1 Introduction Service encounters are often ‘charged’ with emotion (Bailey et al., 2001; Koc, 2017). The job of frontline employees in the hospitality industry entails interactions with customers and tends to involve emotions (Pizam, 2004). Customers also experience emotions associated with service encounters (Mattila and Enz, 2002). In particular, the emotional experiences of customers and employees can be heightened in a failed service encounter (McColl-Kennedy and Smith, 2006). A service failure triggers emotional responses in the customers, and customers expect service employees to address their emotional needs (McColl-Kennedy and Sparks, 2003; Delcourt et al., 2016). Emotional intelligence becomes crucial for both customers and employees to resolve conflicts and find solutions in service failure and recovery situations. Customer emotional intelligence helps customers to be aware of their own feelings as well as the feelings of service providers and therefore allows them to express and manage their emotions to achieve desired outcomes in service failure and recovery (Gabbott et al., 2011). Employee emotional intelligence helps employees to understand what they are feeling as well as what the dissatisfied customers are feeling at service failure, allowing employees to address problems quickly with appropriate service recovery, and therefore resulting in greater customer satisfaction (Kernbach and Schutte, 2005; Prentice and King, 2013). This chapter focuses on how emotional intelligence affects both ­customers and employees in service failure and recovery. Specifically, we d ­ escribe the © CAB International 2019. Emotional Intelligence in Tourism and Hospitality  (ed. E. Koc)

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four emotional ability dimensions as they pertain to service failure and recovery encounters.

9.2  Service Encounters and Emotional Intelligence Emotions provide information to others and to the one experiencing the emotion (Schwarz and Clore, 1983; Clore, 1994), and the information provided through emotions aids adaptive behaviours focused on the environment (Frijda, 1994). Thus, emotions serve to assist people in the evaluation, regulation, augmentation and periodization of goals and plans (Oatley, 1992). Service encounters unfold through a process of events and reactions (Bailey et al., 2001). The tasks of customers and employees are to understand how their emotional reactions are formed and how their own emotions influence the behaviours of others. Adeptness in these tasks depends on one’s ability to detect emotions in others as well as the ability to adapt, regulate and manage them (Bailey et al., 2001). Understanding the emotional aspects of ongoing interactions is related to emotional intelligence and is categorized into four types of abilities (Salovey and Mayer, 1990): ●● Perceiving emotion is the ability to recognize and appraise emotions accurately (Mayer et al., 1999). It involves recognizing one’s own emotions and detecting other people’s emotions from facial expressions, voices and other cues (Côte and Hideg, 2011). ●● Understanding emotion is the ability to analyse complex emotions and form emotional knowledge (Mayer and Salovey, 1997). It involves reasoning emotional problems, such as the causes and consequences of emotions and knowing which emotions are similar or distinct and what they convey (Côte and Hideg, 2011). ●● Facilitating (using) emotion is the ability to access, generate and use emotions to facilitate thoughts (Mayer et al., 1999). It involves knowing which emotions are appropriate to use and express, and facilitating cognitive activities such as information processing and decision-making (Côte and Hideg, 2011). ●● Managing emotion is the ability to regulate emotions in oneself and in others to achieve a desired outcome (Mayer and Salovey, 1997). It ­involves maintaining and changing emotions in oneself and others (Côte and Hideg, 2011).

9.3  Customer Emotional Intelligence in Service Failure and Recovery A great deal of research has examined what emotions customers experience after service failures and how those emotions change through service ­recovery (e.g. Stephens and Gwinner, 1998; Schoefer and Diamantopoulos, 122

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2008); however, our understanding of customers’ ability to use their emotions to achieve desirable outcomes after service failure and during service recovery is very limited (Gabbott et al., 2011). Customers tap into their emotional intelligence to manage their emotions and influence their experience of a service by asking questions, directing aspects of delivery, ­responding to unpredicted events or voicing preferences. This engagement is especially true for service failures (Gabbott et al., 2011; Koc, 2017), in which the disparity between customers’ expectations and perceived service outcomes creates negative emotions (Smith and Bolton, 2002). According to cognitive appraisal theory, a customer evaluates whether a particular service encounter is critical and could affect their well-being (primary appraisal) and, if so, if anything can be done to overcome or prevent it (secondary appraisal) (Folkman et al., 1986; Lazarus, 1991). Negative emotions are generated as a result of the cognitive appraisal, and the negative emotions call for a coping mechanism (Folkman and Lazarus, 1988). Some may complain directly to the service provider (problem-based coping), whereas others may focus on managing their emotions or seeking social comfort from others (emotion-focused coping) (Chebat et al., 2005). The ability to cope with emotions such as anger, disappointment and regret, alongside other cognitive processes, has been shown to influence their perception of the service failure, as well as recovery (Spreng et al., 1995; Weun et al., 2004). Similarly, coping potential refers to the extent to which customers feel they can manage the demands of the failed encounter and their perception of the likely success of each coping alternative (Stephens and Gwinner, 1998). As emotional intelligence is known as a good predictor of emotional resilience in dealing with stressful events (Mikolajczak and Luminet, 2008), it is expected that customers can regulate their own emotions by maintaining a positive mood and relieving negative affective states (Salovey and Mayer, 1990). Emotional intelligence impacts coping strategies by optimizing the distribution of resources between coping strategies to deal with stress more effectively in service-failure situations (Gabbott et al., 2011). In other words, customers with high emotional intelligence are more able to adapt their ­responses based upon their perception of situational circumstances. Furthermore, customers with high emotional intelligence view stressful situations as a challenge, whereas customers with low emotional intelligence are more likely to view stress as a threat (Mikolajczak and Luminet, 2008). In the following sections, we discuss the four dimensions of customer emotional ­intelligence in the context of service failure and recovery. 9.3.1  Perceiving emotion Specific to service failures, perceiving emotion relates to a customer’s recognition of his/her own negative emotions, such as anger, disappointment and regret, after a dissatisfying experience. Emotionally perceptive customers Service Failures, Recovery and Emotional Intelligence

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are more likely to be able to recognize their own emotions correctly, and such perceptions can provide information as to the approaches to take. Specific to service recovery, perceiving emotion involves recognizing service employees’ emotions and appraising them. For example, customers notice the level of empathy from service employees and the authenticity of the emotions. Also, customers can track, or are aware of, their own emotional states before and after the service recovery. 9.3.2  Understanding emotion Specific to service failures, customers high in emotional understanding are better at assigning the blame to the appropriate party based on the emotion they feel. For example, anger is generated when customers believe the service failure is caused by the company and had been controllable. Customers may feel disappointed when they feel that the service failure occurs due to uncontrollable causes. Regret is more likely when customers take self-blame for the service failure to some degree by acknowledging their mistakes or choices. By understanding distinct emotions and their causes and consequences, customers can use their emotional knowledge to analyse service failure and guide their actions. Similarly, customers can evaluate service ­recovery by analysing emotional changes with associated reasoning. Appropriate emotional changes are likely to occur for customers who have the ability to analyse complex emotions with emotional knowledge. For ­example, angry customers who experience a service failure may feel differently when they receive a reasonable explanation for the problem from service providers. 9.3.3  Facilitating (using) emotion Specific to service failures, customers who effectively facilitate emotions know which emotions are appropriate to display or effective to gain desired outcomes and are aware of how their emotions affect the service providers that they deal with. Customers weigh different emotions against one a­ nother and against other sensations and thoughts (Kidwell et al., 2011), and this facilitating emotion process allows customers to focus on directing their thoughts and behaviours to make their complaint effective. Emotional knowledge also helps them assess the appropriateness of service recovery. For example, a customer who is not fully satisfied after service recovery may go through the cognitive appraisal process again to identify the emotions they experience and the causes of those emotions. This information allows the customer to decide on post-recovery behaviours, such as further complaining, spreading negative word of mouth or engaging in third-party ­actions. 124

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9.3.4  Managing emotion Specific to service failure, managing emotion involves the customer’s ability to display and manage negative emotions and to influence service employees’ emotional responses positively. For example, a display of strong negative emotions from customers tends to draw more attention from service providers and may be more effective in having the problem resolved quickly. However, emotions are contagious (Hatfield et al., 1994, pp. 1089–1101), and negative emotions cause emotional labour and stress for service employees, which may hinder the effectiveness of a complaint. Individuals differ in their ability to regulate emotions, some choosing more successful strategies than others (Salovey and Mayer, 1990; Mayer and Salovey, 1997). Managing emotion becomes particularly challenging for customers who ­experience double deviation: an initial service failure, followed by poor service recovery. Customers are in need of more effective coping mechanisms to deal with intensified negative emotions in these situations. In summary, customer emotional intelligence determines the coping strategies to deal with a service failure and explains how some customers achieve successful recovery outcomes, whereas others do not. Emotional i­ ntelligence allows customers to integrate their emotions and reason, in order to achieve successful desirable recovery outcomes and co-repair the value of service experiences with the assistance of service employees. Activity Recall the most recent incident in which you complained to a service provider and received service recovery in the hospitality setting (e.g. restaurant, hotel, airline, cruise). Explain your emotions and behaviours at the stages of service failure, complaint and service recovery. 1.  Service failure: What happened? How did you feel when you experienced a service failure? When you think of the reasons for your emotions, do you believe that the emotions you felt and expressed were appropriate for the situation? How did you manage your negative emotions at the time of failure? 2. Complaint: What emotion(s) did you display while you were complaining? What emotion(s) did the service employee display? How did the service employee’s displayed emotion influence your reactions? 3.  Service recovery: What did the service provider say or do during service recovery? How did the service recovery process and outcome influence your emotions?

9.4  Employee Emotional Intelligence in Service Failure and Recovery When dealing with stressful service failures, employees often need to balance their true emotions with those they can freely display (Walsh et al., Service Failures, Recovery and Emotional Intelligence

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2015). ­Employees who have higher levels of emotional intelligence are more likely to adopt deep acting (reappraising the meaning of a stressful event) rather than surface acting (hiding one’s true emotions). The deep-acting strategy is often associated with a lower level of emotional dissonance and a higher level of affective service delivery (the expression of positive emotions in service interaction) (Grandey, 2003). Both employees and customers have emotions, and employee emotional intelligence helps employees to connect with others and implement effective adaptive strategies to engage with customers (Walsh et al., 2015). Employees with high emotional intelligence can create a better recovery experience for dissatisfied guests, including positive outcomes (Kernbach and Schutte, 2005), higher customer satisfaction (Rozell et al., 2004) and loyalty (Delcourt et al., 2013). In the following sections, we discuss the four dimensions of employee emotional intelligence in the context of service failure and recovery. 9.4.1  Perceiving emotion Emotions provide service employees with information about the behavioural intentions of others (Bosse et al., 2009), and perceiving emotion through emotional cues and signals can be an effective tool in solving dissatisfying customer experiences. Perceiving emotion during a stressful service failure can occur from seeing a customer’s face and through a customer’s non-verbal behaviour and patterns. The human face is thought to be the primary non-verbal channel of emotion (Ekman et al., 2013). For example, a service employee may be able to perceive that a guest is upset when evaluating the emotion, such as anger or frustration, that is displayed on the customer’s face after a dissatisfying situation. People tend to be extremely efficient in identifying emotion in the faces of others, as faces carry information about biologically and socially important attributes (Fox et al., 2000). In addition to the face, emotion can also be perceived through other non-verbal channels, such as body language, gestures or tone of speech. For example, a dissatisfied guest may show signs of back pain (e.g. by being hunched over) after sleeping on an uncomfortable bed at a hotel or after sitting on an airplane after a long flight. Furthermore, an upset guest may show emotion through audible elements, such as a change in tone, pitch or volume. 9.4.2  Understanding emotion Dealing with upset customers after a dissatisfying situation requires service employees to understand emotions. Understanding emotions is often based on past experiences with customers, past experiences as actual customers, and past experiences with dissatisfaction situations and service recovery. 126

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The process of understanding emotion involves reasoning emotional ­problems, such as the causes and consequences of emotions and knowing which emotions are similar or distinct and what they convey (Côte and Hideg, 2011). Huang and Dai (2010) found that employees’ self-monitoring moderates the relationship between customer mood and employee mood. Organizations may provide training resources and development opportunities for employees to understand emotional guest situations through the use of scenarios, sharing of past experiences among employees, role-playing and cultivating an environment that encourages employees to learn the more ­robust ways to understand emotion in dealing with customers. These techniques can be beneficial for employees in utilizing deep-acting techniques when resolving dissatisfying situations. 9.4.3  Facilitating (using) emotion Most service organizations have formal and informal policies that state how and when a service employee may display emotions in a dissatisfying situation. For example, service employees are encouraged not to show anger, frustration or rage against a customer, no matter what the dissatisfying situation. These policies are useful when an employee utilizes surface-­ acting techniques. On the other hand, service employees may use positive emotions, such as empathy, hope and altruism to assist customers in dissatisfying situations. Empathy, or showing care, towards the dissatisfied guest may also be an effective use of emotion (Ioannidou and Konstantikaki, 2008; Wieseke et  al., 2012). For example, many service organizations utilize a LAST model in using emotion in dissatisfying situations: (i) listen to the customer; (ii) apologize to the guest; (iii) solve the dissatisfying situation; and (iv) thank the customer for bringing the dissatisfying situation to the attention of the service organizer. Altruism can be an effective emotion that showcases a service employee being interested in helping other people, which can be a powerful way to obtain support and happiness from others. A smile is also recommended to elicit an emotional display (Muir, 2008). A few scholars in the services literature have examined the role of emotional contagion – the degree that a person may ‘mimic’ the emotion or expression of another human being (e.g. Hennig-Thurau et al., 2006). For example, Pugh (2001) found that positive emotion from employees is positively related to customer positive affect after a service encounter as well as service quality. Huang and Dai (2010) found that employees who have positive moods can pass their moods on to customers, enhancing a customer’s evaluation of service. Utilizing emotional contagion in a dissatisfying customer situation may be an effective way to deal with a dissatisfying situation. A service employee who is calm and shows hope and gratitude could transfer these emotions to a customer. Service Failures, Recovery and Emotional Intelligence

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9.4.4  Managing emotion Employee emotional intelligence has been found to be a predictor of service performance in hospitality settings, such as casino frontline employees (e.g. Prentice and King, 2013). Lopes et al. (2005) posited that emotion regulation is the most important aspect of emotional intelligence. Employees with high emotional intelligence can positively regulate emotions to promote job performance and reduce negative situations (Namie and Namie, 2009). This can be beneficial when managing emotions in the context of dissatisfying customer situations and providing adequate service recovery. Several studies from the management field have found a positive association between employee emotional intelligence and job performance (e.g. Higgs, 2004). Studies have shown that the effects of emotional responses are influenced by one’s ability to manage one’s own emotional response (Salovey and Mayer, 1990; Kim et al., 2012). Service employees often use deep acting and surface acting as a proactive approach in dealing with dissatisfying situations. Hochschild (1983) noted that employees may engage in surface-acting tactics to hide their inner emotions by focusing on outward emotion. In surface-acting techniques, a service employee’s internal emotion is unchanged. Grandey (2003) added that employees hide the emotions they are feeling in order to showcase the emotions they are supposed to portray. Hochschild (1983) suggested that employees can suppress their actual emotions by focusing on their outward facial expressions, gestures and voice tone. This tactic can be used when an employee must abide by formal and informal organizational rules and policies. For example, an upset guest may personally blame the service employee for a dissatisfying situation. Although the service employee may be personally upset, the service employee may force himself/herself to remain calm. Activity Imagine that you are a front-desk employee working at a full-service hotel with various amenities (e.g. pool, spa, gym, restaurants). A customer has come to speak to someone working at the front desk to make a complaint. The guest is visibly upset, physically shaking and starts to yell at the service employee. The guest states that the room is dirty and noisy, and that the pool is closed for refurbishment. The service employee has dealt with numerous situations like this in the past, and has also received training on how to deal with upset guests. In the context of a small group, role-play this scenario with two parties (the upset guest and the frontline service employee) utilizing the four-step process of employee emotional intelligence in providing service recovery: perceiving emotion, understanding emotion, facilitating (using) emotion and managing emotion. Based on the scenario, discuss the following: 1.  How does the service employee perceive emotion from the guest? 2.  What are some tactics that the service employee can use to understand the guest’s emotion? Continued 128

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3.  How can service employees do a better job in understanding emotion? How can a service provider create an environment to facilitate employees to do a better job in understanding emotion? 4.  How should the service employee use emotions? 5.  How can service employees effectively manage emotions? 6.  Would your answers change across different service providers?

In a deep-acting approach, service employees modify their internal emotion. Ashforth and Humphrey (1993) suggested employees use past experiences, images or memories to proactively provoke a specific emotion in order to feel the actual emotion. Instead of being defensive towards the guest in a dissatisfying situation, service employees may modify the internal emotions they are feeling and proceed with solving the dissatisfying situation in a calm and organized manner. For example, service employees may think about a past experience that involved a satisfied guest, think of an image that has a calming effect (e.g. nature) or recall a specific training image of discussing dissatisfied guests with colleagues. Activity Imagine that you are a server, working on a busy Friday evening at a local, casual restaurant in your home town. Customers at a table you are serving ­become irate when their meal takes a very long time. Furthermore, when the meal a ­ rrives at the table, a customer states that his/her meal is burnt. The customer asks to speak to you about his/her dissatisfaction with the wait time and the burnt meal. Based on the scenario, discuss the following: 1.  How can the server use surface-acting techniques as a proactive approach in dealing with the dissatisfied customer? 2.  How can the server use deep-acting techniques as a proactive approach in dealing with the dissatisfied customer? 3.  Which approach is harder for a service employee to use? Is one approach more automatic than the other? Is one approach more authentic than the other?

9.5 Conclusion Customer emotional intelligence is important in understanding how customers respond to service failure and service recovery efforts. Customer emotional intelligence helps customers to be aware of their own feelings as well as the feelings of service providers, and they are therefore better able to express and control emotions in order to achieve desired outcomes in service failure and recovery. On the other hand, employee emotional intelligence allows employees to know and understand their own feelings as well as the dissatisfied customers’ feelings, and to use and manage their emotions more effectively Service Failures, Recovery and Emotional Intelligence

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in resolving guest conflicts. Therefore, emotional intelligence enables both customers and service employees to acquire and apply knowledge from their own emotions and those of others to produce beneficial outcomes in service failures and recoveries.

Questions 1.  Explain the role of emotions in service encounters, service failures and service recovery. 2.  Discuss the importance of emotional intelligence in service encounters, from the perspective of both customers and employees. 3. Explain and discuss how cognitive appraisal theory is instrumental in understanding service failures and recovery.

Further Reading Bailey, J.J., Gremler, D.D. and McCollough, M.A. (2001) Service encounter emotional value: the dyadic influence of customer and employee emotions. Services Marketing Quarterly 23(1), 1–24. Delcourt, C., Gremler, D.D., van Riel, A.C. and van Birgelen, M.J. (2016) Employee emotional competence: construct conceptualization and validation of a customer-­based measure. Journal of Service Research 19(1), 72–87. Kernbach, S. and Schutte, N.S. (2005) The impact of service provider emotional intelligence on customer satisfaction. Journal of Services Marketing 19(7), 438–444. Schoefer, K. and Diamantopoulos, A. (2008) The role of emotions in translating perceptions of (in)justice into postcomplaint behavioral responses. Journal of Service Research 11(1), 91–103.

References Ashforth, B.E. and Humphrey, R.H. (1993) Emotional labor in service roles: the ­influence of identity. Academy of Management Review 18(1), 88–115. Bailey, J.J., Gremler, D.D. and McCollough, M.A. (2001) Service encounter emotional value: the dyadic influence of customer and employee emotions. Services Marketing Quarterly 23(1), 1–24. Bosse, T., Duell, R., Memon, Z.A., Teur, J. and Van Der Wal, C.N. (2009) A multiagent model for emotion contagion spirals integrated within a supporting ambient agent model. In: International Conference on Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems. Springer, Berlin, Germany, pp. 48–67. Chebat, J.C., Davidow, M. and Codjovi, I. (2005) Silent voices: why some dissatisfied consumers fail to complain. Journal of Service Research 7(4), 328–342. Clore, G.L. (1994) Why emotions are felt. In: Ekman, P. and Davidson, R.J. (eds) The Nature of Emotion: Fundamental Questions. Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 103–111. 130

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Côte, S. and Hideg, I. (2011) The ability to influence others via emotion displays: a new dimension of emotional intelligence. Organizational Psychology Review 1(1), 53–71. Delcourt, C., Gremler, D.D., van Riel, A.C. and van Birgelen, M. (2013) Effects of perceived employee emotional competence on customer satisfaction and loyalty: the mediating role of rapport. Journal of Service Management 24(1), 5–24. Delcourt, C., Gremler, D.D., van Riel, A.C. and van Birgelen, M.J. (2016) Employee emotional competence: construct conceptualization and validation of a customer-­based measure. Journal of Service Research 19(1), 72–87. Ekman, P., Friesen, W.V. and Ellsworth, P. (2013) Emotion in the Human Face: Guidelines for Research and an Integration of Findings. Elsevier, Oxford. Folkman, S. and Lazarus, R.S. (1988) The relationship between coping and emotion: implications for theory and research. Social Science & Medicine 26(3), 309–317. Folkman, S., Lazarus, R.S., Gruen, R.J. and DeLongis, A. (1986) Appraisal, coping, health status, and psychological symptoms. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 50(3), 571–579. Fox, E., Lester, V., Russo, R., Bowles, R.J., Pichler, A. and Dutton, K. (2000) Facial expressions of emotion: are angry faces detected more efficiently? Cognition & Emotion 14(1), 61–92. Frijda, N.H. (1994) Emotions are functional, most of the time. In: Ekman, P.E. and Davidson, R.J. (eds) The Nature of Emotion: Fundamental Questions. Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 112–122. Gabbott, M., Tsarenko, Y. and Mok, W.H. (2011) Emotional intelligence as a moderator of coping strategies and service outcomes in circumstances of service failure. Journal of Service Research 14(2), 234–248. Grandey, A.A. (2003) When “the show must go on”: surface acting and deep acting as determinants of emotional exhaustion and peer-rated service delivery. Academy of Management Journal 46(1), 86–96. Hatfield, E., Cacioppo, J.T. and Rapson, R.L. (1994) Emotional Contagion: Studies in Emotion and Social Interaction. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Hennig-Thurau, T., Gorth, M., Paul, M. and Gremler, D.D. (2006) Are all smiles created equal? How emotional contagion and emotional labor affect service relationships. Journal of Marketing 70(3), 58–73. Higgs, M. (2004) A study of the relationship between emotional intelligence and performance in UK call centers. Journal of Managerial Psychology 19(4), 442–454. Hochschild, A. (1983) The Managed Heart. University of California Press, Berkeley, California. Huang, P.F. and Dai, C.W. (2010) The impacts of emotional contagion and emotional and emotional labor perception of employees’ service performance. International Journal of Electronic Business Management 8(1), 68–79. Ioannidou, F. and Konstantikaki, V. (2008) Empathy and emotional intelligence: what is it really about? International Journal of Caring Sciences 1(3), 118–123. Kernbach, S. and Schutte, N.S. (2005) The impact of service provider emotional intelligence on customer satisfaction. Journal of Services Marketing 19(7), 438–444. Kidwell, B., Hardesty, D.M., Murtha, B.R. and Sheng, S. (2011) Emotional intelligence in marketing exchanges. Journal of Marketing 75(1), 78–95. Service Failures, Recovery and Emotional Intelligence

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Kim, T., Yoo, J.J.-E., Lee, G. and Kim, J. (2012) Emotional intelligence and emotional labor acting strategies among frontline hotel employees. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management 24(7), 1029–1046. Koc, E. (2017) Service Failures and Recovery in Tourism and Hospitality: a Practical Manual. CAB International, Wallingford, UK. Lazarus, R.S. (1991) Emotion and Adaptation. Oxford University Press, New York. Lopes, P.N., Salovey, P., Côté, S., Beers, M. and Petty, R.E. (2005) Emotion regulation abilities and the quality of social interaction. Emotion 5(1), 113–118. Mattila, A.S. and Enz, C.A. (2002) The role of emotions in service encounters. Journal of Service Research 4(4), 268–277. Mayer, J.D. and Salovey, P. (1997) What is emotional intelligence. In: Salovey, P. and Slusher, D. (eds) Emotional Development and Emotional Intelligence: Implications for Educators. Basic Books, New York, pp. 3–31. Mayer, J.D., Caruso, D.R. and Salovey, P. (1999) Emotional intelligence meets traditional standards for an intelligence. Intelligence 27(4), 267–298. McColl-Kennedy, J.R. and Smith, A.K. (2006) Customer emotions in service failure and recovery encounters. In: Zerbe, W.J., Ashkanasy, N.M. and Hartel, C.E.J. (eds) Individual and Organizational Perspectives on Emotion Management and Display. Emerald Group Publishing, Bingley, UK, pp. 237–268. McColl-Kennedy, J.R. and Sparks, B.A. (2003) Application of fairness theory to service failures and service recovery. Journal of Service Research 5(3), 251–266. Mikolajczak, M. and Luminet, O. (2008) Trait emotional intelligence and the cognitive appraisal of stressful events: an exploratory study. Personality and Individual Differences 44(7), 1445–1453. Muir, C. (2008) Smiling with customers. Business Communication Quarterly 71(2), 241–246. Namie G. and Namie, R. (2009) US workplace bullying: some basic considerations and consultation interventions. Consulting Psychology Journal Practice and Research 61(3), 202–219. Oatley, K. (1992) Best Laid Schemes: the Psychology of the Emotions. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Pizam, A. (2004) Are hospitality employees equipped to hide their feelings? International Journal of Hospitality Management 23(4), 315–316. Prentice, C. and King, B.E., (2013) Impacts of personality, emotional intelligence and adaptiveness on service performance of casino hosts: a hierarchical approach. Journal of Business Research 66(9), 1637–1643. Pugh, S.D. (2001) Service with a smile: emotional contagion in the service encounter. Academy of Management Journal 44(5), 1018–1027. Rozell, E.J., Pettijohn, C.E. and Parker, R.S. (2004) Customer-oriented selling: exploring the roles of emotional intelligence and organizational commitment. Psychology & Marketing 21(6), 405–424. Salovey, P. and Mayer, J.D. (1990) Emotional intelligence. Imagination, Cognition and Personality 9(3), 185–211. Schoefer, K. and Diamantopoulos, A. (2008) The role of emotions in translating perceptions of (in)justice into postcomplaint behavioral responses. Journal of Service Research 11(1), 91–103.

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Schwarz, N. and Clore, G.L. (1983) Mood, misattribution, and judgments of well-being: informative and directive functions of affective states. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 45(3), 513–523. Smith, A.K. and Bolton, R.N. (2002) The effect of customer’s emotional responses to service fairness on their recovery effort evaluations and satisfaction judgments. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 30(1), 5–23. Spreng, R.A., Harrell, G.D. and Mackoy, R.D. (1995) Service recovery: impact on satisfaction and intentions. Journal of Services Marketing 9(1), 15–23. Stephens, N. and Gwinner, K.P. (1998) Why don’t some people complain? A cognitive–­ emotive process model of consumer complaint behavior. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 26(3), 172–189. Walsh, K., Chang, S. and Tse, E.C.Y. (2015) Understanding students’ intentions to join the hospitality industry: the role of emotional intelligence, service orientation, and industry satisfaction. Cornell Hospitality Quarterly 56(4), 369–382. Weun, S., Beatty, S.E. and Jones, M.A. (2004) The impact of service failure severity on service recovery evaluations and post-recovery relationships. Journal of Services Marketing 18(2), 133–146. Wieseke, J., Geigenmüller, A. and Kraus, F. (2012) On the role of empathy in customer–employee interactions. Journal of Service Research 15(3), 316–331.

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10

Mystery of Spiritual Intelligence: Predictions, Prophecies and Possibilities Atila Yüksel

Learning Objectives After reading this chapter you should be able to: ●● Develop a sense of understanding about the meaning of spiritual intelligence and its significance in the hospitality business. ●● Explain common factors contributing to failures in teamwork and understand the link between lack of spiritual intelligence and team failures. ●● Understand the antecedents and consequences of harmony among the mind, the body and the soul. ●● Explain how cognitive, emotional and spiritual intelligence work and understand the ways one can improve spiritual intelligence. ●● Understand and explain why it is important for managers to recognize and prioritize the spiritual needs of their employees

10.1 Introduction The search for meaning is the primary impulse for every human being. Viktor E. Frankl

Teamwork matters to companies for several reasons, including efficiency, idea generation, learning and communication. It is a magical glue to keep employees together, to generate a bond promoting strength, unity, reliability and support, and to realize organizational goals. Despite its significance, most teams fail due to absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, unwillingness to hold each other accountable and inattention to results. Failures are not surprising. Characterized by competition, selfishness, loneliness, standardization and uniformity, the foundations of the conventional way of work life, which have long paved the way for prioritizing material values in lieu of humane elements, and which have fostered the idea of capitalizing on the weaknesses of others, have started to collapse.

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The conventional management style of ‘command and control’ is strongly criticized since it imprisons employees’ souls. The virtues of being aware of who you are and experiencing life with this awareness, being connected with one’s self and others, or simply ‘interconnectedness’, are now being much emphasized. The need to ‘find meaning in life’ is as fundamental as such needs as food, drink and being appreciated. Meaninglessness in one’s job is likely to bring stress, depression, failure and misery at the end of workdays replete with uncertainty, anger, anxiety and conflict. It is strongly believed that the hospitality business will witness a steady rise in spirituality. This is because employees with logical and emotional intelligence can enable companies not to disappoint customers, but employees with spiritual intelligence (SQ) can delight them. Companies may create and build long-lasting relations with their customers by having employees who bring more of their complete self to work, and deploy more of their full creativity, emotions and intelligence (Mitroff and Denton, 1999). SQ could have a profound effect on staff behaviours and their performance. Empirical studies in the medical care field showed that SQ was strongly associated with clinical competence and better care (Yang and Mao, 2007; Karimi-Moonaghi et al., 2015). Staff with higher SQ were found to be more creative (Farsani et al., 2015), happier, had more compliance and interoperability in the face of stress, and had better resistance against heavy emotional demands (Giardini and Frese, 2006). Moreover, recent studies showed that staff SQ was significantly associated with such managerially important constructs as customer satisfaction (Rezaian et al., 2011; Fashi, 2017; Firdaus et al., 2017), service quality perceptions (Javaheri et al., 2013) and customer loyalty (Nadi and Golparvar, 2011; Firdaus et al., 2017). This chapter attempts to shed light on factors contributing to failures in teamwork, with an explanation of what cognitive, emotional and spiritual intelligence are. This is followed by a focus on harmony among the mind, the body and the soul, and the application of this to tourism and hospitality. The final section questions overreliance on cognitive and emotional intelligence and presents the preliminary findings of two ongoing research studies. Activity Please ask yourself the following questions and share your answers: •  Why is there a profound gap between the costly development of company goals and the low realization rates of these goals? • Do the management theories taught for decades really work at all? • Is it enough for managers to make a profit, or are they more expected to ‘do things’ for people and the world? • How appropriate is it to treat employees only as cognitive and physical beings? • Do employees have other needs to be satisfied beyond their cognitive, physical and emotional needs? Can they leave their unsatisfied needs at home? • Should employees find anything meaningful in what they do?

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10.2  Why Teams Fail in a Workplace: the Mystery of SQ Why do teams fail? According to the Execution Quotient Test by Franklin Covey (Pandey, 2014), only 37% of employees think that they know what their companies really do and why they do it, and only 20% of employees are enthusiastic about achieving company goals in their workplace. Only 15% think that the employees are sufficiently empowered to carry out their departmental objectives or feel they are being trusted. Only 17% think that communication in the workplace is based on mutual respect and that different ideas are allowed to be expressed. Only 20% believe that they work in an environment of trust, and only 13% agree that they can work in cooperation with other departments. Only half are happy about what they achieve in the workplace. As one can see from the above study, the most fundamental cause of disruptions experienced in any business is not because of the system but because of human beings. Individuals who are not aware of their self-­ insufficiencies and weaknesses and who are not open with one another cannot establish the basis for trust in the workplace. The most serious ­aspect of lack of trust is that employees use assumed interpretations ­because they cannot take part in uncensored and healthy debate. This fuels conflicts by opening up misunderstandings. The lack of a healthy debate, as a result of failing to express views clearly, brings about illusions in which team members are assumed to have adopted ideas, objectives and goals set at meetings. In reality, they do not accept and internalize these objectives and thus they are unlikely to stick to so-called joint decisions. Team members who do not feel connected to a jointly decided goal would refrain from asking their colleagues for accountability when these colleagues behave in opposition to the interests of the goals. Team members who fail to account for each other in a democratic manner would keep their individual needs (career, ego) in the foreground. They would begin to regard the needs of their departments as more important than the company’s common goals (Lencioni, 2005). Lack of employees with such skills as effective listening, learning, experimenting, creativeness, mutual trust and innovation will ­ultimately prevent teamwork and cause resistance to change by eliminating the social flexibility. It is believed that there are deeper causes driving team failures. The common causes triggering these disruptions are suggested to be: (i) the person’s (in)ability to better recognize himself/herself; (ii) the limited meaning and the underrecognition of the other; and (iii) the (in)ability to realize and fulfil one’s potential, which are clearly linked to something other than cognitive and emotional intelligence. ‘Intelligence’, the ability to learn and understand, and to think abstractly and apply knowledge to manipulate one’s environment, is an interesting but

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Activity As you read this chapter, in addition to the questions in the previous Activity box aiming to understand the experience of employees, try asking yourself the following questions and share your answers: •  Do I respect other people’s thoughts and feelings? • Do I have a vision of where I want to be in the future? • Am I open to differences and diversity among people? Am I aware of the meaning and purpose of my life? • Can I look at my inner self? • Am I aware of my shortcomings and limitations? • Can I accept goodwill behind every action of someone else? • Can I forgive the mistakes that others or myself have made? • Do I see my weaknesses and strengths? • Can I notice the ‘moment’ and live accordingly or do I get stuck in regrets and concerns? • Can I step outside the box and look at the issue when I am confronted with a problem? • Am I free from prejudices and social moulds? • Do I question the cause of everything fearlessly but respectfully? • Can I redesign the system by turning the problems around? • Do I feel gratitude? • Do I know what I do not know? • Would I love my current job even if I was not paid?

complex subject. What it is and how it works have long attracted attention. The notion that human beings possess multi-intelligence has gained support, and different types of measurable intelligences have been identified. Despite the arguments about the types of intelligence, we insist that, in addition to the types, the question of how any form of intelligence operates begs more consideration. Whatever the name is, the intelligence is a matter of thinking and applying. This brings us to the crucial question of how we really think. Like intelligence, thinking itself is a multi-layered concept and consists of the processes of perception, explanation and comprehension. Shortcomings experienced in any step will prevent the evaluation of information wholly and accurately. Activity Imagine you have found the magic lamp of Aladdin and just as told in the fable the genie suddenly appears from the mist and tells you that you have only one wish. What would you want from him? Money, fame, power, status ... or an ability to learn, understand and apply knowledge. Why?

We tend to think and reach conclusions without full information. Everyone must have had an experience in which one could comprehend the internal and Mystery of Spiritual Intelligence: Predictions, Prophecies and Possibilities

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external meanings of events holistically, despite the absence of full information. For instance, we sometimes find ourselves judging others performing their professions. Imagine a doctor who looks at your medical report on the computer screen but neither makes eye contact with you nor gives you the opportunity to ask what you are living with. Although he shows a cold attitude towards your sufferings, he successfully diagnoses your problem and prognosis, and explains a definite surgery process. He then returns to the reports of the next patient waiting outside the door. How would you think and feel about the process in general and the doctor in particular? You may feel sad but at the same time somewhat pleased and perhaps judge that he is ‘a good doctor in his profession, but insensitive!’ Now think about a second scenario. A warm welcome, eye contact and a great understanding of your suffering are genuinely displayed, but you perceive the doctor as being indecisive about the diagnosis, and hence are sceptical of the subsequent prognosis. This time you may think that ‘he is very sensitive but inadequate in his profession!’ What makes us reach these kinds of conclusions without further information? We should note that these sorts of assessments are not limited to doctors. They are almost always happening in different walks of life. Despite the absence of full information, while entering a hotel one may feel at ease and believe that ‘it is the right place’. We choose something, experience it and decide whether we would like to try it again! Put simply, we perceive the logic in the expressions. We even recognize and explain the emotions accompanying these expressions. But are these logical and emotional clues enough for us to make a sound decision? Despite the fact that we perceive the logic and recognize the feelings, we may still feel uneasy about what is being experienced. Our behaviours and decisions are likely to be flawed when we miss out the deeper meaning underlying the expressions. We can show conscious behaviours and preferences only when we understand this deeper meaning. This suggests that there ought to be something else in operation other than our cognitive and emotional abilities to safely guide our interpretations and decisions. Activity Imagine Susan, a reservation clerk, has been working for almost a decade and, following her maternity leave, she has just returned to the office. On her first day, the hotel is unusually overcrowded, and she is snowed under with work. There are too many loose ends needing to be tied. As she gets home, she suddenly realizes that she has made a costly and unrecoverable reservation mistake. She has forgotten to notify the front office of a booking and this was only understood as the group flocked into the reception at midnight. •  If you were the supervisor, what would you do with Susan and why? Who is responsible for the mistake? Why? • Imagine that Susan is fired due to her mistake. How can the supervisor ensure that the next person in Susan’s post would not make the same mistake? • Can any event happen in isolation from the whole system?

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This ‘something else’ generally helps us notice the missing part and urges us to act accordingly. We sometimes hear about and admire people who have spent a considerable time in their career, who leave their jobs suddenly and start pursuing a happier life in pursuit of new experiences. At those times, an envious desire in the form of ‘I wish I could have done it’ may cross our minds. What is causing such sharp U-turns in a career? One may find the answer in the existence or absence of harmony among the mind, the body and the soul. The accord among this trio can make the individual happier and more productive. When people establish a meaningful and purposeful relationship with life by realizing what their purpose in life is and when that purpose overlaps with their job, they will be less prone to stress. They may stay calm in crisis moments and listen to different perspectives with respect. Their tolerance may increase. They become more self-confident as they understand themselves better and build trust-based relationships with others. They will be more creative. They will understand others better and will be more enthusiastic about achievement of goals set by the company. They would feel more belonging and be more open to improvement of ‘self’. However, any disharmony among the mind, the body and the soul will prevent people from enjoying work in particular, and life in general. Perhaps because of this, employees remain ­unhappy despite all sorts of managerial incentives and interventions. Activity Imagine, you are in the business of providing services to demanding types of customers all day long. Your mind is busy with your own wishes and/or regrets. And your soul is aware that the present job you are doing does not match your purpose in life. Would you lead a happy working life under such circumstances?

10.3  What is SQ? SQ, the source of cognitive and emotional intelligence, is a cluster that allows the application of potentially existing spiritual abilities and resources in business life (Cook et al., 2004). By spirituality, we do not mean religiousness since SQ cannot be limited to religion as it does not involve commitment to religious principles and practices. SQ means that the individual is self-aware, self-controlled and self-motivated. As Noble (2001) and Vaughan (2003) put it, SQ involves such components as honesty and openness, humility, kindness, generosity, tolerance, resilience and willingness to meet the needs of others. Zohar and Marshall (2001, p. 37) defined SQ as: … moral sense, the ability to customize the rigid rules followed by understanding and love as well as the equal ability to see when love and understanding to their limit, it also allows us to grapple with the good and the evil things, to imagine that has not happened, and to lift us out of humility. Mystery of Spiritual Intelligence: Predictions, Prophecies and Possibilities

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According to Eckersley (2000, p. 5), SQ is a deep, intuitive feeling of connectedness with the wide world in our lives. Similar to Wolman’s (2001) definition, which focuses on the ability to ask about the meaning of life and experience simultaneous connections between each person and the world that is inhabited, Amram (2007) views SQ as a set of the ability to work and the tools and resources, values and spiritual features to improve daily life. Selman et al. (2005) refers to the ability to solve problems using multi-­ sensory approaches. According to McMullen (2003), courage, integrity, intuition and compassion are the components of SQ. Wigglesworth (2004) stated that SQ is the ability to behave with compassion and wisdom, keeping the peace regardless of the circumstances. Zohar and Marshall (2000) further argued that SQ is able to make a complete man intellectually, emotionally and spiritually. Mudali (2002, p. 3) even goes a step further and stated that ‘having a high IQ is not enough. To be truly a smart person, one must have SQ.’ An individual with SQ enjoys the present moment more than the past and the future, possesses a vision, develops a holistic thinking ability, looks at the problems from different angles, loves unconditionally, is compassionate, feels deep empathy, asks basic or fundamental questions, reshapes the situation or problems, resists the difficulties humbly and serves humanity, consciously judges himself/herself, changes his/her mind easily, approaches other people, lives his/her own beliefs and faces the crowd if necessary (Seyfi and Köse, 2016). From the point of employees with high SQ, there is no need to be controlled from outside. This is because they can manage themselves in harmony with their surroundings. This does not necessarily mean that managers are no longer needed in the new era of management. On the contrary, the existence of managers equipped with SQ is a ‘must’ for recognizing and accordingly satisfying the spiritual needs of others. Cognitive intelligence, emotional intelligence and SQ are linked to the three nerve centres in the brain and are assumed to work together in support of each other. Cognitive intelligence is related to the amygdala, which is the part of the brain that provides problem solving and is controlled by the neocortex. Emotional intelligence allows emotions to be recognized, expressed and thought by putting other people in place. SQ, which determines what to believe, what to ask, what to change and what to develop, is governed by the frontal lobe (Üstten, 2008). The frontal lobe is an area where conscious decisions are taken and the mechanism of survival exists that includes behaviour such as morality, ambition, emotion and reasoning involving intentional activities such as planning and problem solving. The frontal lobe allows rational and appropriate responses by acting as a buffer against sudden and frivolous reactions of the amygdala. It lets us act consciously by adding our thoughts to what we feel (Jensen, 1998). In reality, we perceive an expression with our cognitive intelligence, internalize it with our emotional intelligence and grasp the deep meaning in expression with our SQ. Put simply, cognitive intelligence will allow the individual to get the job, emotional intelligence will enable 140

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them to rise in the workplace and SQ will help the individual to become ­indispensable in the company. In other words, the success of a business would no longer depend on technical skills only but on other traits, such as inner consciousness: the natural instinct of the human being.

10.4  Why Bother with SQ in a Tourism and Hospitality Business? Happy employees are the most essential instrument for businesses to prosper and create happy customers. Although improvements in organizational structures and physical conditions, and provision of additional vocational and technical training, are extremely necessary for managers to create happy employees, appreciating the employees’ inner needs for spiritual development is a must. There are reasons to believe that there is a productive link between the level of employee self-awareness about their spiritual strengths and the realization of departmental goals. Inconclusive findings of a study we have conducted with employees working in a conservative hotel market segment are suggestive for seriously taking SQ on board (Javadein et al., 2015). In this study, it was requested that participants should specify three values that they consider important and ­specify what they require to live these values more in their work life. A pre-­ determined list, consisting of 30 values was distributed. The values that ­employees frequently put first were family, freedom, love and inner peace. Happiness and honesty were the most frequently mentioned ones among the values ranked second. Interestingly, material values, such as success and financial ­assurance, were not chosen at all. Instead of choosing power and challenge, which are the dominant values in the business world where selfishness, greed, fear and anger are widespread, participants’ tendency to favour more positive values (happiness, family, etc.) suggests that companies fed by these values would do better. The notion suggesting that there are two separate lives (i.e. business and private life) is questionable. We believe that there is only one general life and that values in this general life will inevitably be effective in almost every situation. When we analysed the responses to the second question, which asked ‘What is needed in order to live these values more in the workplace?’ the responses included spare time for self, financial possibility, honesty, love, trustworthy people, justice and better recognition. It is obvious from the responses that the employees need more time to realize the full potential of themselves. In the second phase of the study, participants were asked to pick a photograph that they thought best expressed themselves from the set of 30 photographs laid on the floor. They were then required to articulate why they had chosen the particular photograph. The participants showed their chosen visuals to the others and began to explain their reasons. In this exercise, we observed that such an activity enabled them to reconnect with a scene from their past and their familiar environment that used to comfort Mystery of Spiritual Intelligence: Predictions, Prophecies and Possibilities

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them. This activity helped them to discover a quality or trait they did not know about their fellow colleagues. Interestingly, photographs depicting children, nature and animals were chosen most frequently. A technical department member of staff who was 60 years old preferred the two photographs in which a dog and a ladybird were portrayed and explained: My parents passed away a long time ago, they do not exist anymore. Now I wish I were around 40–45 years old. I would like to spend more of my time with animals. I would have travelled around places that I have not seen more, and I would have helped more people as much as I can. I have a very high sense of justice, and I have feelings of pity, especially for the younger generation at work. When an injustice is made to someone else, especially to the young people, I do everything to defend their rights. I carry no career ambition at all. I wish I were an artisan.

This statement is brief but insightful as he indicates that his job does not fit his life purpose at all. Another participant who admitted a high tendency for spiritual values and feelings chose a photograph showing a child sitting between two older people and stated: I do not enjoy anything other than family. I do not like smart technologies. I miss the 1960s, the years of sincerity. I love life with spiritual feelings.

This is another case pointing out that one finds the very meaning of life not in material values such as money, power and status but in something else. Another participant who chose a photograph depicting a playground stated: I did not live my childhood fully. I am very childish. I wish I could live my inner child.

This is another case that shows that staff may experience difficulty in realizing their purpose in life via their current jobs. For example, how can a staff member who is longing to live her inner child happily perform her job, which is full of ups and downs in trying to satisfy the demanding orders of customers waiting for their hot or cold drinks in the lobby bar?

10.5  Discussion and Conclusion Hospitality is primarily a business of ‘sense, touch and connect’. Its products are designed not only for creating an opportunity to learn new things but also for delivering memorable experiences by touching on emotions and spirits. The ‘touch’ is only possible with the awareness of the self and others. That is to say that the logical and the emotional touch are not enough. This denotes that the touch happens not only with knowledge and logic but also with spiritual chemistry. As Richard Restak (2001) puts it in his book, The Secret Life of the Brain, we advocate the idea that human beings are not ‘thought machines’ but ‘spiritual beings’. During one of our stays in a hotel, we were touched most by the simple but harmonious brush motions of a 142

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technical member of staff who was compassionately painting the metal poles of the information board placed on the beach. He appeared confident and totally connected with what he was doing. We sensed the peacefulness in his mind. He was acting as if he was part of a bigger entity. While he was unaware of our existence, every brushstroke of painting that he did had an impact on our experience as customers. Activity Standard operating procedures (SoPs) are instructions to explain, for example, how to cook a dish or how to mix a beverage. In a dish where an intense spicy flavour is used, it is very rare for two chefs to deliver the same taste through following the same SoP. What could be the reason for the difference?

Sadly, judging from the current curriculums in schools, the skills that need to be acquired are stuck at the level of technical knowledge (e.g. how to make a reservation, how to take an order at a restaurant). We observe a similar tendency in favour of ‘technical logic’ in business operations as well. For instance, several operational procedures have been developed in various fields. It is wrongly assumed that the result will be primarily customer satisfaction when the employees strictly follow these procedures. Over-reliance on logical skills is nothing more than the ‘standardization illusion’ that is prevalent in the mass production lines of factories. The most important shortcoming with such a standardization tendency is that the sacred ingredient cannot be specified. Deeper meaning being added by the service provider to the product and sensed by the customer is ignored in the majority of SoPs. Activity Simple but effective questions for you to discuss include: •  What is really produced as a result of employee–client and employee–­employee interactions? Is it trust, loyalty and satisfaction? Can these be the outcome of logical skills alone? • Is it possible for an employee who cannot completely convince himself about a process or a recommendation to convince the customer while making that recommendation? • Is it possible for an employee who has not been able to connect with himself/herself to connect with someone else? • Is it possible for an employee who does not know why he/she is doing his/her job to create satisfying experiences for customers? • Is it possible to use emotional intelligence, express feelings and address the spiritual needs of others in a workplace where cognitive intelligence is more praised?

Teaching for understanding and delivering the spiritual needs of self and others is more difficult than teaching standardized operations. Particularly, it Mystery of Spiritual Intelligence: Predictions, Prophecies and Possibilities

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is unlikely that individuals who do not have inner awareness, and who cannot realize their spiritual needs, can perform happily. It is difficult for an individual who is unaware of their own needs to notice the cognitive, emotional or spiritual needs of others. Unfortunately, SQ is not taken on board at schools. How to reach ‘self-awareness’ and ‘to touch the soul’ are not among the top competences that are taught in the educational curricula in schools. Instead, how to fill out forms has become the traditional and indispensable focus of training for front-office operations. Chopping, storage or cooking styles have become the major focus of culinary training. Type of presentation is the focus of restaurant training, and materials and chemical usage instructions are the focus of housekeeping training. Of course, it is important to know these procedures. However, the benefit of having procedural knowledge depends on the ability to transfer this information to working life. Think for a minute about the following scenario. You would like to order an item from the menu at a fast-food restaurant. All the procedures are being carefully carried out and the process is completed with a smiling thank you. However, you feel in a bit of a muddle; something is wrong. You somehow know that the staff are just following the procedures with no genuine interest. Deep down you are dissatisfied. But from the procedural point of view, everything is in order! To read, to feel, to understand the needs of customers, to persuade them with a proper touch and to deliver good experiences for their soul, SQ must be among the basic qualifications that should be earned. Trying to solve problems using only logic and trying to understand customer feelings in the service process are insufficient without SQ. With SQ, our intent is not a religious phenomenon but rather a desire to find a deeper meaning and purpose in one’s life and to lead an integrated life.

Activity Simple but effective questions for you to discuss include: •  How do employees create confidence in the eyes of customers seeking consistency, honesty and competence, and how can trust be delivered to the customers? • How can employees who do not feel the spirit of their customers address their client’s needs and feelings?

In summary, SQ, as well as emotional intelligence, which is claimed to be at least twice as effective in the workplace as cognitive intelligence, are not new concepts at all. They are concepts that have been in existence since the days of Aristotle. They have produced many debates and discussions since then. A person can be in good health, work at the head of an important department, have a wonderful family and have a high a status in society. However, they may be discontent with their life. They may doubt that whatever they do is right. 144

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Thanks to long years of training, they may read emotions by looking at verbal and non-verbal clues. By rehearsing the situations they may face, they can develop skills to read anger, astonishment or happiness by just carefully looking at the face of the other. In these situations, they may find and say the appropriate words that they have been trained to use. But if they are not conscientious, intuitive and compassionate, the words that they use will only carry insincerity and lack of faith in the job. Without SQ, trained words and acts cannot disguise the lacking spiritual chemistry sensed by the customer. Perhaps for this reason, while the most sensible, most empathic words and solutions in employee–client interaction are proposed, the ‘chill’ in the client’s soul remains to be resolved. Due to a lack of the spiritual touch, so-called ‘standardized solutions’ coming from ‘standardized manners’ cannot create genuine satisfaction either for employees nor for their customers.

References Amram, Y. (2007) The seven dimensions of spiritual intelligence: an ecumenical, grounded theory. Association paper presented at the 115th Annual Conference of the American Psychological Association, San Francisco, California. Available at: http://www.yosiamram.net/docs/7_Dimensions_of_SI_APA_confr_paper_ Yosi_Amram.pdf (accessed 16 October 2018). Cook, S., Macaulay, S. and Coldicott, H. (2004) Change Management Excellence: Using the Four Intelligences for Successful Organizational Change. Kogan Page, London. Eckersley, R. (2000) Spirituality, progress, meaning, and values. Paper presented at the 3rd Annual Conference on Spirituality, Leadership, and Management, Ballarat, Australia. Available at: http://www.slam.org.au/wp-content/uploads/ 2013/07/JSLaMvol1_2002_Eckersley.pdf (accessed 16 October 2018). Farsani, M.A., Hafsejani, H.S. and Karamian, S. (2015) Studying the relationship between the spiritual intelligence and the employee’s creativity. Journal UMP Social Sciences and Technology Management 3(3), Suppl. 1, 676–681. Fashi, M.F. (2017) Studying the relationship between spiritual intelligence of nurses and patient’s satisfaction with nursing care. Bali Medical Journal 16(3), 539–542. Firdaus, F., Setiawan, M., Djumahir, D. and Sumiati, S. (2017) Effect of emotional intelligence and spiritual intelligence on service quality, customer satisfaction and loyalty: study on Himpuh member Umrah organizer company in district and municipality of Bekasi. International Journal of Economic Research 14(18), 515–528. Giardini, A. and Frese, M. (2006) Reducing the negative effects of emotion work in service occupations: emotional competence as a psychological resource. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 11(1), 63–75. Javadein, S.R.S., Neshan, M.S. and Moradi-Moghaddam, M. (2015) Investigating the effects of spiritual and emotional intelligence on nurses’ job stress and its impact on patient satisfaction. Global Journal of Management Studies and Researches 2(1), 1–8. Mystery of Spiritual Intelligence: Predictions, Prophecies and Possibilities

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Javaheri, H., Bahonar, S. and Safarnia, H. (2013) Surveying relationship ­between spiritual intelligence and service quality. Interdisciplinary Journal of ­Contemporary Research in Business 4(9), 547–554. Jensen, E. (1998) Teaching with the Brain in Mind. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), Alexandria, Virginia. Karimi-Moonaghi, H., Gazerani, A., Vaghee, S., Gholami, H., Salehmoghaddam, A.R. and Gharibnavaz, R. (2015) Relation between spiritual intelligence and clinical competency of nurses in Iran. Iranian Journal of Nursing and Midwifery Research 20(6), 665–669. Lencioni, P. (2005) Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team: a Field Guide. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, California. McMullen, B. (2003) Spiritual intelligence. Available at: http://student.bmj.com/student/­ view-article.html?id=sbmj030360 (accessed 23 October 2018). Mitroff, I. and Denton, A.E. (1999) A study of spirituality in the workplace. Sloan Management Review, Summer, 83–92. Mudali, K. (2002) Quote: how high is your spiritual intelligence? Available at: http:// www.eng.usf.edu/gopalakr/artcles/spiritual.html (accessed 23 October 2018). Nadi, M.A. and Golparvar, M. (2011) Simple and integrative relationship between spirituality components with loyalty at work. Ethics in Science and Technology 6(2), 13–21. Noble, K.D. (2001) Riding the Wind Horse: Spiritual Intelligence and the Growth of the Self. Hampton Press, Cresskill, New Jersey. Pandey, A. (2014) Spirituality in the workplace and spiritual intelligence: a new paradigm for a more effective workforce in an organization. IOSR Journal of Business and Management 16(10), 45–50. Restak, R. (2001) The Secret Life of the Brain. Henry Joseph Press, Malden, Massachusetts. Rezaian, A., Hadizadeh Moghadam, A. and Naeji, M.J. (2011) Designing the model of patients’ satisfaction in hospitals: impact of medical staff’s emotional intelligence, spiritual intelligence and creativity. Hospital 10(3), 5–10. Selman, V., Selman, R.C., Selman, J. and Selman, E. (2005) Spiritual-intelligence/ -quotient. College Teaching Methods & Styles Journal 1(3), 23–30. Seyfi, U.Y. and Köse, S. (2016) Ruhsal Zeka ve Çalışma Algısı Üzerine Bir Analiz. [Analysis on spiritual intelligence and working perception.] Journal of Management and Economics 23(3), 767–787 Üstten, A. (2008) Kuantum Biliminin Getirdiği Yenilikler Işığında Ruhsal Zekânın Edebiyat Eğitiminde Kullanılması. PhD thesis, Gazi Üniversitesi Eğitim Bilimleri Enstitüsü, Ankara, Turkey. Vaughan, F. (2003) What is spiritual intelligence? Journal of Humanistic Psychology 42(2), 16–33. Wigglesworth, C. (2004) Spiritual intelligence: why it matters. Available at: https://www. kosmosjournal.org/journal_issue/spring-summer-2004/ (accessed 23 October 2018). Wolman, R. (2001) Thinking With Your Soul: Spiritual Intelligence and Why it Matters. Harmony, New York. Yang, K. and Mao, X. (2007) A study of nurses’ spiritual intelligence: a cross-sectional questionnaire survey. International Journal of Nursing Studies 44(6), 999–1010. Zohar, D. and Marshall, I. (2000) SQ: Connecting with Our Spiritual Intelligence. Bloomsbury Publishing, New York. Zohar, D. and Marshall, I. (2001) Spiritual Intelligence: The Ultimate Intelligence. Bloomsbury Publishing, London. 146

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Index

Note: Page numbers in bold type refer to figures Page numbers in italic type refer to tables abilities of emotional intelligence  20 activities to develop  24–25 ability 4 models 38–39 see also emotional ability academics 8 achieving learner  68 acting deep  32, 113, 129 genuine 113 emotional 31–32 strategies 113 surface  31–32, 113, 128 activist learning style  69 aesthetic attributes, positive  116 affective components  53 age 86–87 agreeable individuals  66 altruism 127 analysis of variance (ANOVA)  69 anger  56, 124 antecedents, emotional dyadic  53 anxiety, social  6 appearance 115–116 approaches, employee-focused  113 arousal, empathic modes (Hoffman)  54–55 assurance  111, 114–115 atmosphere 116 attitudes, job-related  112 Australia, Austrade  63 avoidance, social  6 awareness, social  57, 79 application 58

baby boomers  87 Bacigalupo, A.C., and Hess. J.D.  56 Bar-On, R., Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i)  37, 39, 56 behavioural competencies  57 behaviours 90

intelligent 37 organizational 98–99 citizenship 53 for satisfactory service encounters  54–59 service employees  46 and skills for satisfactory service encounters 54–59 Bennett, M.  101 Big Five (factors) Personality Test  67, 83 Biggs, J.B.  68 blame 124 Bloom, B., taxonomy of cognitive processes in learning, revision (Krathwohl) 65 Boz, H., and Koc, E.  27, 41 brain 140 British Hospitality Association (BHA)  63 business success  4

career planning  70–71 caring  79, 111, 116 Center for Generational Kinetics  86 character 77 ‘Chinese-ready’ 98 Ciarrochi, J., et al. 41 classical conditioning  55 coaching 80 cognition, social  7 cognitive appraisal theory  123 cognitive intelligence  140 cognitive knowledge  64–65 cognitive style  68 collectivism versus individualism  89, 97 collectivist cultures  98 command and control  135 communication, service provider-customer  113 skills, intercultural 104 competence  99, 115 intercultural 100 competencies 63 behavioural  57 for success  66

147

confidence 30 conflict management  80 conscientiousness 66 coping mechanism 123 strategies 123 courtesy 114–115 Covey, F., Execution Quotient Test  136 Critical Incident Questionnaire 100–101 criticism 52 cues external 21 non-verbal 7 cultural distance, perceived  96 cultural differences  101 knowledge about  98 cultural dimensions theory (Hofstede)  89, 90, 96–98 cultural intelligence  89, 99, 115, 117 cultural values  101 culture 89–90 collectivist 98 definition 96 individualistic 98 indulgence 90 international service  95–96 restraint 90 Western 101 customers cognitive components  53 dissatisfied 7 dysfunctional 117 emotional displays  52 emotional intelligence  121 in service failure and ­recovery  122–123 emotions 112 –employee rapport  117 experience 77 satisfaction  6–7, 79 service 90 excellent 76 –service employees interaction  47 –service provider communication  113 state of mood  52

Darwin, C., Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, The  16, 37 Davidson, R.J., and Ekman, P.  17 debate, healthy  136 debriefing 70 decision-making, skills  55–56 decisions, hiring  66

declarative knowledge  64 deep acting  32, 113, 129 deep learner  68 deprivation 21 desirable emotions  51 development of emotional intelligence  21–26 development opportunities  127 Developmental Model of Intercultural ­Sensitivity (DMIS)  101 Dietze, A.G.  48, 51 differences cultural 98, 101 dimensions theory (Hofstede)  89, 90, 96–98 generational work  88 difficult customers  117 direst association  55 DiSC assessment  83 dissatisfaction, customer  7 Drucker, P.  36 Dunning–Kruger syndrome  41 dyadic interactional antecedents  53 dysfunctional customers  117

education  64, 66 effective leadership  86 Ekman, P. and Davidson, R.J.  17 matrix of emotions  48, 51 embarrassment 52 emerging markets  98 emotion/facial expression recognition  29 emotional ability  38 components of  5 service personnel and service quality  22–23 emotional acting  31–32 emotional dyadic antecedents  53 emotional contagion  53, 127 theory 116 emotional intelligence (EI) definition 99 main constructs of  20 tests  38–42, 56 emotional intelligence and diversity model (Gardenswartz)   84 emotional labour  31–32 and service quality  112–113 emotional processing  15 Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i) (Bar-On)  37, 39, 56

148Index

emotions  15–16, 42, 48–51, 58, 86, 99, 121 customer 112 desirable 51 displayed 48 Ekman’s matrix  48, 51 employee displays of  51 facilitating (using)  122, 124 in organizational behaviour  98 managing  38, 122, 125, 128 negative 30, 31, 56, 123, 125 perceiving  27, 38, 122–123, 126 recognition, training material  28, 29 and service encounters  52–54, 122 students’ 103 understanding  38, 122, 124, 126–127 using and managing  21, 30–32 empathic arousal modes (Hoffman)  54–55 empathy  21, 54–55, 85–86, 116–117, 127 employee–customer rapport  117 employee-focused approach  113 employees see service employees encounters see service encounters Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology 37 EQ-i scales and subscales (Bar-On)  37, 39, 56 ethno-relativism 101 European service providers  98 exaggeration 41 exchange programmes  100, 104 Execution Quotient Test (Covey)  136 experiences, international  100 expert knowledge  63, 65 expertise development 65 professional 64 Expression of the Emotions in Man and ­Animals, The (Darwin)  16, 37 expressions see facial expressions extravert personality traits  66

face 126 facial expressions  21, 27, 29, 128, 138 recognition  29, 42 facilitating (using) emotion  122, 124 facilitating thought  38 failure see service failures feelings  16–17, 77, 86 negative  17, 21 females  7, 85–86 femininity versus masculinity  89, 97 Five Factor Model (Liu and Madera) 83 flight attendant  51 forgetfulness 52

Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (Gardner)  37 frontline employees  113–114 casino 128 frontline service providers  114

Gardner, H. Frames of Mind: The Theory of ­Multiple Intelligences 37 multiple intelligences construct  2, 3–4 gender 85–86 strengths  86 Generation X  87 Generation Z  87 generational work differences  88 generations, multiple  86–87 genuine acting  113 Germany 97–98 gestures 128 Goldberg, L.  66 Goleman, D.  17–20, 37, 39, 77, 99 emotional intelligence model  37 guest–host relationship  114

happiness 90 hard skills  75 healthy debate  136 Hess, J.D., and Bacigalupo, A.C.  56 high emotional intelligence  114, 116–117, 126 customers 123 higher-than-average emotional intelligence 56 highly extraverted persons  66 hiring decisions  66 Hochschild, A.  31, 113, 128 Hoffman, M.L., empathic arousal modes  54–55 Hofstede, G.J., cultural dimensions theory  89, 90, 96–98 Honey, P., and Mumford, A., Learning Style Questionnaire 69 hospitality case study  70 marketing 114–115 performance, and learning styles  68–69 hotels managers 66 market study  141–142 service encounters  47 stay 109 success management  66 human personality  66

Index149

image inappropriateness  52 individualism versus collectivism  89, 97 individualistic cultures  98 indulgence culture  90 indulgence versus restraint  90, 97 inferences, managerial  65 inflated self-efficacy beliefs  41 influencing 80 inspirational leaders  80 integration 104 intellect 66 intellectual persons  66 intelligence  1–2, 136–137 behaviors 37 cognitive 140 cultural  89, 99, 115, 117 models 37 social 37 spiritual (SQ)  4, 135–145 see also multiple intelligences intelligence quotient (IQ)  37 intelligere 1 interactions customers–service employees  47 employee and employee–customer  80 person-to-person 46 intercultural communication skills  104 intercultural competence  100 Intercultural Development Continuum  101 intercultural sensitivity  99–104 training on  98–100, 100–104, 102–103 interculturally competent people  99 international exchange programmes  100, 104 international experiences  100 international service cultures  95–96 international tourism  89 interpersonal skills  6, 56

jet lag  17 job-focused approach  113 job performance and working environment  70–71

Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces  28 knowledge 63–64 about cultural differences  98 cognitive 64–65 declarative 64 emotional 124 expert  63, 65 prior 65 procedural 64

Koc, E. and Boz, H.  27, 41 et al. 5 Kolb, D.A., Learning Style Inventory  68 Krathwohl, D.R., revision of Bloom’s ­taxonomy of cognitive processes in learning 65

labour, emotional  31–32, 112–113 language-mediated association  55 LAST model  127 Law, K.S., and Wong, C.-S.  41 leaders, inspirational  80 leadership, effective  86 learning approaches to (Biggs)  68 dimensions of  70 reflective 101 styles, and hospitality performance  68–69 Learning Style Inventory (Kolb)  68 Learning Style Questionnaire (Honey and Mumford) 69 logical skills  143 long or short-term orientation of a society 97

management 63 conflict 80 relationship 57–58 self- 57, 78–79 success models  64 managerial concepts  65 managerial facts  65 managerial inferences  65 managerial problem solving  69 managers 63–64 hotel 66 perception of  70 managing emotions  38, 122, 125, 128 markets, emerging  98 marketing 15 hospitality 114–115 masculinity versus femininity 89, 97 Mayer, J.D. et al. 20 and Salovey, P., theory of emotional intelligence  5, 41 Salovey, P., and Caruso, D.R.  38 Mayer–Salovey–Caruso Emotional ­Intelligence Test (MSCEIT)  38, 40–41

150Index

McDonald’s 109 meaning in life  135 measure, self-report  40 measurement systems  36 measuring, service quality  110–111 medical care field  135 men 86 mental ability models  38 mentoring 80 millennials 87 mimicry 55 mixed models  39–42 monitoring, self- 127 mood  52, 127 motivation  20, 77, 114 MSCEIT (Mayer–Salovey–Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test)  38, 40–41 Multicultural Personality Questionnaire  100–101 Multifactor Emotional Intelligence Scale (MEIS)  37, 38 multiple intelligences  2, 37 Multiple Intelligences Construct (Gardner)  2, 3–4 Mumford, A. and Honey, P.  69 Myers–Briggs Type Indicator  66–67, 81, 82

person-to-person interactions  46 personal ethic  103 personnel, service  22–23 see also service employees personality and emotional intelligence  81–85 extrovert 66 human 66 outgoing 66 as success predictors  66–67 tests  66–67, 81, 85 traits  81, 83 extrovert 66 as success predictors  66–67 types  82 Petrides, K.V., et al. 41 power distance  89, 96 practitioners 8 pragmatic versus normative  89 pragmatist learning style  69 prior knowledge  65 problem solving, managerial  69 procedural knowledge  64 professional development training 68 professional expertise  64 psychophysiological tools  42

negative emotions  30, 56, 123, 125 management strategies  31 negative feelings  17, 21 non-intellective factors on intelligent ­behaviour  37 non-verbal channels  126 non-verbal elements  112 Nordic model  110 normative versus pragmatic  89

quality relationship 53 see also service quality (SQ)

organizational behaviours  98–99 citizenship 53 outcomes, work-related  112 outgoing personality  66 overconfidence 41 Oxford English Dictionary  2

perception of managers 70 perceived cultural distance  96 perceiving emotions  27, 38, 122–123, 126 performance hospitality, and learning styles  68–69 job 70–71

rapport 53 employee-customer 117 rational processing  15 reactions, primary circular  54 recovery see service recovery reflective learning  101 reflector learning style  69 regrets 124 relationship management  57–58 application 58 relationship quality  53 reliability  111, 114 repatronage  52, 54 responsiveness  111, 117 restaurants 47 restraint cultures 90 versus indulgence 90, 97 role taking  55 Rome, Fiumicino Airport  96

Index151

Salovey, P., and Mayer, J.D.  37, 41 satisfaction 21 satisfactory service encounters  54 behaviour and skills for  54–59 Schutte, N.S., et al. 41 Self-Report EI Test  39 SEEVal 53 selection practices  66 self-awareness  20, 56–57, 63, 77–78, 114, 144 self-efficacy 41 inflated beliefs in  42 self-management  57, 78–79 self-monitoring, employees  127 self-regulation 20 self-report 39–41 measures 42 Self-Report EI Test (Schutte et al.) 39 sensitivity, intercultural  99–104 training on  98–100, 100–104, 102–103 service cultures, international  95–96 service delivery 99 high-contact 47 with a smile  113 service employees  25 behaviours 46 –customers interaction  47, 80 cognitive components  53 displays of emotions  51 emotional intelligence  121 high 128 service failure/recovery  125 self-monitoring 127 satisfactory and unsatisfactory ­responses in encounters  49–50 in Turkey  27, 29 service encounter emotional value (SEEVal) 53 service encounters  5–6, 21, 47–48, 58, 95 basic emotions in  18–19 behaviours and skills for satisfactory  54–59 desirable emotions  51 and emotional intelligence  122 and emotions  52–54, 122 failed 121 in hotels  47 intercultural  95, 99 recovery 54 restaurants 47 satisfactory 54–59 satisfactory and unsatisfactory employee responses in  49–50

service failures  47–48, 54, 121 and customer emotional intelligence  122–123 and employee emotional intelligence  125–129 team 136–139 service personnel, and emotional ability  22–23 service providers, European  98 service quality (SQ)  46, 96, 108–110, 139–142, 144–145 dimensions 46 and emotional ability  22–23 and emotional intelligence  111–112 and emotional labour  112–113 hierarchical model  111 measuring 110–111 service recovery  47–48, 54 and customer emotional intelligence  122–123 and employee emotional intelligence  125–129 excellent 54 servicescape design 116 social 6 SERVQUAL model 6, 110, 111 application 114–118 dimensions of  7, 110 skilled workers, shortfall  63 skills  4, 38, 63 basic 5 in decision-making  55–56 emotional intelligence  20, 47, 56 hard 75 intercultural communication  104 interpersonal  6, 56 logical 143 for satisfactory service encounters  54–59 social 21 soft  4, 66, 76, 99–100 verbal and nonverbal  115 smile  113, 127 social anxiety  6 social awareness  57, 79 application 58 social avoidance  6 social cognition  7 social intelligence  37 society, long or short-term orientation of  97 soft skills  4, 66, 76, 99–100 Spenser, E.  2 spiritual intelligence (SQ)  4, 135–145 spirituality  135, 139

152Index

SQ see service quality (SQ); spiritual ­intelligence (SQ) standards, cultural  96 Statistica 87 stimuli, embarrassment  52 strategic learner  68 stress 123 students, emotions  103 success 62–63, 81, 112 competencies 66 management  64, 66 personality traits as predictors  66–67 summer schools abroad  100 surface acting  31–32, 113, 128 surface approach to learning  68

tangibles 115–116 teaching 143 team failure  136–139 teamwork  80, 134 Teares of the Muses, The (Spenser)  2 theorist learning style  69 theory of emotional intelligence (Mayer and Salovey) 5 Thorndike, E.L.  2, 37 thought 38 tools, psychophysiological  42 tests emotional intelligence  38–42, 56 personality  66–67, 81, 85 ‘touch the soul’ 144 traditionalists 87 training  54, 64, 100, 144 on intercultural sensitivity  98–100, 100–104, 102–103 material, emotion recognition  28, 29 online 27

professional development  68 resources 127 True Colors Assessment  82–83, 84 trust, lack of  136 Turkey service employees in  27

uncertainty avoidance  89, 96 understanding emotions  38, 122, 124, 126–127 United Kingdom (UK)  63 United States (US)  85, 90, 97–98 census estimate  87 universities 104 courses 104 university-level education  99

values 141 cultural 101 violation of privacy  52 voice tone  128

Western cultures  101 women  6–7, 85–86 Wong, C.-S., and Law, K.S.  41 work, generational differences  88 work-related outcomes  112 workers, skilled, shortfall  63 workforce, diverse  95 working environment, and job ­performance  70–71 workplace issues  86 World Economic Forum (WEF)  4 World Tourism Organization  89 world travel  89

Index153

CABI – who we are and what we do This book is published by CABI, an international not-for-profit organisation that improves people’s lives worldwide by providing information and applying scientific expertise to solve problems in agriculture and the environment. CABI is also a global publisher producing key scientific publications, including world renowned databases, as well as compendia, books, ebooks and full text electronic resources. We publish content in a wide range of subject areas including: agriculture and crop science / animal and veterinary sciences / ecology and conservation / environmental science / horticulture and plant sciences / human health, food science and nutrition / international development / leisure and tourism. The profits from CABI’s publishing activities enable us to work with farming communities around the world, supporting them as they battle with poor soil, invasive species and pests and diseases, to improve their livelihoods and help provide food for an ever growing population. CABI is an international intergovernmental organisation, and we gratefully acknowledge the core financial support from our member countries (and lead agencies) including: Ministry of Agriculture People’s Republic of China

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