IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jomorg/v13y2007i02p160-174_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Working within the front-of-house/back-of-house boundary: Room attendants in the hotel guest room space

Author

Listed:
  • Boon, Bronwyn

Abstract

Context is an important but largely ignored dimension of quality service encounters. This paper contributes to the hospitality service industries literature by examining how the front-of-house and back-of-house boundary work (Nippert-Eng 1996, 2003) engaged by Room Attendants working within the hotel guest room space impact on the hospitality impression management performed. Qualitative data from fieldwork engaging with hotel employees located within the tourist resort of Queenstown New Zealand are used to explore the multiple fronts on which the front-of-house and back-of-house boundaries are simultaneously negotiated. The results suggest that Room Attendants negotiate the front-of-house and back-of-house boundary through objects – such as the guest room and articles belonging to the guest – and aspects of self– such as impression management, safety, socialising and self-responsibility for room checking. The results support the importance of considering context when seeking to understand the complexities associated with the (re)production of a reliably positive service encounter.

Suggested Citation

  • Boon, Bronwyn, 2007. "Working within the front-of-house/back-of-house boundary: Room attendants in the hotel guest room space," Journal of Management & Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 13(2), pages 160-174, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:jomorg:v:13:y:2007:i:02:p:160-174_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1833367200003837/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kensbock, Sandra & Jennings, Gayle & Bailey, Janis & Patiar, Anoop, 2016. "Performing: Hotel room attendants’ employment experiences," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 112-127.
    2. Sandra Kensbock & Janis Bailey & Gayle Jennings & Anoop Patiar, 2015. "Sexual Harassment of Women Working as Room Attendants within 5-Star Hotels," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(1), pages 36-50, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:jomorg:v:13:y:2007:i:02:p:160-174_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/jmo .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.