Hotel Employees’ Individual Characteristics and their Service Outcomes: The Critical Role of Polychronicity

Purpose: The aim of the study is to identify the importance of hotel employees’ individual characteristics, namely polychronicity, for their critical attitudes and behaviors towards their service jobs. More specifically, this study develops and tests a research model that investigates the relationships between polychronicity and employees’ personal accomplishments and analyzes its relationships with creativity and job performance. The person–job fit theory offers a rationale for developing the proposed relationships. Design/Methodology/Approach: A survey instrument was used to collect data from selected hotels in Northern Poland. Data were analyzed through descriptive statistics, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. Findings: The results proved that polychronicity may be a significant predictor of employees’ personal accomplishment that may exert a positive impact on employees’ creativity and their job performance. Practical Implications: This study offers several useful implications including implementation of adequate recruitment procedures, effective training programs and motivation to attract and retain valuable employees, predisposed to their service jobs and likely to deliver high quality service experience. Originality/Value:The research value of this study may also result from the holistic approach undertaken towards the study concept, since the relationships proposed in this study have been combined within one conceptual model and analyzed simultaneously in the context of hotel employees in Poland, extending the study results to a new socio-cultural context of Central-East Europe.