Organizational citizenship behaviors of hotel employees: The role of discretionary human resource practices and psychological contract - Theory and Practice in Hospitality and Tourism Research - page 71

Organizational citizenship behaviors of hotel employees: The role of
discretionary human resource practices and psychological contract

M.A. Hemdi & M. Hafiz
Faculty of Hotel and Tourism Management, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam, Malaysia

F. Mahat
Faculty of Hotel and Tourism Management, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Penang, Malaysia

N.Z. Othman
KFCH International College, Selangor, Malaysia

ABSTRACT: The aims of this study were to investigate the relationship between discretionary HR
practices and OCBs (OCBO and OCBI), and to clarify the mediating effects of psychological contract
fulfillment. 380 operational employees from 22 large hotels in Malaysia participated in this study. The
results show that discretionary HR practices, particularly training and development, performance man-
agement, and participation and involvement have significant positive relationship with either OCBO or
OCBI. Furthermore, psychological contract fulfillment was a significant mediating mechanism of the
relationship between discretionary HR practices and OCBs. These findings suggest that practicing hotel
managers should continue to place greater emphasis on HR practices in order to enhance feeling of psy-
chological contract and to promote greater OCBs among hotel's operational employees.

Keywords : Discretionary HR practices, psychological contract, organizational citizenship behavior

1 INTRODUCTION

quality services to their customers (Chang, Gong
& Shum, 2011). However, the understanding of
how it is that HR practices impact employee atti-
tudes and behavioral outcomes is still lacking,
especially within the Malaysian hotel industry
(Hemdi & Othman, 2014; Tang & Tang, 2012).
According to Li, Frenkel and Sanders (2011), HR
practices are the means through which employee
perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors are shaped.
Therefore, building on somewhat limited research
conducted to date on discretionary HR practices
and psychological contract, this study proposes to
examine the employees' assessment of the quality
of discretionary HR practices on their perceptions
of psychological contract fulfillment and its impact
on individual outcomes, specifically organizational
citizenship behaviors (OCB).

Tourism industry has been performing extremely
well in the Malaysian economy. Between 2006-
2009, revenue from the tourism industry increased
67.1% to RM53.4 billion and tourist arrivals
increased 43.6% to 23.6 million. In 2012, a total
of 25.03 million tourists arrived in Malaysia and
spent RM60.6 billion. During the 10th Malaysian
Plan (2011-2015) period, the target is to improve
Malaysia's position to be within the top 10 in terms
of global tourism receipts, contributing RM115
billion in receipts and providing 2 million jobs in
the industry in 2015 ( Economic Planning Unit -
10th Malaysian Plan , 2011). As a result of a
steady increase in tourism over the years, Malaysia
now has more hotel rooms than ever before. For
example, as of May 2013 the total room supply
has increased to 184,998 rooms as compared to
168,497 rooms in 2010( Economic Planning Unit -
10th Malaysian Plan , 2011).
For Malaysia to be competitive in the global
tourism industry, service-oriented organizations
such as hotels, an important sector in the tour-
ism industry, need to be proactive in their human
resources implementations in order to deliver high

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Discretionary HR practices
Discretionary HR practices are those which the
organization chooses to invest in, are typically
more strategically focused, and are different from
those which are transactional (Hayton, 2004).