For the purposes of this research, the DSB construct is attractive because:
(i) it corresponds closely with the concept of Performance Beyond Expectations
and, therefore, with the Job Performance factor developed above; but
(ii) it measures a group-level organisational outcome (rather than the individual-
level as is the case for the Job Performance construct above); and
(ii) it can contribute to the research by providing an additional behavioural
measure of work motivation/extra effort which:
a. avoids self-reporting bias; and
b. is specifically designed for customer contact service encounters.
Service Quality (Organisational-level outcome)
Service Quality (SQ) has been identified as a core positive organisational outcome
for hospitality organisations (Go et al. 1996: 1; Hartline and Ferrell 1996: 52-53;
Wilkins et al. 2007) and of key importance in a more general organisational
context as a key contributor to a number productive organisational outcomes
including profitability, costs, customer satisfaction and retention, and positive
word-of-mouth customer evaluations (Buttle 1996: 8). Service Quality has been
measured using the SERVQUAL instrument developed by Parasuraman, Berry and
Zeithaml (Parasuraman et al. 1985, 1988; Parasuraman et al. 1991) and the
SERVQUAL instrument has been employed in a number of hospitality research
studies (e.g. Lee and Hing; Armstrong et al. 1997; Atilla 2006; Murphy et al.
2007; Nam and Lee 2011). Elsewhere, Stevens et al. (1995) have adapted the
22 - item, five-factor SERVQUAL instrument for the catering context, creating a 29-
item, five-factor measurement scale called DINESERV.
Both SERVQUAL and DINESERV are based on assessments of discrepancies
between customers’ service expectations and their subsequent evaluations of the
service provided. For this research, however, accessing customer evaluations of
service quality is not a practical method. Specifically, this research involves
gaining the support of hospitality organisations (hotels) in order to collect data
from the population of interest (non-supervisory service employees in table
service restaurants) within the participating hotels. In practice it was extremely
difficult to secure the support of an adequate number of hotels – such difficulties
were anticipated (although not to the extent that they were actually experienced!)
and accordingly, during the research design stage it was considered that
attempting a concurrent customer survey alongside the employee survey would: