Study On Impact Of Tourism Corporate Social Responsibility On Employee Performance

As China continues to develop its market economy and the process of global integration accelerates, the important role of tourism industry in the national economy and social development has become increasingly prominent; and tourism industry has become an important industry for industrial structure adjustment, for the expansion of domestic demand, and for the transformation of economic growth mode. But the development of China’s tourism market has been hindered by the following problems: the problems caused by lack of social responsibility in some tourism enterprises, the social conflicts related to social responsibility, and short-sighted behavior of tourism enterprises, etc. The employees in tourism enterprises are important part of the society and are core stakeholders in the enterprises, and they play a very important role not only in the perception of corporate social responsibility but also in the process of sustainable development of tourism enterprises. So the employees’ perception and evaluation of corporate social responsibility will affect their own work and performance. Therefore, it is both theoretically and practically important to study the influence of corporate social responsibility on the employee performance in tourism enterprises.The existing research documents indicate that current researches are more emphasized on the effect of corporate social responsibility and its influence on external stakeholders. In most of the studies, the internal factors of tourism enterprises are treated as a "black box", and the in-depth analysis of its influence mechanisms is ignored. There are few systematic research achievements on the intrinsic link between corporate social responsibility and employee performance, and in particular, there has been even less such empirical study on labor-intensive tourism enterprises based on employee perspectives that can reflect the characteristics and attributes of the tourism industry. Because of the reasons mentioned above, this paper conducts an in-depth study on the mechanism of the influence of corporate social responsibility on employee performance by using corporate social responsibility as an independent variable, the relationship quality and job involvement as intermediate variables, and employee performance as the dependent variable. Specifically, this study addresses three main issues:firstly, the study redefines the dimensions of tourism corporate social responsibility based on literature review, interviews and questionnaires; secondly, based on the perspective of employees, this paper conducts a quantitative analysis of the relationships among corporate social responsibility, relationship quality, job involvement and employee performance. Thirdly, this paper has thoroughly constructed, analyzed and tested the mechanism for the influence of tourism corporate social responsibility on employee performance.To address the issues mentioned above, this study takes the result from the survey of tourism enterprises in Jiangxi Province as research data (through semi-structured interviews with small sample tests and large sample surveys and other methods). This study processes the data through such statistical analysis software as SPSS 18.0 and AMOS7.0, and has carried out the reliability and validity analysis, descriptive statistics analysis, factor analysis and multiple aspects of regression analysis of the survey data.According to the results of the empirical study we can draw the following conclusions:Firstly, Corporate social responsibility of tourism enterprises includes responsibility to shareholders, responsibility to customers, responsibility to employees, responsibility to government, responsibility to business partners and responsibility to environment, public welfare and local community; and corporate responsibilities to employees, customers and environment are the main factors that affect employee performance.The improvement of employee performance in tourism enterprises is the re sult of the joint interaction between corporate social responsibility’s driving influence on employee intrinsic values and the external environment’s driving factors.Secondly, Corporate social responsibility of tourism enterprises has a significant positive influence on employee performance. This paper examines the influence of tourism enterprises’responsibilities (to customers, to the environment and to employees) on employee performance. The empirical results show that corporate social responsibilities to customers, to the environment and to employees have positive influence on employee performance. This conclusion tells us that in tourism business management, tourism enterprises can achieve the goal of enhancing employee performance by fulfilling responsibilities to employees, customers and the environment.Thirdly, Different dimensions of tourism corporate social responsibility have different effects on the various elements of employee performance. The empirical results show that the employee performance is affected by corporate social responsibility, both directly and indirectly. The direct influence shows that if employees perceive the corporate social responsibility to employees, employees will take the initiative through their own efforts to complete the tasks assigned by the organization, and the fulfillment of the tasks will reflect efficiency; and if employees perceive corporate social responsibility to the customers, the employees will be actively working with the customers and the customers will treat the staff fairly, which will help improve employee performance. Corporate responsibility to the environment has significant direct positive influence on work dedication, and it indicates that a positive corporate commitment to environmental responsibility will increase employees’trust and recognition of the company, thereby promoting the initiative of the employees to overcome the difficulties in the work and to better restrain self- behavior. The indirect influence shows that corporate responsibilities to employees, to customers and to the environment have positive influence on the employees’work quality, interpersonal relationships and work dedication through relationship quality; and have positive influence on work efficiency and work dedication through job involvement.Fourthly, Different dimensions of tourism corporate social responsibility have positive influence on relationship quality (organizational trust, job satisfaction) and on job involvement. The empirical results show that tourism corporate social responsibility to employees, to customers and to the environment not only have direct positive influence on customer relationship quality (organizational trust, job satisfaction), but also have direct positive influence on work involvement, indicating that if the employees can better evaluate corporate social responsibility behavior, then they will be more satisfied and dedicated in their work.Fifthly, Relationship quality (organizational trust, job satisfaction) has direct positive influence on task completion quality, interpersonal improvement and work dedication. The empirical results show that efforts to improve tourism enterprises’ organizational trust and job satisfaction will motivate the employees to better show their merits and work harder to improve employee performance, and this performance improvement can be seen in the enhancement of task completion quality, in the improvement of interpersonal relationships, and in more efforts to help colleagues and the dedication to the organization.Sixthly, Relationship quality (organizational trust, job satisfaction) and job involvement interact with each other and promote each other. The empirical study results show that the improvement of relationship quality will have positive response from the employees and result in higher employee dedication and involvement. And while the improvement of relationship quality promotes job involvement, it will also reversely increase job satisfaction and organizational trust. As relationship quality and job involvement interact with each other in a positive way and promote each other, the interaction between the two intermediate variables is essentially a spiral process.Seventhly, Different employee personality traits and organizational characteristics have different influence on the variables in this study. According to the result of the significance test mentioned above, we can see that employees of different ages, education levels, statuses, firm sizes and corporate characteristics have significantly different understandings of the variables under research. After adding the control variables, we can find that there is little change in the route of impact of corporate social responsibility on employee performance; while there is some change in the strength of influence in some of the equations, and the influence of some of corporate social responsibility’s dimensions on employee performance has become much more significant after adding the control variables.The innovation of this study is mainly reflected in the following three areas:Firstly, this paper defines and analyzes the dimensions of tourism corporate social responsibility from the perspectives of stakeholders, and concludes that corporate responsibilities to employees, to customers and to the environment are the main factors that affect employee performance, and conducts exploratory research on the influence of corporate social responsibility on employee performance. This paper overcomes the shortcomings in measuring tourism corporate social responsibility in previous studies. Thus laying the foundation for exploring the ways to promote employee performance in tourism enterprises. This paper includes corporate social responsibility into the framework of factors influencing employee performance, It not only broadens the scope of research on the influence factors on employee performance, but also expands the field of social responsibility research.Secondly, this paper uses the relationship quality and job involvement as intermediate variables, builds and tests the mechanism of the influence of tourism corporate social responsibility on employee performance. By using relationship quality and job involvement as a bridge that links tourism corporate social responsibility with employee performance, we are able to open the "black box." of the influence of tourism corporate social responsibility on employee performance. Therefore, by using relationship quality and job involvement as intermediate variables, this study succeeds in building a framework for the analysis of tourism corporate social responsibility’s influence on employee performance. This study has overcome the problems of fragmentation and one-sidedness that exist in previous theoretical studies, and has made up for the lack of research in the field of corporate social responsibility and employee performance. This study will greatly enrich connotation and denotation in the study of corporate social responsibility theories.Thirdly, this paper analyzes the influence effects of tourism corporate social responsibility on employee performance, and focuses on the intermediary effects of relationship quality and job involvement in the process of influence. Through empirical analysis, this paper finds that tourism corporate social responsibility has a significant positive influence on employee performance, that relationship quality and job involvement play different and important intermediary roles in the influence of tourism corporate social responsibility on employee performance, and that relationship quality and job involvement interact with each other and promote each other. As relationship quality and job involvement interact with each other in a positive way, the interaction between the two intermediate variables is essentially a spiral process. This study will not only help to find out the positive effects of tourism corporate social responsibility in terms of motivating employee performance and efficiency, but also will help to provide new ideas and new perspectives in the research on corporate social responsibility.