INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TOURISM RESEARCH Int J Tourism Res 13, 103–123 (2011) Published online September 2010 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/jtr.802 Deterrents to Tourism Development in Iran Yeganeh Morakabati* School of Tourism, Bournemouth University, Poole, Dorset, UK ABSTRACT INTRODUCTION There are parts of the Middle East that can be regarded as being among the least preferred tourism destinations in the world Research shows that travellers’ perceptions of the region, as a whole, have been damaged and that, for some nations, the situation has gone from bad to worse The combination of a hard-line attitude towards religion, oil and water shortages have led to the onset of war and conflict, either among countries within the region, or have resulted in countries from within the region having conflicts with countries located outside of the region This paper looks at the Middle East in general and Iran in particular in order to review its tourism potential and explains how the process of its development as a tourism destination has been hampered This research also attempts to discover why, in spite of several attempts by the Iranian government, tourism has failed to develop to its true potential The research is informed by a questionnaire survey of travellers together with a Mini-Delphi Study of tourism academics Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd here are some regions of the world that are stereotypically perceived to be subject to greater risks of a specific nature than others, where such risks may not even enter into the mind of a potential tourist For instance, there are probably not many tourists who are concerned about the risk of hurricanes when booking their trip in Europe, although hurricanes (infrequently) occur in that region However, there may be some concerns about such natural phenomena if they are considering booking a vacation between June and November in, say, the Caribbean Similarly, the Middle East may give rise to enhanced travel-risk perceptions because of political unrest and terrorism However, one might expect that people travelling within their own region of the world to have lower travel-risk perceptions than if they are travelling to a different region with more unknowns and less familiarity This is because the assessment of travel risk is relative, with people judging the risk of a potential destination partly based on their own sense of norm This paper examines the factors that may give rise to enhanced travel-risk perceptions and the damage to the image of the Middle East in general and to Iran in particular Received January 2010; Revised 23 July 2010; Accepted 23 July 2010 Keywords: Middle East; Iran; tourism; image; risk T THE TOURISM SYSTEM Taking the tourism system into account (Oppermann and Weaver, 2000), Leiper (1995) defined it (see Figure 1) as having three fundamental elements as follows: Tourists; Geographical elements; and The tourism sector *Correspondence to: Dr Yeganeh Morakabati, Bournemouth University, Talbot Campus, Fern Barrow, Poole, Dorset BH12 5BB, UK E-mail: ymora@bournemouth.ac.uk In examining the attraction of a destination, there are two main forces that can be influential in the mind of potential tourists At its most Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 104 Y Morakabati destinations because it will form the basis of the ‘pull’ effect and result in different demand schedules (Glaesser, 2003) This knowledge and image will also be coloured by the perception of travel-related risk for various destinations and vice versa There are various kinds of definitions adopted to describe the word ‘image’ in tourism research, and the World Tourism Organizations (UNWTO) defines it to be: Figure A basic tourism system Adapted from Leiper (1995) in Cooper et al (2003) elementary, without push factors, the decision to travel does not take place; the pull factors are necessary when determining the destination to which the traveller will go The geographical elements are key features within the tourism system, acting as the main motivating factor to stimulate tourism activity The volume, value and type of tourism will depend on many factors, such as quality, diversity, accessibility of the location and the attractions, accommodation and facilities offered The destination is at the receiving end of the tourism system and consequently benefits and/or suffers from the events that may take place between the start and the end of the vacation journey The following are the main pull factors for a destination: • • • • • • • • • Geographic proximity to a market; Accessibility to markets; Availability of attraction; Cultural links; Availability of services; Affordability; Pro-tourism policies; Peace and stability; and Positive image This paper tends to focus upon the last two of these factors Like any individual, the tourist’s knowledge of the world is made up of experience, acquired information, learning emotions and perceptions, and yield a specific image of the world This image is crucial in forming an individual’s travel preferences, their motivations and their behaviour towards tourist products and Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd • The artificial imitation of the apparent form of an object; • Form resemblance, identity; and • Ideas, conceptions held individually or collectively of the destination Trommsdorff (1990, p 121) describes image as ‘a multidimensional construct made up of denotative and connotative product characteristics, which simultaneously reflects the structure of a one dimensional attitude phenomenon’ If the attitude towards characteristics was illustrated along a good–bad range, ‘the image has characteristics on several dimensions, namely the subjective impressions of the product’s individual (non-material) characteristics’ Image may be defined as the sum of beliefs, attitudes and impressions held by a person or group of people towards some phenomenon (Crompton, 1979; Baloglu and Brinberg, 1997) In general, images can be either descriptive or evaluative (Walmsly and Jenkins, 1993) Images are of immense importance in discretionary forms of tourism such as recreational vacations, where the destination is not predetermined by business demands or social necessities This is because the product, at least for the first-time visitor, is an intangible one that cannot be directly experienced prior to its consumption In these cases, potential visitors must rely on their images in choosing one destination over another According to Glaesser (2003), the general image of a country is built routinely and separately to the issue of whether or not the country in question is a holiday destination The image is a result of ‘background data’, general information that consumers continually take in during their everyday lives It is the constant news stream of political, economic and social events as well as the impressions that have been gained about the country’s products Int J Tourism Res 13, 103–123 (2011) DOI: 10.1002/jtr Deterrents to Tourism Development in Iran when actively seeking a destination The result of this background data is a nontourism-specific country image As a rule, this image is closely related to political or geographical borders that emphasise a country’s characteristic details, including the population characteristics, countryside, culture and landmarks, etc (Meyer, 1981; Fakeye and Crompton, 1991; Mayerhofer, 1995) Glaesser (2003) also points to the country’s political system and its relationship with other nations as ingredients that help form the image in the mind of the potential tourist In that case, it is perhaps important to include a national component of consumers when trying to determine a country’s image assessment, similar to the way in which cultural differences need to be taken on board when undertaking analyses of risk assessment Many tourists may consider Iraq and Afghanistan to be high-risk destinations as a result of the lasting political tensions Therefore, they are likely to prefer products from ‘free’ countries rather than those from ‘un-free’ countries (Lebrenz, 1996; Sonmez and Graefe, 1998) A similar dimension is when consumers judge products from more developed countries to be of a higher quality than those produced in developing countries (Lebrenz, 1996) It can be argued that the use of these factors is biased because it is based on stereotyping destinations into risk or quality categories, but this is part of the process that often prevails when individuals consciously or subconsciously assess their travel risks Baloglu and McCleary (1999) define the categories of factors that influence destination image (see Figure 2) Destination factors Perceptual/cognitive Affective Global factors Personal factors Psychological Values Motivations Personality Social factors Ease of access Age Education Marital status Other including Stimulation factors Information sources Quantity of information Type of information Previous experience Figure Influences of destination image Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 105 The issues of political stability and political relations within and between states are extremely important because they compound the uncertainty elements that arise as a result of the intangible nature of the travel experience; effective tourism depends heavily on positive images (Chon, 1990; Echtner and Ritchie, 1993; Gartner 1993; Bramwell and Rawding, 1996; Dann, 1996a, 1996b) As far as the tourism originating country is concerned, the perceived risk of a particular destination is really important because it is that perception that may convert potential demand into effective demand The reality is that tourists often travel in order to experience travelling attributes such as relaxation, pleasure, peace, calm, enjoyment, comfort, etc., and not to be exposed to risks, other than where the travel is for acceptable risks such as skiing or white water rafting for instance Anything that might suggest exposure to enhanced risk levels, other than those normally associated with their activity, is not considered to be on the positive side of the travellers’ equation The way in which tourists handle risk assessment is also questionable because, often, the tourists’ basis for fear is poor and has little to with logic An example of this break between reality and perception could be Egypt during the Gulf war Although in fact it was safe to travel, tourists perceived the risk to be too high and stayed away (Santana, 2003) Factors that also influence the risk equation for potential tourists include the role that the public sector plays in tourism development and their attitude towards, and response to, incidents The media is also an important component in helping to form the tourists’ perceptions of a destination and determining the effective attitude towards the political characteristics of a destination and its tourist image (see Figure 3) When tourists make their travel decisions, an aspect of that decision will focus on travel risk, of which there are a variety of forms including those relating to physical harm, financial loss and the risk of dissatisfaction from their travel experience (Hall, 1994; Reisinger and Mavondo, 2005) For some tourists, this may be considered to be a positive aspect, but for the majority, the exposure to risk will be considered a negative element (Roehl and Fesenmaier, 1992) Int J Tourism Res 13, 103–123 (2011) DOI: 10.1002/jtr 106 Y Morakabati World of mouth Tourists previous experience Media reporting Destination Region Media and marketing intergovernment Generating Region government policies Government relation and interest Figure Political instability, violence and image-making process Adapted from Hall (1994) in Pizam and Mansfeld (1996) Although travellers may be informed about various risks through media exposure or from travel advisories issued by their governments, this information tends to be partial and sometimes biased, in that often only the more spectacular incidents are brought to attention (Bastide et al., 1989; Keown, 1989; Kone and Mullet, 1994) THE MIDDLE EAST ‘The image of the Arab world as gleaned through the eyes of Western media is largely negative’ (Aziz, 2001 in Harrison, 1992, p 151) The view of Islamic society in the 21st century is one painted by brush strokes of oppression (patriarchal), religious fundamentalism, political extremism, female suppression, violence and lethal terrorist activities This image results from a number of terrorist attacks in the 21st century by minority groups carrying the Islamic banner Furthermore, the image of the Middle East is one that has been portrayed as a theatre of war and conflict, from the Arab– Israeli conflicts to the more recent war against terror in Iraq, terrorism in Yemen, the Israel/ Palestine conflict and the nuclear issues in Iran All of these issues have coloured the region’s image to one that is not the safest or most stable region in the world These conflicts have, at times, been high intensity and, at others, low intensity, masking the underlying political failures, the resource disputes and the refractive interface with western societies where sanctions have provided ‘the unnatural friction to development’ (Milton-Edwards and Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Hincheliffe, 2001) Dobson and Marsh (2001) describe the Middle East as ‘a theatre of violent competition and high stakes’ The Middle East, when isolated from the political turmoil, offers a vast collection of unique tourist sites, diverse climate, exotic food and hospitable hosts, where hospitality is fundamental to the way of life The region can reasonably be referred to as one of the world’s original and most significant tourist attractions Balch et al (1996) reported: Many people rank the region’s attractions among the most important places to visit in the world The opportunities for expansion of cultural tourism, given the region’s concentration of religious and historic sites, can hardly be overestimated At the same time, there are tremendous opportunities in leisure tourism development that capitalize on the region’s suburb climate and other natural gifts (pp 5–6) Some countries within the Middle East have worked hard to overcome the low volume of tourism activity through extensive marketing campaigns and major investments and, as a result, are doing well, such as the United Arab Emirates or Saudi Arabia (the latter specialising in mass pilgrimage tourism) Indeed, in spite of the hindrances to tourism development, the Middle East, as a whole, has recorded quite strong growth rates in recent times, ranking as the fastest growing region in the world (2008–2007; see Figure 4) However, it should also be remembered that this strong Int J Tourism Res 13, 103–123 (2011) DOI: 10.1002/jtr Deterrents to Tourism Development in Iran 107 20 18 16 14 % 12 10 Middle East Africa Americas Asia and the Pacific Europe Figure Regional growth (2008/2007) Adapted from UNWTO (2009) 60 50 Million 40 30 20 10 1990 1995 2000 2005 2006 2007 2008 Figure Middle East international arrivals for selected years Adapted from UNWTO (2009) growth rate is being applied to quite a small tourism base, and the absolute growth in numbers (less than 60 million) is relatively small (see Figure 5) Table shows tourist arrivals to the main destination countries of the Middle East Many of the countries in the Middle East are dependent upon intra-regional tourists or pilgrimage tourists and have limited traffic from outside the region Evidence from the literature suggest that the perceived levels of travel-related risk increases if the destination is outside the region of the traveller’s normal place of residence given (Morakabati, 2007) Taking this factor and adding to it the specific concerns regarding travel to the Middle East provides some explanation for the region’s relatively poor inter-regional tourism flows The exceptions to this being Egypt, which has an abundance of Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd unique attractions and has had a more favourable political situation for western visitors than many of its neighbours, and the Emirates that have continued to increase their share of tourism from Europe (see Table 1; Figure 6) INTRODUCTION TO IRAN The country of Iran, known as Persia until 1935, described by Baum and O’Gorman (2010, p 1) as a ‘combination of Persia and Islam’, has its roots firmly embedded in over 5000 years of civilization However, it was also one of the first countries to be occupied by the Islamic armies coming out of Arabia in the seventh century In spite of this occupation, Iran has managed to hold on to its distinctive culture by, for example, retaining its own language and attaching itself to the Shia interpretation Int J Tourism Res 13, 103–123 (2011) DOI: 10.1002/jtr 108 Y Morakabati Table Tourism in the Middle East and some selected countries Rank Country 2003 2004 2005 Political stabilitya Control of corruptiona 20 273 9100 — 8244 3914 3368 2987 — 1903 — 1140 — 336 — — 88 −0.53 −0.63 0.61 −0.91 0.06 −0.89 −0.2 −1.1 −1.1 0.76 −1.1 0.7 −1.42 0.1 0.06 −1.67 0.01 −0.02 0.89 −0.45 0.54 −0.66 0.34 −0.52 0.82 0.64 −0.50 0.93 −0.84 −0.78 0.79 −0.99 In thousands 10 11 12 13 14 15 17 Turkey Saudi Arabiaa UAE Egypt Bahrain Syria Jordan Iran Israel Oman Lebanon Qatar Yemen Libya Kuwait West Bank Gaza 13 341 7332 5871 5746 2955 2788 2353 1546 1063 1039 1016 557 155 142 94.00 37 16 826 8599 — 7795 3514 3032 2853 1659 1506 1195 1278 732 274 149 91.00 56 Source: Adapted from UNWTO (2006) and adapted from World Bank (2009) (available from: http://www.unwto.org/ facts/menu.htm) a The two governance indicators are measured in units ranging from about −2.5 to 2.5, with higher values corresponding to better governance outcomes UAE, United Arab Emirates 90 80 70 60 % 50 40 30 20 10 Egypt Saudi Arabia Bahrain Jordan Syria Figure Market share of regional tourism arrivals (2007) Adapted from UNWTO e-library (2009) of Islam (U.S Department of State, 2005; BBC, 2006) The countries that are identified as being in the Middle East are fluid, and it often depends on the purpose at hand (Alavi and Yasin, 2000) Iran is neither an Arab country, nor one, according to the definition of the UNWTO, that resides in the Middle East, and yet it is often perceived otherwise This misperCopyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd ception, however, may be a reflection of the Islamic regime’s failure to generate a strong positive country image Internally, the poor performance of the tourism industry in Iran may not be seen as a depressing outcome, particularly from the point of view of the Iranian government, which may feel that low levels of tourism activity is a blessing and keeps the Int J Tourism Res 13, 103–123 (2011) DOI: 10.1002/jtr Deterrents to Tourism Development in Iran 109 Figure Iran’s complex political system Source: BBC (2005) country away from the poison of the western culture and help preserve the traditional Islamic culture (Harrison, 1992) Furthermore, Said (2000, p 189) noted that the failure of the US media and officials to understand and explain the Arab and Muslim world has created a bigger gap between the West and perhaps Iran In particular, Said (2000) argued that ‘Muslims and Arabs are essentially covered, discussed, and comprehended either as suppliers of oil or as potential terrorists’ Iran may not have the tourism, but its oil export revenues account for around 80–90% of its total export earnings and 40–50% of the government’s total budget (Burke, 2007) Iran’s late 20th century developments, particularly since the 1979 revolution, has created a volatile backdrop to the balance of ‘Persia and Islam’ (Baum and O’Gorman, 2010), resulting in many Iranian’s referring to themselves as being Persian rather than Iranian in order to either protect themselves from the negative image created by the current regime or to make a statement about their opposition to the direction in which Iran is travelling The revolution brought forward the idea that ‘religion and politics are inseparable’, introducing a complex system of government in Iran (see Figure 7) that has compounded the hindrance towards tourism development However, since Mossadegh (Iranian Prime Minister, 1951–1953), who established the National Front of Iran or Jebhe Melli, there have been some attempts to create a policy of secular government, thereby separating political and religious destinies, but under the Islamic regime, this idea has faded Some argue that a handful of religious extremists are holding the entire population of Iran to ransom, although others (Simpson, BBC, 2006) believe that some kind of democracy still exists Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd The period since the revolution has not been conducive to fostering tourism development Difficulties in relationships with the USA have become common news fodder The seizure and holding of the US Embassy in Tehran for 15 months, the term ‘axis of evil’, the disastrous war with Iraq from 1980 through to 1988 and the nuclear development in Iran have added to the pressures on the country and its destination image Hoffman (1997) in Enders and Sandler (2000) noted that the takeover of the US embassy in Tehran changed the nature of terrorism, and there has been an increase in the severity of terrorist attacks from that time onwards, and that event, according to Norris and Ken (2003) and Aburish (1997), stereotyped Muslims and Arabs as being the instigators of terrorism and violence The external sanctions placed on Iran also hinder tourism development, and Simpson (2006) and Hiro (1985) suggest that the sanctions not directly hurt those in power, but hurt the poor and unprotected and provide the right breeding conditions for black markets and corruption THE TOURISM INDUSTRY IN IRAN It is generally said that Iran’s backward tourist sector is the product of ill-advised and harmful attitude of some local officials and the propaganda campaign launched against the country by hostile powers Seeing the state of affairs, one is bound to think that officials in charge of this industry not know what they are in for, nor our policy-makers realize how helpful tourism can and should be in attaining higher growth and create jobs (Iran Daily Newspaper, 25 March 2005) Int J Tourism Res 13, 103–123 (2011) DOI: 10.1002/jtr 110 Y Morakabati Iran’s tourism pedigree stretches back to the time of Marco Polo and beyond Its location as a land bridge between Asia Minor and Asia made it a natural transit route before air transport for world travellers for trade, religious endeavours or leisure The country’s environmental assets and exotic culture, combined with a versatile climate and major heritage assets, provide it with a sound platform from which to build a diverse, unique and dynamic tourism industry In spite of the fact that Iran ranked in the top 10 countries with respect to its ancient and historical sites United Nation Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), experts believe that its costal areas, mountains, deserts and rivers have remained untapped because the state has either ignored or given too little attention to the tourism industry Following the political changes in 1979, there was a significant fall in the level of tourism activity as tourists, particularly those from outside the region, voted with their feet and sought alternative destinations such as Turkey To give some idea of Iran’s past performance with respect to tourism, it was considered to be ‘the Middle East’s top tourist destination during the period 1967–1977, when Egypt, which has one of the world’s Seven Wonders, was (only) ranked 14th in the region’ In 1977, the country attracted 70 000+ US visitors (reduced to only 800 visitors in 1995; Alavi and Yasin, 2000, p 13) The various tourism sectors in Iran also reflected this performance when, in the 1970s, Iran Air was seen to be the fastest growing airline in the world and one of the most profitable (Iran Chamber Society, 2008) By 1976, Iran Air was ranked second only to Qantas as the world’s safest airline Currently, with respect to its safety record, Iran Air cannot secure a place in the top 30 airlines in the world (see Figure 8), which can, to a large extent, be attributed to the lack of availability of bona fide spare parts and maintenance 30 25 20 15 10 Air Zimbabwe EgyptAir ValuJet/AirTran Nigeria Airways Garuda Indonesia Midwest Express Airlines Avianca Iran Air SilkAir/Singapore Airlines Olympic Airways Swissair Aerolineas Argentinas Malaysia Airlines Iberia Braathens SAFE South African Airways American Airlines/Eagle United Airlines/Express Lufthansa All Nippon Figure Air accident rate by some selected airline (2004) Adapted from http://www.airdisaster.com/ statistics/ Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Int J Tourism Res 13, 103–123 (2011) DOI: 10.1002/jtr Deterrents to Tourism Development in Iran 111 200,000 150,000 100,000 50,000 1970 1978 1979 1980 2007 IRAN 2,209 20,213 26,218 13,385 93,440 UAE 605 10,384 14,991 23,087 165,358 Turkey 794 2,965 3,475 3,734 138,629 Egypt 985 4,762 4,583 7,263 41,243 Figure GDP by export of goods and services: current prices (millions US$) GDP, gross domestic product Adapted from: http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?q=gdp&d=SNAAMA&f=grID%3a101%3bcurrID%3aUSD%3b pcFlag%3a0 activity through the operation of the economic sanctions In terms of gross domestic product (GDP) by export of goods and services, Iran’s performance paints an even more depressing picture (see Figure 9) As can be seen, in the 1970s, Iran recorded the highest GDP from the export of goods and services among its competing countries such as Turkey, Egypt and the Emirates However, this position has been reversed, following the revolution in 1979, and despite an increase in oil exports, Iran has fallen behind Turkey and Egypt with respect to the value of its exports of goods and services and behind Egypt, Turkey and the Emirates when tourism receipts are included in the measurement Over the past 30 years, concurrent with the organised expansion of tourism in countries such as Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia and some Persian Gulf Arab states, Iran has only received 5% of the $80 billion Islamic tourism market (Iran Daily, 2004) In terms of arrivals, Iran welcomes less than two million arrivals annually, which is also behind the arrival numbers of countries such as Syria and Jordan It can also be argued that most of these visits are either Visits to friends and relatives (VFR) or business travel, but this is hard to substantiate from the figures available (see Figures 10–13) Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd To add to these problems, there has also been a lack of efficient planning and management for the future of tourism Tourism has not yet been considered as a major economic priority, although there have been signs of development potential (United Nation Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific [ESCAP], New York, 2001) Many officials in the country have argued that tourism in Iran is a key to economic development (Iran’s Tourism Master Plan, 2002 Maldives 11th–13th February 2002), but others have argued that the plan can never be effective In 2005, one of the members of the Cultural Commission in the Iranian parliament called for the adoption of a National Policy on tourism, noting that foreign models should be avoided, and criticised the ‘luxuries approach’ used elsewhere to attract high-spending tourists (Iran Daily, 15 August 2005) Ghadery (2006 in Iran Daily) suggested: the industry will not improve as long as its status in the national economy remains unclear According to statistics released by the Oil Ministry, it requires $70 billion worth of investment in order to export five million barrels of oil per annum Rahimipour, an Int J Tourism Res 13, 103–123 (2011) DOI: 10.1002/jtr 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September 2010 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/jtr.809 Do Job Characteristics Lead to Employee Creativity in Travel Agencies? Sheng-Hshiung Tsaur1, Chang-Hua Yen2,* and Wan-Yu Yang3 Institute of Recreation, Tourism and Hospitality Management, National Chiayi University, Chiayi City, Taiwan Department of Leisure and Recreation Management, National Taichung Institute of Technology, Taichung, Taiwan Graduate School of Tourism Management, Chinese Culture University, Taipei, Taiwan ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between job characteristics and employee creativity among different job types in travel agencies This study collected data from 289 employees of 63 consolidated travel agencies headquartered in Taipei The sample included tour managers, route controllers, operators and salespersons Results indicate that both job characteristics and employee creativity differ with the four job types Also, different job types moderate the effect of job characteristics’ five dimensions on employee creativity Implications of these findings for stimulating employee creativity as well as future research directions are also provided Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Received 10 December 2009; Revised 14 August 2010; Accepted 25 August 2010 Keywords: job characteristics; employee creativity; travel agency; job type INTRODUCTION In today’s rapidly changing business climate, organizational success is more dependent than ever on employee creativity, which can substantially contribute to organizational innova*Correspondence to: C.-H Yen, Department of Leisure and Recreation Management, National Taichung Institute of Technology, 129, Sanmin Road, Sec 3, Taichung 404, Taiwan E-mail: chyan@ntit.edu.tw tion, effectiveness and survival (Nonaka, 1991; Amabile, 1996; Oldham, 2002; Wang and Netemeyer, 2004) According to the statistical data of Taiwan’s Tourism Bureau (2006), 2083 travel agencies are operating in Taiwan This shows that the travel industry is highly competitive In addition, because intellectual property rights not protect travel products, homogenous travel packages are rampant Consumer preferences, however, could change easily To satisfy customer needs and enhance customer retention, travel agencies must frequently update their products and innovate their services to generate rising added value Therefore, how to increase employee creativity in such a competitive environment has become an issue of great concern to managers of travel agencies Several studies found evidence that creativity-relevant personal characteristics and contextual characteristics at work are vital for employee creativity (Oldham and Cummings, 1996; Miron et al., 2004; Shalley and Gilson, 2004; Shalley et al., 2004; Unsworth et al., 2005; Rice, 2006) Job characteristics are a part of contextual characteristics Hackman and Oldham’s (1975) job characteristics model suggested that five core job dimensions affect certain personal and work-related outcomes, including work motivation and job satisfaction The five core job dimensions they identified are skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy and feedback Based on Amabile’s (1988) model of creativity, job characteristics should be an important component that leaders need to consider when managing for creativity With regard to job characteristics, it has been demonstrated that Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 192 the way jobs are structured contributes to employees’ intrinsic motivation and creative output at work (e.g Oldham and Cummings, 1996) For a travel agency, job types typically include tour manager, route controller, operator and salesperson As the job contents of each job type differ significantly, the job characteristics also differ For example, tour managers possess higher job autonomy because they might have to make adjustments to an itinerary due to spontaneous situations that might arise during a trip On the other hand, the job autonomy of operators is low because their jobs are relatively standardized In other words, job characteristics differ with job types, and employee creativity might also differ as a result Although theoretical and empirical literatures discussing the relationship between job characteristics and employee creativity exist, there has been relatively little work that addresses the travel industry In addition, most studies focus on the exploration of job characteristics rather than job types Therefore, is the relationship between job characteristics and employee creativity in travel agencies different among job types? The answer to this question is unavailable in current literature It is the use and development of creative ideas that allows the organization to adjust to shifting market conditions, to respond to opportunities and, thereby, to adapt, grow and compete (Nonaka, 1991; Oldham, 2002) Because the travel industry is highly competitive and employee creativity is vital for longterm corporate success, examining the relationship between job characteristics and employee creativity in the travel industry is helpful towards understanding the dimensions of job characteristics that influence employee creativity Managers also need to think about objective job characteristics when they make differentiations between jobs In addition, job design has long been considered an important contributor to employee creativity (Amabile, 1988; West and Farr, 1990) Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between five core job dimensions (skill variety, task identity, etc.) and employee creativity across four travel industry job types (route controller, tour manager, etc.) The results of this study can Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd S.-H Tsaur, C.-H Yen and W.-Y Yang offer travel managers a reference when making decisions related to job redesigns in the future First, based on a literature review, this study develops several hypotheses to link job characteristics with employee creativity The next section describes the study’s methodology A presentation and discussion of the findings are then given, followed by managerial implications and recommendations for future research LITERATURE REVIEW AND HYPOTHESES Job characteristics of the travel industry Job characteristics refer to some factors or attributes about the job (Steers and Porter, 1991) Seashore and Taber (1975) noted that job characteristics have to include the work environment, welfare, security, human relationship, skill required, feedback, autonomy, the opportunity to develop and anything about the job Past researchers have proposed different dimensions of job characteristics Turner and Lawrence (1965) summarized requisite task attributes, which include variety, autonomy, required interaction, optional interaction, knowledge and responsibility Hackman and Lawler (1971) indicated four core dimensions of job characteristics that are related to employees’ reactions to their jobs: variety, task identity, autonomy and feedback Among the theories related to job characteristics that have received much attention is one developed by Hackman and Oldham (1975), which is referred to as the job diagnostic survey This measure identifies five core job dimensions: skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy and feedback from the job In-depth interviews Since a study on job characteristics in the travel industry is still lacking in current literature, we conducted in-depth interviews with 20 managers of travel agencies to understand the difference of job characteristics among the four job types Skill variety is described as the degree to which a job requires a variety of different activities in carrying out the work, which involves the use of a number of different skills and talents of the employee According to the results of the in-depth interviews, the route controller has to consider all factors related to the itinerary when Int J Tourism Res 13, 191–204 (2011) DOI: 10.1002/jtr Relationship of Job Characteristics and Employee Creativity developing it, coordinate with salespersons on the promotion of each travel plan, monitor the entire tour operation and control the profit/ loss of each product line Therefore, the professional knowledge required is high The tour manager, meanwhile, not only has to understand the related information of travel locations, but also possess good expression, communication, crisis handling and English skills The skills needed by the tour manager are therefore diverse The skill variety of a salesperson is low compared with the above two groups However, selling products still require selling techniques and understanding of each travel product The operator, on the other hand, is responsible for correspondence and liaison duties but has no direct contacts with customers Although the operator has to possess computer techniques, he or she has the lowest skill variety Overall, the route controller has the highest skill variety, followed by the tour manager, salesperson and operator Task identity is described as the degree to which a job requires the completion of a whole and identifiable piece of work, which is doing a job from start to finish with a visible outcome The tour manager’s task is supported by the services rendered by tour guides and drivers, as well as restaurant and lodging personnel Since the tour manager does not complete the tour management duties individually, the level of individual task completion is low The operator needs salespersons to provide him or her with customer information He or she also needs route controllers, airline companies and other regional dealers to provide him or her with other information The salesperson is mainly responsible for negotiating businesses Different salespersons support different tour groups but most handle their tasks independently, and they rarely need the assistance of others Therefore, the level of individual task completion is very high The route controller, who is responsible for the entire tour operation, requires the support of the company’s internal units and has to negotiate with many external companies The level of individual task completion is also low Therefore, the salesperson has the highest task identity while that of the three other roles is low Task significance is described as the degree to which the job has a substantial impact on the Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 193 lives or work of other people, whether in the immediate organization or in the external environment If the degree of acceptance of an itinerary designed by the route controller is low, the salesperson will find it difficult to sell the product In this case, the operator will have no follow-up correspondence work to and the tour manager’s task will be suspended Ultimately, the company’s operation will be affected Therefore, the four roles are intricately intertwined, and the task significance of all four roles is high Autonomy is described as the degree to which a job provides substantial freedom, independence and discretion to the employee in scheduling the work and in determining the procedure to be used in carrying it out The route controller’s job autonomy is high because he or she is responsible for developing itineraries and controlling the entire tour operation, which require extensive independent thinking and judgement The tour manager frequently runs into spontaneous situations Although the tour manager is bounded by company regulations and tour contracts, he or she can make adjustments to itineraries depending on the situation The working hours of a salesperson are flexible Although the salesperson could arrange work hours according to the business condition, such arrangement is limited to the availability of the customers Therefore, the autonomy of a salesperson is lower than the above two groups The operator mainly completes the job according to the information provided by salespersons and route controllers The autonomy of the operator is therefore the lowest Overall, the route controller’s job autonomy is highest, followed by the tour manager, salesperson and operator Feedback is described as the degree to which carrying out the work activities required by the job provides the individual with direct and clear information about the effectiveness of his or her performance Feedback depends on the type of performance evaluation standard that a company adopts For example, figures, such as number of employees, sales amount or sales weight of a product line, can determine the performance of the salesperson or route controller, and surveys can be used to examine the performance of a tour manager Also, some customers may react emotionally and put the Int J Tourism Res 13, 191–204 (2011) DOI: 10.1002/jtr 194 blame of itinerary flaws on the tour manager Most importantly, the company has to develop customers’ trust for the tour manager and make customers believe that the trip is worth their money As for the operator, who is responsible for correspondence affairs and completing tasks according to the information provided by salespersons and route controllers, his or her job results can be nullified by the failure of a tour due to insufficient tourists or natural disasters Therefore, the feedback of the operator is low Overall, the salesperson’s feedback is highest, followed by the route controller, tour manager and operator Based on the results of in-depth interviews, job characteristics will probably vary depending on the job characteristics of the four job types Therefore, this study proposes the following hypothesis: Hypothesis 1: The four travel industry job types differ significantly on the five core job dimensions (skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy and feedback) S.-H Tsaur, C.-H Yen and W.-Y Yang product Therefore, the tour controller has to demonstrate creativity in travel products and design itineraries different to other travel agencies in order to establish competitive advantage Also, the tour controller has to monitor the profit/loss of the entire tour operation and therefore has to come up with new ideas in the work procedures Meanwhile, the job of an operator is routine and standardized, and he or she would find methods to shorten the work hours As to the salesperson who confronts the pressure of having to sell a travel product within a deadline as well as the direct sales of airlines and hotels, the salesperson’s performance can be improved through creative selling techniques Overall, the in-depth interview results show that employee creativity would probably vary depending on the differences in the four job types Therefore, this study proposes the following hypothesis: Hypothesis 2: Employees working in the four job types demonstrate different levels of employee creativity Employee creativity Job characteristics and employee creativity Creativity refers to the development of novel, potentially useful ideas Employee creativity refers to individuals’ generation of novel and useful products, ideas and procedures that are raw materials for innovation (Cummings and Oldham, 1997) Amabile (1988, 1997) categorized the components of individual creativity into three areas: domain-relevant skills, creativity-relevant skills and task motivation Domain-relevant skills refer to knowledge, ability and technical skills in the area of interest Creativity-relevant skills include appropriate cognitive and work styles, and the ability to generate novel ideas Finally, task motivation refers to an individual’s positive attitude towards performing the creative task According to the in-depth interview results, the tour manager would seek creative service ideas in an effort to raise tourists’ satisfaction of the itinerary Supported by job autonomy and available resources, the tour manager has to come up with new ideas to provide different services to tourists Meanwhile, the route controller is responsible for developing the The design of jobs has long been considered a vital contributor to employees’ intrinsic motivation and creative performance at work (Hackman and Oldham, 1980; Amabile, 1988; West and Farr, 1990) Zhou (1998) discovered that employees exhibit highly creative performance when they receive positive feedback and when their job autonomy is high Specifically, complex, challenging jobs (i.e those characterized by high levels of skill variety, identity, significance, autonomy and feedback) tend to support and encourage higher levels of task motivation and creativity than relatively simple, routine jobs (Hackman and Oldham, 1980; Deci et al., 1989) Therefore, previous studies suggested that job characteristics are an important determinant of employee creativity (Oldham and Cummings, 1996; Shalley and Gilson, 2004; Shalley et al., 2004; Unsworth et al., 2005; Rice, 2006) Highly complex jobs enable employees to see the significance of an exercise responsibility for an entire piece of work, have the autonomy to exercise choices about how and when Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Int J Tourism Res 13, 191–204 (2011) DOI: 10.1002/jtr Relationship of Job Characteristics and Employee Creativity the work gets done using a variety of skills and receive enough feedback from the work itself to monitor their progress (Cummings and Oldham, 1997) These characteristics are important because they provide employees with the information and freedom to recognize divergent needs and pursue novel ideas in useful ways In other words, if diversified skills are required of employees, if they can independently complete tasks and possess higher autonomy, if they clearly understand job performance and when their tasks are more important to the organization, then employee creativity could be elevated The job characteristics of different job types in the travel industry possess significant differences Also, results of in-depth interviews show that the job characteristics of the four job types possess differences Thus, employee creativity will probably vary depending on the different job characteristics of the four job types Therefore, this study proposes the following hypothesis: Hypothesis 3: The effect of job characteristics on employee creativity is moderated by different job types RESEARCH METHOD Sampling and data collection This study collects samples from Taiwan’s travel agencies, which are presently classified into consolidated, class A and class B depending on their business activities Because consolidated travel agencies are bigger in size and segmentation of job types is more obvious, this study does not consider class A and class B travel agencies In addition, according to Taiwan’s Tourism Bureau (2006), among the 87 consolidated travel agencies based in Taiwan, 63% or 73% are located in Taipei Therefore, this study adopts consolidated travel agencies headquartered in Taipei as the research target Prior to data collection, we conducted a pilot test to ensure the comprehensiveness, clarity and reliability of the questionnaire The research randomly selected 40 participants from a consolidated travel agency in Taipei, Taiwan After the pilot test, several items were Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 195 amended and some wordings were modified Respondents of the questionnaire included tour managers, route controllers, operators and salespersons working in travel agencies Although the term tour manager in Taiwan also includes non-professional freelancers working for travel agencies, they are excluded from this study because they are not formal employees The study further asked the respondents to complete the survey according to their job types In order to confirm the respondents’ willingness to complete the questionnaires, the researchers made phone calls to the general managers of 63 consolidated travel agencies in Taipei, Taiwan, explaining the purpose of this research and inquiring about their willingness to cooperate Twenty-nine travel agencies agreed to participate The researchers then personally delivered the questionnaires to the travel agency and asked the manager to randomly select the respondents from the four job types Also, to thank the respondents for participating in the survey, the researchers provided each respondent with a coupon that can be used in one of Taiwan’s famous coffee chains Two weeks after the surveys were distributed, the researchers made follow-up phone calls to the travel agency managers and then collected the completed surveys In total, 310 questionnaires were distributed After removing 21 incomplete surveys, this study collected 289 questionnaires, or a response rate of 93.22% Measure This study measures job characteristics using the 15 items proposed by Hackman and Oldham (1980) On the five dimensions: skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy and feedback, the respondents noted their agreement with each item using a 5-point Likert scale ranging from ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree’ This scale is frequently used in measuring job characteristics constructs (e.g Tiegs et al., 1992; Oldham and Cummings, 1996; Abbott et al., 2006) This study measures employee creativity, defined as the generation of new and useful ideas by individual employees in the work environment, using a 13-item (Zhou and Int J Tourism Res 13, 191–204 (2011) DOI: 10.1002/jtr 196 George, 2001), 5-point Likert scale ranging from ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree’ Previous literature indicated that organizational encouragement and creative personality are important antecedents of employee creativity (Scott and Bruce, 1994; Amabile et al., 1996; Oldham and Cummings, 1996; Zhou and George, 2001; Zhou and Oldham, 2001; Zhou and Shalley, 2003) We therefore controlled for their effects in all of our analyses This study measures organizational encouragement, defined as the extent to which an employee perceives that the organization encourages, respects, rewards and recognizes employees that exhibit creativity, using a fouritem (Scott and Bruce, 1994), 5-point Likert scale ranging from ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree’ This study also uses the 30-item creative personality scale (CPS; Gough, 1979) to assess employees’ creative personality Of the 30 adjectives, 18 describe highly creative people: capable, clever, confident, egotistical, humorous, informal, individualistic, insightful, intelligent, interests wide, inventive, original, reflective, resourceful, self-confident, sexy, snobbish and unconventional The researchers assign each of these checked adjectives a value of +1 The remaining 12 adjectives describe less creative people: cautious, commonplace, conservative, conventional, dissatisfied, honest, interests narrow, mannerly, sincere, submissive, suspicious and phony The researchers assign each of these checked adjectives a value of –1 The values of creative and less creative people were then summed to form a CPS index Higher values reflect a greater degree of employees’ creative personality Scale reliability and validity The researchers determine the reliabilities of multi-item scales by computing Cronbach’s alpha Table shows that the reliabilities of the four constructs exceeded 0.7 (Nunnally, 1978) except for task significance, skill variety and organizational encouragement, which ranged from 0.60 to 0.91 The researchers also employed a set of established procedures to check for convergent validity and discriminant validity of our scales The estimated coefficients of all the indicators were significant, and the estiCopyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd S.-H Tsaur, C.-H Yen and W.-Y Yang mates for the average variance extracted (AVE) were higher than 0.50 (Fornell and Larcker, 1981; Bagozzi and Yi, 1988), supporting convergent validity The researchers measured discriminant validity by calculating the AVE for all pairs of constructs and comparing this value to the squared correlation between the two constructs of interest The research results show the squared correlation between any pair of constructs in all cases was less than the respective AVE of each of the constructs in the pair (Fornell and Larcker, 1981) RESULTS Characteristics of the respondents This study sampled 56 (19.4% of 289 employees) tour managers, 72 (24.9%) route controllers, 70 (24.2%) operators and 91 (31.5%) salespersons Majority of the tour managers (55.4%) and route controllers (55.6%) that participated in this study were male Most operators (82.9%) and salespersons (59.3%) were female In terms of age, most respondents of the four different job types were between 26 and 35 years of age and the fewest were over 56 years of age Most tour managers, route controllers and salespersons had college or above degrees, while most operators were graduates of technical institutes In terms of tenure, most route controllers and operators had between two and four years of tenure, most tour managers had five to seven years, and most salespersons had less than one year (inclusive) Analysis of variance Results from Table indicate that skill variety (F = 67.51, p < 0.01), task identity (F = 152.40, p < 0.01), task significance (F = 42.13, p < 0.01), autonomy (F = 60.91, p < 0.01) and feedback (F = 19.25, p < 0.01) all reached significance among different job types The Scheffe test revealed that tour managers and route controllers scored the highest in both skill variety and autonomy, followed by salespersons and operators In task identity, salespersons scored the highest, followed by operators, route controllers and tour managers In task significance, operators scored the lowest, while the three other groups scored the highest In Int J Tourism Res 13, 191–204 (2011) DOI: 10.1002/jtr Relationship of Job Characteristics and Employee Creativity 197 Table Factor analysis, reliability and validity Constructs Skill variety The job involves doing a number of different things The job requires me to utilize a variety of different skills in order to complete the work The job requires me to use a number of complex skills Task identity The job involves completing a piece of work that has an obvious beginning and end The job provides me the chance to completely finish the pieces of work I begin The job is arranged so that I can an entire piece of work from beginning to end Task significance The results of my work are likely to significantly affect the lives of other people The work performed on the job has a significant impact on people outside the organization The job itself is not very significant or important in the broader scheme of things Autonomy The job allows me to decide on my own how to go about doing my work The job gives me considerable opportunity for independence and freedom in how I the work The job denies me any chance to use my personal initiative or judgement in carrying out the work Feedback The job itself provides very few clues about whether or not I am performing well The supervisors and co-workers on this job almost give me any feedback about how well I am doing in my work Supervisors often let me know how well they think I am in performing the job Employee creativity I suggest new ways to achieve goals or objectives I come up with new and practical ideas to improve performance I search out new technologies, processes, techniques and/or product ideas I suggest new ways to increase quality I am a good source of creative ideas I am not afraid to take risks I promote and champion ideas to others I exhibit creativity on the job when given the opportunity I develop adequate plans and schedules for the implementation of new ideas I often have new and innovative ideas I come up with creative solutions to problems I often have a fresh approach to problems I suggest new ways of performing work tasks Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Factor loadings Cronbach’s alpha AVE 0.68 0.58 0.76 0.64 0.60 0.57 0.82 0.62 0.84 0.64 0.91 0.57 0.53 0.76 0.80 0.75 0.85 0.83 0.78 0.76 0.77 0.81 0.88 0.65 0.71 0.85 0.83 0.65 0.80 0.67 0.69 0.62 0.76 0.68 0.72 0.68 0.63 0.77 0.71 0.72 Int J Tourism Res 13, 191–204 (2011) DOI: 10.1002/jtr 198 S.-H Tsaur, C.-H Yen and W.-Y Yang Table Continued Constructs Factor loadings Organizational encouragement Creativity is encouraged at the company Our ability to function creatively is respected by the leadership The reward system here encourages innovation Company publicly recognizes those who are innovative Cronbach’s alpha AVE 0.69 0.60 0.70 0.62 0.73 0.83 AVE, average variance extracted Table Analysis of variance results and means on the five dimensions of job characteristics and employee creativity measures for the four job types Tour manager Route controller Operator Salesperson F value Skill variety 4.20 4.22 3.06 3.59 67.51* Task identity 2.35 2.64 3.80 4.20 152.40* Task significance 3.68 3.70 2.81 3.55 42.13* Autonomy 4.03 4.15 2.74 3.43 60.91* Feedback 3.88 3.60 3.30 3.94 19.25* Employee creativity 3.63 3.72 2.95 3.16 32.04* Scheffe test 1>4> 2>4> 4>3> 4>3> 1>3 2>3 4>3 1>4> 2>4> 1>2> 4>2> 1>4> 2>4> 3 3 3 3 * p < 0.01 feedback, tour managers and salespersons scored the highest, followed by route controllers and operators Therefore, Hypothesis of this study is supported Also, results from Table indicate that employee creativity (F = 32.04, p < 0.01) was significant among different job types The Scheffe test revealed that the creative performance of tour managers and route controllers was the highest and that of salespersons and operators was the lowest Empirical results demonstrate that employee creativity differs with the four job types Hypothesis of this study is thus supported Correlation analysis Table presents the correlations of all variables Results show that job characteristics relate Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd positively to employee creativity (r = 0.64, p < 0.01), organizational encouragement (r = 0.31, p < 0.01) and creative personality (r = 0.20, p < 0.01) In addition, organizational encouragement (r = 0.38, p < 0.01) and creative personality (r = 0.24, p < 0.01) relate positively to employee creativity Hierarchical regression analysis To test the hypotheses, this study utilizes hierarchical multiple regression analyses to examine the relationship between job characteristics and employee creativity The use of hierarchical regression allows us to pinpoint and control the predictive power of these contextual factors This study first installed the control variables of organizational encouragement and creative personality (model 1) Job characteristics were Int J Tourism Res 13, 191–204 (2011) DOI: 10.1002/jtr Relationship of Job Characteristics and Employee Creativity 199 Table Correlation analysis Variable Job characteristics Job characteristics Organizational encouragement Creative personality Employee creativity Organizational encouragement Creative personality 0.20* 0.38* 0.24* Employee creativity 0.31* 0.20* 0.64* * p < 0.01 Table Hierarchical multiple regression results of job characteristics on employee creativity Organizational encouragement Creative personality Job characteristics R-square Adjusted R-square ΔR-square F β (Model 1) β (Model 2) 0.35* 0.16* 0.19* 0.09* 0.57* 0.46 0.45 0.29 79.40* 0.17 0.16 29.32* * p < 0.01 Table Hierarchical multiple regression results of job characteristics on employee creativity among four job types Tour manager Organizational encouragement Creative personality Job characteristics R-square Adjusted R-square ΔR-square F 0.46** 0.01 0.21 0.19 7.23** 0.30** 0.12 0.56** 0.48 0.47 0.26 15.78** Route controller 0.45** 0.06 0.20 0.18 8.72** 0.28** 0.07 0.56** 0.48 0.46 0.28 20.85** Operator Salesperson 0.15 0.12 0.54** 0.45** 0.31** 0.18** 0.36* 0.19 0.16 0.06 5.30** 0.19* 0.15* 0.48** 0.54 0.52 0.22 34.06** 0.12 0.10 4.75** 0.32 0.31 20.91** * p < 0.05; **p < 0.01 then installed in step (model 2) The results are presented in Table Overall, the model predicting employee creativity was significant (F = 79.40, p < 0.01), explaining 45% of variance After the researchers entered job characteristics in model 2, the increase in explained variance was 29% (β = 0.57, p < 0.01) Also, the study Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd examined the relationship between job characteristics and employee creativity among the four job types As Table shows, tour managers (β = 0.56, p < 0.01), route controllers (β = 0.56, p < 0.01), operators (β = 0.36, p < 0.01) and salespersons (β = 0.48, p < 0.01) all showed statistical significance Int J Tourism Res 13, 191–204 (2011) DOI: 10.1002/jtr 200 S.-H Tsaur, C.-H Yen and W.-Y Yang Table Hierarchical multiple regression results of the five dimensions of job characteristics on employee creativity among four job types Tour manager Organizational encouragement Creative personality Skill variety Task identity Task significance Autonomy Feedback R-square Adjusted R-square ΔR-square F Route controller 0.46** 0.28** 0.45** 0.01 0.09 0.18 0.07 0.24* 0.42** 0.23* 0.59 0.53 0.35 9.91** 0.06 0.21 0.19 7.23** 0.20 0.18 8.72** 0.24** 0.05 0.25** 0.08 0.23* 0.52** 0.08 0.58 0.53 0.35 12.46** Operator Salesperson 0.15 0.10 0.54** 0.45** 0.31** 0.31** 0.32* 0.61** 0.10 0.17 0.18 0.38 0.31 0.21 5.40** 0.19* 0.14* 0.12 0.23** 0.12 0.24** 0.30** 0.60 0.57 0.26 18.05** 0.12 0.10 4.75** 0.30 0.29 20.91** * p < 0.05; **p < 0.01 In addition, this study tested employee creativity across the five dimensions of job characteristics for different job types The results are presented in Table For tour managers, task significance (β = 0.24, p < 0.05), autonomy (β = 0.42, p < 0.01) and feedback (β = 0.23, p < 0.05) positively relate to employee creativity For route controllers, skill variety (β = 0.25, p < 0.01), task significance (β = 0.23, p < 0.05) and autonomy (β = 0.52, p < 0.01) positively relate to employee creativity For operators, skill variety (β = 0.32, p < 0.05) and task significance (β = 0.61, p < 0.01) positively relate to employee creativity For salespersons, task identity (β = 0.23, p < 0.01), autonomy (β = 0.24, p < 0.01) and feedback (β = 0.30, p < 0.01) positively relate to employee creativity The results indicate that different job types moderate the effect of the five dimensions of job characteristics on employee creativity Thus, Hypothesis of this study is supported CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS The purpose of this study is to explore the difference in job characteristics and employee creativity as well as the relationship between the two Empirical results show that different job types in travel agencies possess significant differences in job characteristics and employee creativity Also, the relationship between travel Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd industry employees’ job characteristics and employee creativity differ with different job types As a basis, the study adopted the variables and variable correlations of Oldham and Cummings (1996), and modifications were made to the categorization of job types in the travel industry Empirical results show that job characteristics significantly and positively correlate with employee creativity In other words, the higher the degree of job characteristics, the higher the degree of employee creativity Although this result is consistent with past findings, this study further discovers that the impact on employee creativity differs with different job types The tour manager who serves an important role in providing services to customers will act in the interest of customer satisfaction during emergency situations The tour manager utilizes the job’s flexibility to make adjustments to itineraries, and service quality is determined by the amount of tips, opinion surveys and the degree of customer complaints The above indicates that the tour manager’s task significance, autonomy and feedback are high Therefore, the tour manager may offer new concepts or ideas to provide differentiated experience to customers in an effort to enhance customer satisfaction For the route controller, who is responsible for developing itineraries that are Int J Tourism Res 13, 191–204 (2011) DOI: 10.1002/jtr Relationship of Job Characteristics and Employee Creativity different from those available in the market and that match customer needs, extensive professional knowledge and judgement skills are required to determine the feasibility of the itineraries Since the route controller manages the entire tour operation and profit/loss of the tour, this role is very important from the travel agency’s perspective The above shows that the route controller’s skill variety, task significance and autonomy are high Therefore, the route controller has to frequently come up with new ideas or convert creativity into the development of travel products Moreover, the operator independently handles most of the duties related to overseas tour groups Since the job nature is very routine, the skill variety and task identity of the job are high These circumstances prompt the operator to develop new ideas to change the working procedures in order to improve job performance As for the salesperson, who works independently in negotiating businesses, he or she enjoys flexibility in working hours and price negotiation of itineraries This shows that the salesperson’s task identity and autonomy are high These circumstances and the fact that salesperson performance is determined by sales figures are helpful towards stimulating the salesperson’s adoption of creative selling techniques to boost sales and achieve objectives Managerial implications The study shows that job characteristics have a significant and positive impact on employee creativity in the travel industry If a travel company wants to maintain a unique position in Taiwan’s highly competitive environment, it is important for travel managers to improve employees’ performance by stimulating the motivators of creativity Therefore, this study suggests travel managers to raise employees’ creativity through job design (or redesign), such as enhancing their power to freely make decisions Also, travel managers should raise the company’s competitive advantage by nurturing employee creativity These managerial efforts can include restructuring the job of a high-potential employee so that it provides the employee with more autonomy at work, more skill variety to complete the job and additional and reliable feedback about performance effecCopyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 201 tiveness, as well as ensures that the employee completes an entire and identifiable piece of work In addition, managers should regularly evaluate the degree of employees’ adaptation to each of these conditions and reassign employees or further adjust their work contexts by restructuring jobs as needed The above research findings show that the four job types moderate the effect of the five dimensions of job characteristics on employee creativity The present research thus offers several managerial implications Offer different levels of authorization according to job characteristics Results of this study demonstrate that with the exception of operator, the job autonomy of different job types in the travel industry enhances employee creativity Therefore, enhancing employees’ ability to freely make decisions through proper authorization allows employees to attain greater flexibility in job progress or method However, since the characteristics of each job are different, the level of autonomy is also different From the standpoint of the salesperson, for example, more authorization in pricing helps stimulate the salesperson to think about ways to increase company profit The salesperson can therefore negotiate businesses according to a price that customers can accept, and this will increase the possibility of striking a deal For the tour manager and route controller, a free hand in managing tours and developing itineraries can stimulate their willingness to design creative services and launch different travel products Provide employees with an environment for learning and growth During the pre-job training, an important asset to the company is conveying messages to employees regardless of the job type This allows employees to feel that they are part of a group, and they will become more willing to contribute their creativity to the company Training can also compensate for individual inadequacy and then generate new and beneficial thoughts and ideas (Zhou and Shalley, 2003) Therefore, managers can allocate budget into employee training centers and irregularly hold training sessions For example, the operator is responsible for affairs related to liaison and has frequent contacts with external Int J Tourism Res 13, 191–204 (2011) DOI: 10.1002/jtr 202 organizations Therefore, it would be helpful to organize programs in communication and interpersonal relationships for the operator Also, the route controller is responsible for tour operations and the operating expense of product lines Training programs in cost estimate and operations management would benefit the route controller Use diversified channels to understand job performance Managers can encourage employees to focus not only on accomplishing job objectives, but also collecting the opinions from co-workers, supervisors, external customers and counterparts in the industry By doing so, employees can gain a clearer understanding of their job performance and then seek improvement For example, although the tour manager’s performance can be partly determined by customer surveys and tips, more insights on service negligence could be gained by listening to the opinions of other service personnel during the trip By doing so, the tour manager can provide more creative services to enhance customer satisfaction In addition, the salesperson can improve selling techniques according to the opinions of co-workers Shape a company environment that encourages creativity The results of this study also found that organizational encouragement positively relates to employee creativity Therefore, travel managers can offer more incentives and recognition to creative employees They can frequently use tangible bonuses, such as promotions and pay raise, or verbal encouragement to stimulate employees’ motivation for creativity In other words, travel managers can shape an environment that encourages creativity to foster employees’ creative performance This move is beneficial towards nurturing the company’s competitive advantage Recruitment and development strategies Employees have different preferences about job characteristics Some may prefer job autonomy and some may expect to get feedback from their performance Past research has indicated that person-job fit is related to a number of positive work outcomes, such as performance and job satisfaction (Saks and Ashforth, 1997, 2002; Lauver and Kristof-Brown, 2001) For Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd S.-H Tsaur, C.-H Yen and W.-Y Yang the travel agency, this study highlights the importance of allowing the applicants to have sufficient information about different job characteristics among the four job types during the recruitment and selection process In addition, the tour manager should assign jobs according to the preference of the applicants For example, if an applicant prefers higher job autonomy, then he or she is more suited in a tour manager or route controller role By doing so, the company can enhance employees’ person-job fit, and employee creativity can be upgraded Future research and limitations This study focuses only on the service personnel of travel agencies Future studies can explore other segments of the tourism industry Also, there are other factors influencing employee creativity (e.g supervisory encouragement and work group encouragement) Since this study only controlled factors that previous literature considered to be influential of employee creativity, we suggest future studies to incorporate more control variables to further clarify the relationship between job characteristics and employee creativity Since this study gathered samples from consolidated travel agencies headquartered in Taipei, the research results may not be effectively and accurately generalized towards other tourism segments In addition, this study measures employee creativity in a self-report manner, which may lead to an overestimation of the survey results REFERENCES Abbott JB, Boyd NG, Miles G 2006 Does type of team matter? 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