Abstract
I recently acquired some new administrative responsibilities, and part of my charge is to build community among my area colleagues. My predecessor forged a strong foundation and developed a culture of collegiality and respect that will make this part of my job relatively easy. However, the context is not without challenges. Like our readers, my colleagues face numerous demands at and outside work, and it does not appear to be getting any easier. As such, it will be difficult to exceed that which has already been accomplished.
Fortunately, the papers included in the current issue offer several prescriptive insights that have direct implications for my own community building purposes, and more importantly, future hospitality research and practice. The lead article by Brewster, Gourlay, and Nowak refutes prior evidence of racial differences in customer tipping behavior and offers a strong reminder about the importance of taking purposeful steps to promote equity, inclusion, and belonging in the workplace. The papers by Hendler, LaTour, and Cotte and Chen, Liu, and Mattila offer granular insights about the impact of temporal orientation and the use of innovative communication strategies, respectively, for enhancing customer experience and generating loyalty. The papers by Du, Ma, Lin and Wang, Xu, Martinez, and Van Hoof, and Vashdi, Katz-Navon, and Delegach are directly aligned with the community building motif and show how authentic leadership, stressful events, and a firm’s “service priority climate,” respectively, influence employee responses to work. Finally, the papers by Agarwal, Koch, and McNabb, Kwok, Lee, and Han, O’Neill and Yeon, and Schwartz, Webb, and Ma present several unique data-driven approaches for improving both diagnostic and evaluative decision making. There is a lot to take away from these studies, and I hope you are able to find similar applicability to your own community building and scholarly endeavors. Enjoy!