Talent Management in the New Normal of Hospitality and Tourism

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Guest Editors

Foteini Kravariti, University of Portsmouth Faculty of Business and Law (UK), foteini.kravariti@port.ac.uk

Stefan Jooss, Cork University Business School, University College Cork (Ireland), stefan.jooss@ucc.ie

Justice Nyigmah Bawole, University of Ghana Business School (Ghana), jnbawole@ug.edu.gh

Hugh Scullion, University of Hull (UK), h.scullion@hull.ac.uk

Editor-in-Chief

Fevzi Okumus, University of Central Florida, USA, fevzi.okumus@ucf.edu

Purpose

Hospitality and tourism is an important industry to the global economy and employment (WTTC, 2020), but its sustainability has long been challenged by macro-level incidents, such as the recent pandemic (Giousmpasoglou & Marinakou, 2021). The spread of COVID-19, global quarantines and countries’ total lockdowns have had a severe impact on this industry’s revenues (Baum et al., 2020) and many businesses have flattered with bankruptcy (Gössling et al., 2021). More than 100 million jobs have been put at risk (Sigala, 2020), whereas employees have been impelled to both quickly adapt to clients’ increased health and safety expectations and to adopt relationship-building approaches so as to help maintain businesses’ clientele (Gursoy & Chi, 2020). The industry’s businesses hence understood that the new management priority should be their human resource (Papathanassis, 2020), to which larger companies such as Marriott International and Pret a Manger responded with furlough strategies as a cushion to job and talent loss (Huffman et al., 2021). Despite these efforts, the recent pandemic imposed several questions to the hospitality and tourism businesses as a whole in terms of managing talent (Birtch et al., 2021).

Talent Management (TM) in the hospitality and tourism industry is considered the strategic management of those viewed as high-calibre employees and who can efficiently respond to the industry’s diversified requirements if allocated to the right working position at the right time (Baum, 2008). Broadly, organisations need to attract, develop, and retain talent to develop a sustainable talent pipeline (Jooss et al., 2021). Identifying pivotal roles, developing talent pools of high-performing and high-potential individuals, and establishing a differentiated HR architecture are key TM routines which organisations can consider as part of their TM strategy (Collings and Mellahi, 2009).  In that way TM can facilitate hospitality and tourism businesses to employ talented individuals who could respond to changing business needs, in particular amid periods of crisis (Bagheri et al., 2020). TM strategies could also help the industry signal opportunities for both development and career progression, and thus increase talent attraction and retention (Sen and Bhattacharya, 2019), as well as help nurture talent especially in economies that are highly dependent on the industry’s revenues but lack talent supply (WTTC, 2020).

Academic society has paid increased attention to TM topics across contexts in the last twenty years (Kravariti & Johnston, 2020), but it is now crucial to understand the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the future of TM in terms of employee attraction, development, retention, and deployment. Other areas such as global talent mobility, the gig economy, and technological trends will also continue to shape TM in a post-pandemic context (Vaiman et al., 2021).

The overarching aims of this special issue are to examine the lessons learnt from TM in hospitality and tourism amid COVID-19 and to map post-pandemic directions of this significant strategy for the industry.

Submissions related to the following topics are particularly welcome

• Talent management and careers amid and/or post COVID;
• Experiences in managing hospitality and tourism talent amid COVID-19;
• Changes to the nature and practice of talent management amid/post-COVID;
• Skills and competencies of the industry’s talent amid and/or post COVID-19;
• Conceptualisation of talent and/or talent management in hospitality and tourism;
• Talent identification amid and/or post COVID;
• Talent management and employee turnover;
• Mobility and talent management;
• Key positions in hospitality and tourism;
• The nature and operations of talent pools;
• Organisational, team and individual talent management outcomes;
• Macro and micro-level factors impacting talent management design and delivery;
• External partnerships, stakeholder management, and talent management;
• Talent analytics in hospitality and tourism;
• Talent management and technology;
• Talent management and artificial intelligence in hospitality and tourism;
• Talent management, diversity and inclusion in hospitality and tourism;
• Talent and career issues of females in hospitality and tourism;
• Other relevant topics related to talent management in hospitality and tourism.

General information for prospective authors

Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. We welcome both conceptual and empirical papers. We welcome research embedded in context and which adopts sound theoretical foundations and different methods. We are also interested in research that is based on compelling case studies of single or multiple destinations and organisations, as well as on developing conceptual frameworks. We highly welcome research from the hospitality industry including travel, lodging, event planning and recreation. For more details and manuscript guidelines, please visit the official website at:

http://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/products/journals/journals.htm?id=ijchm

Submission procedure

Prospective authors are strongly encouraged to contact the special issue editors regarding potential topics of interest or any questions/suggestions regarding the special issue. Abstracts (up to 750 words) can be submitted directly to the guest editors via email (foteini.kravariti@port.ac.uk) by 1st November 2021. Abstracts must be concise and to the point, with appropriate references. Full papers must be submitted by 1st April 2022 through ScholarOne Manuscripts, the online submission and peer review system. Registration and access is available at: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ijchm Please select the correct issue to submit to: “Talent Management in the New Normal of Hospitality and Tourism”. Author guidelines for IJCHM can be found at:

http://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/products/journals/author_guidelines.htm?id=ijchm

Review process

Each paper submitted to this special issue will be subject to the following review procedures:

1. It will be reviewed by the guest editors for general suitability for this special issue.
2. If it is judged suitable, three reviewers will be selected for a rigorous double-blind review process.
3. Based on the recommendation of the reviewers, the guest editors and the Editor-in-Chief will decide whether the particular paper should be accepted as it is, revised and re-submitted, or rejected.

Timeline

Abstracts submissions: 1 November 2021 (email to foteini.kravariti@port.ac.uk)

Abstract decisions: 1 December 2021

FULL paper submissions: 1 April 2022

Revisions and decisions: October 2022

Publication: 2023

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References

Bagheri, M., Baum, T., Ebrahimi, A. and Abbasi, A. (2020), “Talent Management in the Tourism and Hospitality Industry: evidence from Iran”, Anatolia: An International Journal of Tourism and Hospitality Research, Vol. 31 No. 1, pp. 88-98.

Baum, T. (2008), “Implications of hospitality and tourism labour markets for talent management strategies”, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 20 No. 7, pp. 720-729.

Baum, T., Mooney, S.K.K., Robinson, R.N.S. and Solnet, D. (2020), “COVID-19’s impact on the hospitality workforce – new crisis or amplification of the norm?”, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 23 No. 9, pp. 2813-2829.

Birtch, T.A., Chiang, F.F.T., Cai, Z. and Wang, J. (2021), “Am I choosing the right career? The implications of COVID-19 on the occupational attitudes of hospitality management students”, International Journal of Hospitality Management, Vol. 95, available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278431921000748?via%3Dihub (accessed 3 June 2021).

Collings, D.G. and Mellahi, K. (2009), “Strategic talent management: A review and research agenda.” Human Resource Management Review, Vol 19 No. 4, pp. 304-313.

Giousmpasoglou, C. and Marinakou, E. (2021), “Hospitality managers in turbulent times: the COVID-19 crisis”, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 33 No. 4, pp. 1297-1318.

Gössling, S., Scott, D. and Hall, C.M. (2021), “Pandemics, tourism and global change: a rapid assessment of COVID-19”, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, Vol. 29 No. 1, pp. 1-20.

Gursoy, D. and Chi, C.O. (2020), “Effects of COVID-19 pandemic on hospitality industry: review of the current situations and a research agenda”, Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management, Vol. 29 No. 5, pp. 527-529.

Huffman, A.H., Albritton, M.D., Matthews, R.A., Muse, L.A. and Howes, S.S. (2021), “Managing furloughs: how furlough policy and perceptions of fairness impact turnover intentions over time”, The International Journal of Human Resource Management, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print, pp. ahead-of-print

Jooss, S., Burbach, R., and Ruël, H. (2021), “Talent management innovations in the international hospitality industry”, Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing Limited. Ahead-of-print.

Kravariti, F. and Johnston, K. (2020), “Talent management: a critical literature review and research agenda for public sector human resource management”, Public Management Review, Vol. 22 No. 1, pp. 75-95.

Papathanassis, A. (2020), “Cruise tourism ‘brain drain’: exploring the role of personality traits, educational experience and career choice attributes”, Current Issues in Tourism, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print, pp. 1-16.

Sen, K. and Bhattacharya, A. (2019), “Attracting and managing talent, how are the top three hotel companies in India doing it?”, Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes, Vol. 11 No. 4, pp. 404-417.

Sigala, M. (2020), “Tourism and COVID-19: impacts and implications for advancing and resetting industry and research”, Journal of Business Research, Vol. 117, pp. 312-321.

Vaiman, V., Cascio, W.F., Collings, D.G. and Swider, B.W. (2021), “The shifting boundaries of talent management”, Human Resource Management, Vol. 60 No. 2, pp. 253-257.

World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) (2020b), “Recovery scenarios 2020 & economic impact from COVID-19”, available at: https://wttc.org/Research/Economic-Impact/Recovery-Scenarios (accessed 5 March 2021).