Workforce Empowerment in Hospitality and Tourism: The Need for Industry-Specific Considerations

Abstract

The evidence suggests that one strategy to deal with the challenge posed by staffing shortages, workforce diversity, and employees’ critical role in service excellence in contemporary hospitality and tourism is empowerment. This study examines workforce empowerment research in hospitality and tourism through bibliographic coupling and analysis of 98 articles to provide comprehensive insights for researchers and practitioners. Results show that research on workforce empowerment is highly concentrated in Asia, and quantitative methods are the most popular for researchers, though theoretical underpinnings are limited. This study classifies empowerment research into four main clusters and develops an integrated framework that outlines the antecedents, outcomes, mediating, and moderating mechanisms of empowerment. Implications of the results and critical avenues for future research are discussed. The study concludes that industry-specific characteristics should be considered when implementing empowerment.