Applying complexity theory to solve hospitality contrarian case conundrums Illuminating happy-low and unhappy-high performing frontline service employees

摘要

Purpose - This paper aims to advance a configural asymmetric theory of the complex antecedents to hospitality employee happiness-at-work and managers' assessments of employees' quality of work performance. The study transcends variable and case-level analyses to go beyond prior statistical findings of small-to-medium effect sizes of happiness-performance relationships; the study here identifies antecedent paths involving high-versus-low happy employees associating with high-versus-low managers' assessments of these employees' performances.