INTRODUCTION
The hotel industry in the United States, one of the countries with the largest tourist turnout in the world, is an important pillar of the service sector and the general economy. Data from theAmerican Hotel and Lodging Association –AHLA– (2021) state that this sector produces 8.3 million direct and indirect job posts, contributing 660 billion dollars to the country’s GDP. Likewise, the sector comprises more than 55,900 hotels, that is to say, 5.3 million rooms. These data demonstrate the importance of generating and implementing strategies and processes to remain competitive in the sector.
One of such strategies is entrepreneurial orientation –EO– which intends that firms in the hotel sector take up an entrepreneurial behavior before the rest and take risks in becoming more competitive than competitors (Covin and Slevin 1988). Likewise, it is necessary that such product, service, or process to innovate has the expected quality to meet the customers’ needs. To do so, actions to increase efficiency and quality standards must be defined, and also generate a philosophy oriented to doing things right the first time (Williams Jr. et al. 2020); that is to say, hotels must implement total quality management –TQM–. Another fundamental aspect in the activities of any firm, and with emphasis on the hotel sector, is corporate social responsibility –CRS—, which intends to satisfy not only the clients’ needs but those of everyone around and inside the organization, within an environment of sustainability and commitment to protecting society in general (Hopkins 2005).
Individually, a lot of empirical works has demonstrated the importance of these elements on firm performance (Al-Dhaafri and Al-Swidi 2016). What is more, the combination of the two of them as regards performance has been studied as well (Abbas 2020;Sahoo and Yadav 2017;Zhuang et al. 2020); even, the link between these two elements has been analyzed (Ghobadian et al. 2007). However, the combined analysis of these three elements that allow better competitiveness and firm performance has not been thoroughly deepened. At this point, one notices an important gap between empirical evidence and its theoretical support, since this has been developed to explain each element’s behavior, not what takes place when all these interact. Commonly, the link between TQM and CSR is the most studied because of the philosophic roots they have (Ghobadian et al. 2007), in addition to their direct impact on clients and stakeholders. Conversely, the link of EO is not sufficiently clear, and approaching any of these elements is mainly carried out indirectly. Furthermore, another gap we notice is related to the fact that a firm has limited capacity to design, plan and set up various elements to be competitive. Nevertheless, there is no information that helps firms identify the ideal combination to implement and attain the stated goals. Thereby, it is essential to analyze each of the links and verify whether they exert a positive force in conjunction, which in due time help firms improve, particularly, those in the hotel sector.
This research is driven by the desire to contribute to finding the best practices in the hotel sector in order to contribute not only to the improvement of the economic aspect, but mainly to accomplish the most satisfaction of customers, employees, stakeholders, and the community in general. We start from the idea that firms are continuously evolving, therefore, the strategies to be implemented will not be the same all the time, owing to which, it is necessary to analyze some of them —three in this case— and provide evidence on the basis of statistical data that allow making objective decisions. Though it is recognized there are many others that also have a positive influence.
Due to the foregoing, the following research questions are put forward: Are there significant positive relationships between EO-CSR, EO-TQM, and TQM-CSR? Does the adoption of a competitive strategy such as EO allow strengthening the implementation of TQM and CSR measures? Are the theory and empirical evidence regarding the strong link between TQM and CSR verified? What shall be the suitable combination of strategies to set up in order to maximize the resources invested in the firm’s functioning?
In this way, the present paper has as goal to analyze the relationships between entrepreneurial orientation, total quality management, and corporate social responsibility in the US hotel sector. Plus, it is intended to establish the element or combination of elements with the most impact on the hotel sector in favor to be competitive. With a view to meeting the objectives proposed, a survey was applied to 155 three-star and above hotels in the US over 2020-2021. To interpret the data, the model of partial least squares structural equation model (PLS-SEM) was applied resorting to Adanco 2.1.1 (Dijkstra and Henseler 2015).
The results corroborate the theory as regards the role of EO at the time of implementing both TQM and CSR. Likewise, TQM also positively relates to the adoption of CSR.
This article contributes to showing how the three variables associate, at different intensities nevertheless; which suggests that to the extent that these are set up, the effect one has upon the others decreases, probably as a consequence of the dispersion of the priorities defined by senior management.
The present article is structured as follows: firstly, a review of the literature and analyses of empirical studies related to the variables approached is made, as well the research hypotheses are presented. Later on, the methodology is explained. Third, we present the analysis of the results and their comparison with other similar studies. Finally, the conclusions that approach contributions, implications, limitations, and future research lines are presented.
1. LITERATURE REVIEW
1.1 Theoretical framework
The theoretical support for entrepreneurial orientation and total quality management will be based on a resource-based view; which establishes that firms have as a goal to attain a sustainable competitive advantage (Barney 1991). To do so, they resort to certain tangible and intangible resources, as well as capabilities to reach higher levels of economic performance and satisfaction of needs. Each firm demands find out the resources and capacities it has to use in function of business needs, goals, and projects it has.
Entrepreneurial orientation has been analyzed from this theoretical standpoint. Firms use their resources to design and set up strategies that enable them to obtain competitive advantages by means of innovating their products and services; in addition to being the first to explore and boldly enter into new markets. If these results and capacities are well utilized, then these firms will be able to differentiate from the rest. For its part, TQM is a philosophy that intends to optimize the use of firm resources, and it is reflected in the clients’ satisfaction. Consequently, setting up TQM comes from intensively developing the skills to improve each process carried out in a firm.
For its part, CSR is supported by the stakeholder theory (Freeman 1984), which states that inside and outside the organizations there are groups or individuals with actual interests, who want firms to be successful. These interest groups are benefitted from the actions enterprises undertake to improve relationships with the environment and society (Kunda et al. 2019). Among the main interest groups, one finds shareholders, employees, clients, environmental organizations, and civil society, among others (Gürlek et al. 2017).
As pointed out byBenavides-Velasco et al. (2014), TQM and CSR are suitable strategies that enable improving the firms’ value, as they consider the interests of the parties involved. From this viewpoint, implementing quality allows firms to offer better products and services to meet needs, thereby, it increases firms’ competitiveness. In the case of CSR, it is sought that all stakeholders are satisfied with the firms’ actions, equally attaining greater competitiveness and economic performance.
1.2. Entrepreneurial orientation
Entrepreneurial orientation is a very important strategy that allows firms to be competitive. At first, EO was associated with firms whose main characteristic was to be entrepreneurs; that is to say, firms that analyzed the feasibility to enter new markets following a strategy based on risk and innovation of products or services (Miller 1983). Later on, some authors contributed to developing this strategy (Covin and Slevin 1988;Lumpkin and Dess 1996) building a theoretical framework that has been empirically substantiated over the years in various situations and contexts (Hernández-Perlines et al. 2020).
EO may be defined as the capability organizations have to generate strategies supported by the innovation of their products, services, and processes. Moreover, they are characterized by being the first to make decisions in relation to face competence, i.e., they are proactive. As well, in spite of uncertainty and facing great losses, they risk failing in this endeavor (Hernández-Perlines et al. 2020;Ibarra-Cisneros et al. 2021). In this sense, EO is considered the option taken by entrepreneurs to create another firm, product, or service (Dos Santos and Marinho 2018). In this way, an entrepreneurial mindset is an important factor that allows producing innovative strategies (Saadat et al. 2021), which are later facilitated by the implementation of an EO strategy.
Within the context of the hotel industry, EO is composed of all the processes, practices, methods, philosophy, and decision-making styles the management resorts to running hotels in an entrepreneurial fashion (Jalilvand et al. 2018). This indicates that EO is a strategy that adapts to the particularities of each sector and industry but always keeps the main dimensions on which it is structured as a base. EO is mainly composed of three dimensions: innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk-taking. The first, innovativeness, is defined byCovin and Slevin (1988) as the intention to prioritize the research and development of new products, services, and processes, and furthermore improve technology in the industry; also, innovate commercial strategies and relationships with the environment (Lumpkin and Dess 1996). Therefore, an innovative firm is disruptive and has an innovation-oriented organizational culture (Ibarra-Cisneros et al. 2021). The hotel sector is not the exception; innovativeness is applied to devise new services, products, and experiences that their competitors have not developed. In like manner, this sort of enterprise is characterized by an important use of novel information technologies and strategies, as well as a leadership different from that of competitors (Tajeddini 2010). The second dimension is proactiveness, which consists of the intention of the firm to enter new markets before competitors. Proactive organizations observe the environment and find unexploited opportunity areas (Hernández-Perlines et al. 2020). Plus, they are known to modify their environment for their benefit and have no fear of facing competitors (Covin and Slevin 1988). In the case of the hotel sector, proactive hotels are those which identify new needs before anyone else and implement strategies to be the earliest in exploiting new markets and make returning customers by means of this offer new services; this enables them to be more competitive (Rigtering et al. 2017). The third dimension is risk-taking. It means making risky decisions, either to be the first in entering a market or introducing new products or services, though this may not yield the expected results (Lumpkin and Dess 1996). Neither are these firms afraid of using a large number of resources to carry out their business strategy (Uchenna Eze et al. 2019). In the case of hotels, risk-taking consists in harnessing unexploited market niches, new services within their facilities, and differentiation strategies as well.
There is considerable evidence of positive aspects after the implementation of EO in the firms; such aspects are associated to better financial and market results (Kocak et al. 2017;Martin and Javalgi 2016). Hence, it is a priority to set up EO in the hotel sector, which is characterized by the continuous search for new clients, which for their part will increase the hotels’ revenues and image. All of this supported an entrepreneurial mindset focused on clients (Miao et al. 2022).
1.3. Total quality management
The background of TQM dates back to contributions by various authors such asCrosby (1988), andDeming (1989), who linked quality not only with a technical standpoint but also to management and organization; that is to say, TQM analyzes how to perfect technical and administrative processes to reach an improvement in the working methods (Suárez-Barraza and Miguel-Dávila 2008) to produce client satisfaction (Williams Jr. et al. 2020), for which a philosophy around TQM is created (Corrigan 1995). This way, research on TQM has focused on the impact it has on firms (Hilman et al. 2020;Powell 1995), with special attention to the hotel sector (Al-Ababneh 2021).
As regards the TQM concept,Zairi (2013) defines it as the combination of the socio-technical process to make things correctly from the start with economic viability in each stage of the process. In this definition, TQM is seen from a traditional approach, which is mentioned as, technical. However,Alsughayir (2016, 656) defines it as “the management of the entire firm so that it stands out in the products and services important for its clients”. Here, the market approach is integrated and customers are directly considered; it is necessary to clarify that not only consumers as such are considered, but also the firms’ internal clients, that is to say, the employees. Thereby, TQM also influences the employees to be rewarded for working with quality through diverse incentives. In like manner,Ghobadian and Gallear (1996) mention that TQM fosters teamwork, integrity, honesty, and being objective in decision making. TQM's goal is to improve the customers’ satisfaction level (Mehralian et al. 2016), to do so, suitable organizational management is necessary (Sallis 1993), which orients all processes toward clients (Dean and Bowen 1994), as well the firms’ mission, vision, and values, aided by all the members (Bagodi et al. 2021). As an additional objective, TQM seeks to generate higher incomes by offering better products and services (Do et al. 2021) and also better firm performance (Powell 1995;Wang et al. 2012). Furthermore, the importance of setting up TQM, which is a management process, is that it enables facing market changes efficiently (Venkatraman 2007).
There are various classifications into which TQM divides. For the end of this research, we resorted to using four, afterSik Cho and Jung (2014), which have been previously studied in the literature thus far generated. The first is strategic planning. According toBounds et al. (1994), it is the process to formulate and implement strategies that offer value to the customers. These strategies shall head toward meeting their needs, as they are the focus of any strategy. To do so, organizations have to develop formal planning processes, which are previously required by quality models (Tarí 2011). As regards process management, its goal is to improve efficiency and assess the risks and consequences of all the key actors in the organization (Tarí 2011). Moreover, process management enables the dissemination of the knowledge of all the organization members and helps reduce mistakes and duplicate activities; this entails a transversal vision of the organization to meet the clients’ demands (Hernández Palma et al. 2018). As pointed out byDessler (2000, 678), human resources management is “the policies and practices needed to perform the human-resource aspects in a managerial post, which comprise processes of recruiting, selection, training, and others”. Management of human resources is important for quality to become philosophy. Therefore, it is necessary to further a good organizational climate and set up motivational actions. For its part, customer focus consists in “prioritizing the clients’ needs and requirements in the decisions made by the firm and promoting a culture that has customers as a focus” (Sit et al. 2009, 690). That is to say, every enterprise shall act bearing their clients in mind with a view to providing them with better quality goods and services.
All these TQM components are important in the hotel sector, being especially identifiable in the management of process and human resources, as the main critical success factors in this sector (Al-Shourah and Al-Shourah 2020). Even though it is important to mention that TQM participates in all the business areas in a hotel via the implementation of standards for each one (Avelini Holjevac 1996). Furthermore, evidence emphasizes the importance of TQM as a catalyst for better hotel performance (Sunil et al. 2021). For this reason, the hotel sector set actions into motion to constantly improve its quality, and thus meet even the most demanding customers’ requests.
1.4. Corporate social responsibility
The study of CSR has grown from the classic contributions byBowen (1953),Davis (1960), andCarrol (1979) to become the theoretical basis to explain the way it improves the internal conditions of firms, clients, the environment, and society. As previously commented, CSR is supported by the stakeholder theory (Freeman 1984). CSR is defined as the “the firms’ continued commitment by ethically conducting their business and contributing to economic development, improving at once the quality of life of their workforce and its families, the local community and society at large” (World Business Council for Sustainable Development,1999, 3).
According toHopkins (2005 214), the goal of “corporate social responsibility is to create increasingly higher living standards for their interest groups inside and outside the corporation”. Owing to this, organizations have stressed this aspect and are aware that a balance between the economic, social, and environmental is possible and necessary to meet the society's demands (Peña Miranda and Serra-Cantallops 2013). Setting CSR actions has important benefits for organizations, improves competitiveness, customer loyalty, and firm reputation (Hamrouni et al. 2020;Nemec Rudež 2010), and increases financial performance (Valdez-Juárez et al. 2019).
In the hotel industry, the implementation of CSR is more intensive, as it focuses on customer satisfaction, the environment, and general society. In this sense, hotels adopt CSR practices as a strategy for product differentiation and performance improvement (Jalilvand et al. 2018), in which environmental and social commitment is important for customers (Ghaderi et al. 2019). Besides, adopting them allows for creating a satisfactory work environment and better conditions than those established in labor legislation (Abbas 2020), which makes more productive and happier employees; this translates into better service that leads to meeting the customers’ needs (Gürlek et al. 2017). It is important to mention that there should be an internal culture that believes in the transcendence of setting up CSR to meet the needs of customers and society. Consequently, the participation of employees is fundamental (Kucharska 2020). However, we have to mention that setting up CSR is not simple because of the entailed costs; thereby, larger hotels are enabled to impact society with their CSR actions at a higher proportion, as empirical evidence suggests (Ghaderi et al. 2019).
On the other hand, CSR divides into four responsibilities or action spheres, which are economic, legal, ethical, and discretional or philanthropic (Carrol 1979), at present, nevertheless, mainly the economic, social, and environmental spheres are utilized.
The economic sphere is the enterprises’ obligation to create a balance between wealth generation and satisfaction of needs (Abdulai Mahmoud and Hinson 2012). This implies that the customers are fundamental in this regard and the strategy of implementing CSR must focus on them (Abbas 2020). The environmental sphere may be defined as the actions that intend to preserve nature, decrease pollution, save water and energy, use renewable sources and protect biodiversity (Benavides-Velasco et al. 2014). Finally, the social sphere looks for the integration of business goals and society concerns (Famiyeh 2017).
1.5. Relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and total quality management
EO allows firms to change profiles and become aggressive, empowered, and with an attitude to look for new market opportunities. At once, all the organization members are aware of the importance TQM has to improve the quality of their products and services, and achieving thus customer satisfaction. In this way, EO makes it easy for TQM management processes and policies to be efficiently adopted (Waheed 2020), since what is intended is firm performance improvement (Al-Dhaafri et al. 2016). Adding to the above,Wales et al. (2019) state that EO, by including organizational processes, climate, and entrepreneurship-oriented routines in its strategy, makes it easy for TQM activities to be benefitted as there is already working experience carrying out TQM once the process starts.
Several studies in many sectors have demonstrated that EO is positively associated with better TQM implementation. For example,Sahoo and Yadav (2017) carried out a study on 121 manufacturing SMEs in India to demonstrate, among other things, the influence of EO on TQM. By means of CB-SEM, it was possible to verify such association. Unlike the present research,Sahoo and Yadav (2017) utilized the 3 main dimensions of EO and added competitive aggressiveness and autonomy. In like manner, TQM comprised five dimensions, of which only process management is the same as in this paper. This substantiates the idea that EO allows organizations to be more aggressive and take the lead in searching for performance improvement and competitive advantages. To do so, TQM is set up as a mechanism to accomplish such goals.
Similar to the case above,Daniel and Musa (2020) also analyze the relationship between EO and TQM, in the context of 364 Nigerian exporting industries. By means of PLS-SEM, they defined a strong link between EO and TQM, and also the use of the latter as a moderator of the relationship between EO and SMEs export execution. Although, in such research, the authors focused on an utterly different sector and context; even so, they verified the findings of previous works (Al-Dhaafri and Al-Swidi 2016;Al-Dhaafri et al. 2016). In the particular case of the hotel sector, empirical evidence is limited; therefore, it is a necessity to define if the same relation is witnessed or if it has a divergent behavior; in this way, the following is put forward as a hypothesis:
H1: Entrepreneurial orientation is positively associated with better total quality management processes in the American hotel sector
1.6. Relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and corporate social responsibility
The effect of EO on the implementation of CSR measures has been studied in recent years (Adomako and Nguyen 2020;Iqbal and Malik 2019;Zhuang et al. 2020) and evidence points out that the organizations that undertake innovativeness, proactiveness, and take risks are able to deal more efficiently with the obstacles they face while adopting CSR.Zhuang et al. (2020) argue that proactive organizations with a risk-taking profile are more prone to make the decision of being socially responsible. Similarly, there exist data that state that enterprises with higher EO levels generate more capabilities to carry out CSR activities (Adomako and Nguyen 2020) as regards those without EO.
In this regard,Zhuang et al. (2020) researched the relationship between EO and CSR performance in 738 Chinese public enterprises; by means of secondary information over an 8-year period, the authors studied this relationship behavior. Particularly, for such a study, in which the Chinese economy is dominated by public enterprises, results validated the argumentations in the sense of a positive association between EO and CSR. However, it is distinguishable that such a relationship is not significant for the case of private enterprises; therefore, it is important to study the context of each economy so as not to generalize the behavior of the variables in question in diverse contexts.
Additionally,Valdez-Juárez et al. (2021), by means of a survey of 488 trade and service SMEs in Mexico and resorting to PLS-SEM, reached the conclusion of the existence of a positive relationship between EO and CSR, and at once, on FP. It is worth underscoring that additionally, CSR is used as a mediator between EO and FP, both have the same results. This allows stating the great affinity of these variables and their contribution to the improvement of firms, thus CSR generates direct and indirect impacts.
In the hotel sector, EO is an important tool to implement CSR, since the hotels’ innovative attitudes boost the conditions to adopt CSR measures and harness the advantages it produces (Jalilvand et al. 2018). Plus, it is possible that hotels develop better skills to unfold successful CSR strategy implementation (Valdez-Juárez et al. 2021) out of their previous experience in designing the entrepreneurial orientation strategy. This way, the following hypothesis is proposed:
H2: Entrepreneurial orientation positively influences the unfolding of corporate social responsibility actions in the American hotel sector.
1.7. Relationship between total quality management and corporate social responsibility
The evidence thus far generated indicates that TQM positively influences the implementation of CSR (Jalilvand et al. 2018;Kanji and Chopra 2010;Makhdoom and Anjum 2016). There is a link between both variables since they share philosophical roots (Ghobadian et al. 2007), it is also necessary to clarify that they do not always associate positively. Everything will depend on key factors such as organizational culture, vision focused on customers and the employees’ commitment to applying the policies and processes as designed. It is important to mention that the organizations that satisfactorily manage to couple these philosophies usually accomplish their proposed goals more easily (McAdam and Leonard 2003;Mehralian et al. 2016); besides, they become more competitive (Benavides-Velasco et al. 2014).
Among the main studies produced so far, distinguishable isMcAdam and Leonard (2003), who carried out an analysis of several models and methodologies utilized to implement TQM, in which a number of CSR elements were incorporated. Results show that the ethical basis developed by TQM allows for setting up various CSR actions. However, this analysis is theoretical and is reinforced by a case study; thereby, it is not possible to find out if the entire hotel sector applies the same methodologies and models, and obtains the same results. For their part,Larrán et al. (2016) carried out a bibliometric analysis on 107 studies, having SEMs as objects of study. The existence of a link between TQM and CSR was verified in a number of dimensions. This allowed corroborating in a general manner the relation that exists between TQM and CSR.
In a similar sense of the latest mentioned study,Tarí (2011) carried out a bibliometric analysis of journals dealing with total quality management and social responsibility. Eighty-three articles were identified within the period from 1990 to 2010 in 26 countries. Thus far, theoretical articles were more numerous than empirical. Among the main conclusions, the incorporation of social responsibility in multiple practices of quality management was underscored. Likewise, some quality practices have an impact on the firms’ ethical behavior; for this to occur, there should be common elements that make it possible that implementing TQM leads to developing CSR practices. Respect,Abbas (2020) utilized six TQM and CSR practices to demonstrate the way they relate to Corporate Green Performance in mid-sized and large manufacturing firms in Pakistan. The added value of this study is the inclusion of CSR as a mediating variable between TQM and performance, thus demonstrating partial mediation. The results were obtained by means of covariance base analysis (CB-SEM) and are in line with other studies’ results.
By contrast, a study on the pharmaceutical sector in Iran, byMehralian et al. (2016) used TQM as a mediating variable and CSR as independent of firm performance. That is to say, TQM was put forward as a mediator between CSR and Performance, instead of CSR mediating the relation between TQM and Performance. This change in the position of variables suggests that the link between them is bilateral and they are not necessarily unilaterally conditioned by each other. By combining these findings, it is possible to visualize that the success in the performance of a firm of any size and sector is conditioned to the implementation of both variables. Therefore, it is not about demonstrating “whether the chicken or the egg came first”, but how one improves the other. Even though according to the majority of evidence generated so far, it is considered that TQM is usually adopted before CSR. Therefore, for the purpose of the present research, such direction is followed.
In the hotel sector, findings indicate that TQM improves CSR actions and becomes higher competitiveness at the same time (Nazar et al. 2020). Likewise, changes in the demand patterns and the customers’ higher awareness level regarding planet sustainability make TQM and CSR relevant for this sector. Customers look for hotels committed to the environment and also to receive satisfaction from the services these hotels provide (Benavides-Velasco et al. 2014). Owing to this, the following is proposed as a hypothesis:
H3: Total quality management positively influences the development of corporate social responsibility actions in the American hotel sector.
2. METHODOLOGY
2.1. Design
The research carried out was explanatory and transversal, the hypotheses are verified through the structural equation model by the partial least squares method, using the software Adanco 2.1.1 (Dijkstra and Henseler 2015). This methodology was chosen because it combines confirmatory factor analysis and multiple regression, which make analysis and interpretation easy, plus it has high accuracy degree, unlike other methodologies in which analyses are carried out separately. Likewise, it is highly accurate when small samples are used, it is not necessary to establish suppositions regarding data distribution since it is utilized with non-parametric statistics. In this research, when using ordinal data, PLS-SEM minimizes data manipulation, in this way it is ensured that the results will be rigorous.
2.2. Population and sample
According toAHLA (2021), there are 55,900 hotels in the United States. To identify 3-star hotels and above, these were found in a previously acquired list in which their category was consulted; then, the surveys were sent to them for their participation. In the end, there were 155 responses from hotels in every American state. With a view to ascertaining the sample effectiveness level, the power levels reached were verified by resorting to Gpower (Faul et al. 2009). As a first step, Pearson correlation values between EO and TQM were calculated, and later, between EO and CSR, obtaining values of 0.454 and 0.402, respectively, reaching significant thresholds at a 0.01 level (bilateral) in both cases.
Following, the power was calculated with the data above using the software G*power. The criteria were a bivariate correlation test of a two-tailed normal model and considering a post hoc analysis mode as there are 155 applied surveys. Finally, with a value of α = 0.05, which is equivalent to being mistaken 5 times out of one hundred opportunities for both cases, values for EO-TQM= 0.9999762 are equivalent to 99.99% (Figure 1), while for EO-CSR= 0.9995073 equivalent to 99.95% were obtained (Figure 2), these two over >0.80 (Kline 2015,). That is to say, it is statistically validated that the sample is suitable to verify the research hypotheses.
Source: from data fed to open source software Gpower, version 3.1.9.6
2.3. Variables
Entrepreneurial orientation. It is considered a second-order variable since its total effect on the rest of the variables is studied; that is to say, it is unidimensional, therefore it is independent. EO comprises 10 items; 3 of which measure innovativeness; 3, proactiveness; 4, risk-taking. For the construction of this variable, contributions from Hernández-Perlines and Ibarra-Cisneros (2018) as well asTajeddini (2010) were considered. Total quality management. A variable considered independent regarding CSR and dependent regarding EO. It comprises 25 items; 6 of which measure strategic planning (SP); the other 6, customer focus (CF); 7, human resources management (HRM); and 6, process management (PM). In like manner, it receives a second-order variable treatment. The studies byAbbas (2020) andSik Cho and Jung (2014) were taken as references. Corporate social responsibility. A dependent variable that comprises 9 items; 3 of which measure the overall environment; 3, the social sphere; and the final 3, the economic one. For this variable,Abbas’ (2020) proposal was taken as a reference.
2.4. Instrument and procedure
The selection of these three factors that allow improving the hotels’ performance and competitiveness was according to the analysis of various studies that identified some of the factors under study. Nevertheless, due to the complexity of the research, time and resource constraints, and the extension of the survey, it was decided to choose only three factors that this specific sector largely tends to adopt in order to meet the clients’ demands.
Once EO, TQM, and CSR were selected, the survey was designed on the basis of various authors who had studied the selected variables. Later on, content and construct validity were performed to verify that the items in the survey actually measured the various dimensions of each variable. To do so, at first, the proposal was revised by 3 researchers highly experienced in the methodology and objects of study. Secondly, 3 hotel managers were interviewed separately so that they expressed the items and made suggestions to improve the survey. This allowed to modify some questions and also improve their wording. The end result was a 44-question survey divided into the three aforementioned variables to be answered on a 5-point Likert-type scale, where 1= fully agree and 5= fully disagree (see appendix 1).
Following, a pilot test of 25 email surveys was applied to three-star and + hotels in states such as California, Texas, Florida, and New York, which led to the modification of some items that were not correctly structured or did not offer sufficient information about the analyzed variables. Moreover, statistical tests were carried out to examine the validity of data, and suppress inconsistencies, atypical and duplicated data. In this way, the final version of the instrument was produced and the application of the survey to 155 hotels began (Figure 3).
The instrument was designed on Google and sent via email to the hotels. To do so, a database with names, locality, and contact data for each hotel was acquired. When it was not possible to have an answer, the hotels were phoned to ask for the managers’ support to respond to the survey. It is worth mentioning that the information gathered from the hotels comes from three years before the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey was aimed at hotel managers, as they have all the information and are aware of the strategies implemented in the business. On occasion, due to the unavailability of the manager, the survey was applied to an individual appointed by the manager. Or else, by the assistant or responsible for human resources, who are also well aware of the activities of the firm.
3. RESULTS
In the first place, a starting procedure was begun to assess the global model fit by means of SRMR (standardized root mean square residual) a criterion implemented for PLS (Hu and Bentler 1998). It was possible to find out the differences in the empirical correlation implicit model; that is to say, the distance between two matrices, in which a value of 0.10 for SRMR indicates a good fit (Henseler et al. 2016), the model reached a threshold of 0.0907. Later on, the values of the external loads reached with each construct were verified. In the case of TQM, all the weights accepted (λ) were located between 0.733 and 0.866; for CSR, the items oscillated between 0.720 and 0.865; finally, for EO, λ were between 0.723 and 0.843, being all superior to λ > 0.707 (Hair et al. 2017). Albeit, in this last construct an item had a weight of 0.626, in spite of this value, it was decided to preserve it so as to avoid affecting the model; this was carried out followingHulland’s (1999) criteria, which indicate that loads between >0.40 and <0.7 may be kept in the function of their impacts. The rest of the items that did not reach the 0.40 threshold were eliminated from the model; therefore, the final model comprised the analysis of 30 items.
In the case of the validity of latent variables via Cronbach’s alpha, composite reliability (ρc), and Dijkstra and Henseler’s ρA (Dijkstra and Henseler 2015), which led to ascertain the sum that corresponded to the model, these indicators were at the strict level being above 0.8 (Hair et al. 2017) in each of the cases, which indicates reliable construct scores (Table 1).
λ: weight or load; Cronbach’s alpha; ρC, ρA: Dijkstra–Henseler’s and Jöreskog
Fornel and Larcker criterion is the method to valorize discriminant validity by comparing the square root of AVE (average variance extracted) values with the correlation of latent variables. In this case, all the values were higher than their correlation with any other of the constructs (Fornell and Larcker (1981), while in the case of discriminant validity, HTMT (heterotrait-monotrait), as it is an estimation of what the actual correlation between two constructs would be, were they measured perfectly;Henseler et al. (2016) recommend values lower than 1, preferably under < 0.90 (Table 2).
| Discriminant validity F&L | Discriminant validity: HTMT | |||||||||||||||
| Construct | EO | TQM | CSR | Construct | EO | TQM | CSR | |||||||||
| EO | 0.5771 | EO | ||||||||||||||
| TQM | 0.4218 | 0.6560 | TQM | 0.6234 | ||||||||||||
| CSR | 0.3949 | 0.6131 | 0.6585 | CSR | 0.6751 | 0.8650 | ||||||||||
Source: own study
The next step was to apply bootstrapping to obtain inference statistics for all the model’s parameters for the purpose of reinforcing the nonparametric inferential technique, extracting a large number of new samples. For this case, a value of 4,999 subsamples was defined (Henseler and Fassott 2010) to measure the effect size; this is a measure of the magnitude of an effect independent from the sample size. f2 values over 0.02, 0.15 and 0.35 obtained are considered small, medium and large effects, respectively (Table 3). In this case, the proposed hypotheses, EO-TQM and TQM-CSR, had a large effect, as they were above 0.35; whereas, EO-CSR barely had a small effect with 0.0687.
| BETA | t Values | p Values | f2 | ACCEPTED /REJECTED | |
| EO - TQM | 0.6495 | 10.2213 | 0.0000 | 0.7295 | Accepted |
| EO - CSR | 0.2074 | 8.4749 | 0.0000 | 0.0687 | Accepted |
| TQM - CSR | 0.6483 | 10.6388 | 0.0000 | 0.6712 | Accepted |
Likewise, path values were positive and superior to 0.2 (Hayes 2009). As well, the direct and positive effects and their respective t and p values are observable, both within the critical values established in the single-tailed test (Hair 2019). In the relations between EO-TQM, EO-CSR and TQM-CSR, the beta values were positive and significant; that is to say, hypotheses H1, H2 and H3 were accepted (Figure 4).
Finally, the model showed R2 values of 0.4218 and 0.6379 for latent constructs; this way, the larger R2, better predictive capability being over the minimal value of 0.10, defined byFalk and Miller (1992), and whichChin et al. (2003) define as substantial, moderate and week (0.67, 0.33 and 0.10, respectively); while forHair et al. (2017) these values are still 0.75, 0.50 and 0.25, respectively. The values obtained in this study displayed a moderate predictive power of R2 for TQM and CSR.
4. DISCUSSION
The obtained results indicate that the three variables are correlated, this implies verifying the theoretical and empirical argumentations regarding each of the three analyzed relationships. The positive association between entrepreneurial orientation and total quality management, which corresponds to the first hypothesis, has high correlation values (β=0.649). This agrees with evidence byAl-Dhaafri and Al-Swidi (2016);Daniel and Musa (2020) andWales et al. (2019), which is affirmed as a culture that fosters innovativeness, proactiveness, risk-taking with the central objective of meeting the customers’ demands incentivizes the implementation of TQM processes. It also concurs withSahoo and Yadav (2017), even though they use five EO dimensions and the other five for TQM, the results are similar. Experience shows that a strategy based on EO is a great resource that hotels use so that TQM provides the expected results, which are quality improvement, customer satisfaction, and firm performance. Therefore, TQM is more comprehensively developed with the interest of not only meeting quality standards, which are compulsory for the sector but satisfying the clients’ needs as well. Since entrepreneurial orientation has looked at the future as a characteristic, it allows the adoption of TQM to be carried out with the most seriousness and responsibility, suppressing errors and deficiencies that might produce the malfunctioning of the strategies set up in the sector. Moreover, it was also found that entrepreneurial orientation positively influences the development of corporate social responsibility actions (H2), though with a lesser impact (β=0.207). This concurs with findings byAdomako and Nguyen (2020) andIqbal and Malik (2019). Likewise, this agrees with a recent study byValdez-Juárez et al. (2021) on the trade and service sector –including hotels–, in which a strong correlation between EO and CSR was found. Hotels with an entrepreneurial profile have a better disposition to adopt social responsibility measures (Zhuang et al. 2020) because they are aware of the benefits it produces for customers and the hotels themselves. However, the degree of intensity of the relationship between EO and CSR is low, which suggests that it is not fully implemented or not as deeply as needed. This situation is because many of the hotels do not carry out all the CSR measures –the descriptive data offered a lower level of positive responses for various items of this variable– either because they do not have all the resources or time to carry them out in full.
In this sense, it is important that EO analyzes and assesses, or even finds a way to advance the carrying out of CSR in the function of the firms’ behavior. This is because environmental variables have forced hotels to adjust or drastically change the way CSR is realized. Presently, the impact the environment has on society's behavior is well known, this makes hotels more insistent on this aspect of CSR. Though, results do not show that an EO strategy influences at a sufficiently important level to change the traditional way in which CSR is implemented.
In the end, it was verified that total quality management positively influences the development of corporate social responsibility actions (H3). This relationship (β=0.649) was also strong, similar to H1. The results add to other author’s findings (Abbas 2020;Ghobadian et al. 2007;Kanji and Chopra 2010;Makhdoom and Anjum 2016), the processes, policies, values, and organizational culture developed in hotels after TQM make it easy for CSR to be implemented. The bonds that join these philosophies are significant, which makes it expectable that hotels have no difficulties in adopting CSR. This is because of the ethical component they share (Ghobadian et al. 2007); moreover, both intend to obtain a sustainable competitive advantage (Benavides-Velasco et al. 2014). This leads to the adoption of CSR as an additional strategy to meet the clients' and stakeholders’ demands. On the one side, they commit to quality practices that positively impact the environment and community; on the other, they follow national and international guidelines and meet requirements related to the environment. In this way, to the extent that hotels adequately set up TQM, they might transfer the experience, know-how and common objectives to develop CSR practices, which will positively impact the stakeholders' expectations (Benavides-Velasco et al. 2014). Hence, these philosophies intertwine to strengthen the hotels’ competitiveness. Nevertheless, firms must be aware that resources that may be destined for the implementation of CSR actions are limited; hence, they have to prioritize which to use and what interest groups to benefit from in the first place (Wang and Pala 2021).
Adding to the above, it is important to underscore that the link between these three variables enables the hotel sector to have social orientation. It is particularly important here to underscore the role of social entrepreneurship (Ho and Yoon 2022;Shahid and Alarifi 2021), in which the customer helps generate value by using the socially responsible services offered by the hotel sector, which are the result of certified quality processes and where there is synchrony between economic interest and social benefit.
Unlike the aforementioned studies that support the hypotheses of EO-TQM, EO-CSR, and TQM-CSR relationships shown in this work, we compared this with the work byJalilvand et al. (2018), who carried out an analysis involving the three variables in question, focused as well on the hotel sector, though in this case in Iran. Such a study reported the CB-SEM method in 268 hotels, though they disaggregated TQM in five dimensions and carried out the first-order analysis for TQM on CSR. Then, CSR was linked to EO, where all the results were positive. Unlike the proposal byJalilvand et al. (2018), in this document EO was put forward as the independent variable in place of TQM; moreover, TQM relates to CSR, so not only does the order of analysis change, but every variable is related. Consequently, this document provides a new way to understand the planning of the three variables at the moment of being implemented in the hotel sector. This is a reason for the lack of previous studies that analyze in this way the variables involved.
5. CONCLUSIONS
The importance of these three variables understudy for the hotel sector is undeniable. All share three aspects in common, the satisfaction of the needs of everyone involved, more efficient processes due to quality increase, and performance improvements. Even if the parallel use of EO, TQM, and CSR by the hotels is feasible and positive, if senior management is not able to efficiently carry out the systematic and reasoned implementation of each, the result would not be as advantageous. According to the approach of dynamic capabilities, the adoption of strategies entails an important expense of economic resources, time, and efforts and distracts the firms from their core objectives. In this way, strategic planning is important to define if these variables are progressively implemented or else, simultaneously. Furthermore, the evidence shown allows bridging the gap between theory and practice. Not only do the results enable verifying, but mainly deepening into the study of the way resources in a firm, applied to interest groups, generate links that help improve the firm’s competitiveness. Moreover, the most impactful combinations in the hotel sector are displayed, in this way, managers can make decisions based on data. Finally, what is important is that hotels become aware of the benefits entailed by thoroughl3-y implementing EO, TQM, and CSR and developing a culture around them; this way, regardless of the existing management in each hotel, these will be carried out.
Originality and theoretical implication
The article stands out because it simultaneously relates three relevant variables for the hotel sector, which are related to one another. Such variables are applied in varying intensities, this way, the results allow visualizing the way each of them takes place. Likewise, it contributes to enhancing empirical evidence and verifying the various theoretical frameworks thus far developed. The results suggest that is necessary to develop a theoretical framework in which these three variables coexist. It is proposed to devise a process, in which, firstly entrepreneurial orientation is set up, then total quality management and these two will impact corporate social responsibility. Moreover, the context of firms and countries should be studied. In the case of the hotel sector, the context related to the degree of contribution from tourism to the economy, laws, and standards applied in the countries may be factors to study in order to find out if the context has a different effect between countries and sectors.
Practical and managerial implication
Hotels must set up three variables gradually stage by stage; plus, the goals of hotels and society shall be synchronized for these measures to be effective. Entrepreneurial orientation must lead to an excellent total quality adoption and this, for its part, to better social responsibility practices. However, the latter should be based neither on economic reasons nor on employee criteria, otherwise, the impact will be limited. Therefore, the hotel sector must adopt social responsibility, if it wants to be congruent with what clients are offered. Nevertheless, it should be carried out after implementing TQM, which is the strategy that supports the most a better CSR adoption.
The participation of managers and their staff is essential to implement the strategies analyzed and accomplish the hotels’ competitiveness. To do so, managements have to develop a methodology that allows for measuring and qualifying each of the processes carried out in the firm. The result will enable selecting the processes that contribute the most to setting up EO, TQM, or CSR. In this way, resources that may be channeled to other areas are saved. On the other side, it is relevant that managers foster a culture based on quality, innovation, and the satisfaction of the needs of all the individuals involved. On the contrary, the adoption of the aforementioned measures will only be carried out to meet the standards and certifications, though not to accomplish an actual change of culture, oriented to the various stakeholders.
The social implication of the obtained results will allow hotels, to the extent they set up total quality management and corporate social responsibility measures following a strategy based on entrepreneurial orientation, to attain greater satisfaction of customers, employees, shareholders, and society at large. Therefore, hotels will have a better disposition to contribute to environmental sustainability, benefitting all of the foregoing actors.
Limitations and future research
The main limitation of the study was the difficulty to get in touch with the hotels as many of them were closed owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, which produced a low response rate. As future research lines, the following are proposed: analyze quality in the hotel sector from the standpoint of quality 4.0, where not only the use of information technologies shall be measured, but also administration, human aspects, customers, and of course, the products and services offered. It is considered important to approach this aspect due to the importance I4.0 has in society and industry, as stated byBalouei Jamkhaneh et al. (2022). Another future research line, but now methodologic, would be to select a group of hotels and apply Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA), as well as Quality Function Deployment (QFD) –this last has been already utilized in the hotel sector, however, scarcely. These are implemented in other industries such as automotive, aerospace, and medical. The goal is to identify processes that do not produce value for the client, do not meet needs, and therefore, waste valuable resources. In this way, alternatives to maximize resources may be generated, which at once, will help the implemented EO, TQM, and CRS strategies to offer better results. Finally, it is proposed to develop another study where the TQM variable functions as a mediator between EO and CSR. This aims to analyze whether the relationship between EO and CSR is conditioned by the implementation of practices that improve the quality of all processes, strategies, and policies that aim to improve the performance and competitiveness of an organization.