Mining the moderating role of organizational tenure in the association between PsyCap and educational qualifications among tourism and hospitality workers

• Published date: 01 February 2022
• Author: Donald Douglas Atsa'am,Ersin Kuset Bodur
• Date: 01 February 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2272

ACADEMIC PAPER

Mining the moderating role of organizational tenure in the

association between PsyCap and educational qualifications

among tourism and hospitality workers

Donald Douglas Atsa'am

1,2

| Ersin Kuset Bodur

3

1

Department of Computer Science and

Informatics, Faculty of Natural and Agricultural

Sciences, University of the Free State,

Qwaqwa, South Africa

2

Department of Mathematics, Statistics, and

Computer Science, University of Agriculture,

Makurdi, Nigeria

3

Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Arts

and Sciences, Eastern Mediterranean

University, Famagusta, via Mersin 10, Turkey

Correspondence

Donald Douglas Atsa'am, Department of

Computer Science and Informatics, Faculty of

Natural and Agricultural Sciences, University

of the Free State, Qwaqwa, South Africa.

Email: donatsaam@alumni.emu.edu.tr

This research mined the moderating role of organizational tenure (OrgTenure) in the

association between psychological capital (PsyCap) and educational qualifications

among tourism and hospitality employees. Previous research reported a crude odds

ratio (OR) of 2.6 to represent the association between PsyCap and educational quali-

fications among a sample of 329 hospitality workers. Using the same experimental

dataset, this study obtained stratum-specific OR representing the association as 2.2

and 7.5 for shorter and longer tenure, respectively; establishing OrgTenure as an

effect modifier. This implies that longer OrgTenure strengthens the association

between PsyCap and educational qualifications more than shorter OrgTenure. This

finding means that the tourism and hospitality industry should develop strategies

aimed at retaining well-educated and long-tenured workers in the service of the

industry.

1|INTRODUCTION

This research is concerned about mining new knowledge on whether

the duration of service of employees within the tourism and hospital-

ity industry has an impact on the strength of association between

their psychological capital (PsyCap) and educational qualifications.

Atsa'am and Bodur (2020, p. 1076) established that tourism and hos-

pitality employees with higher educational qualifications are 2.6 times

more likely to be seen as having positive PsyCap than those with

lower qualifications. In order to facilitate the investigation, they col-

lected PsyCap, educational qualifications, and other demographic data

on a sample of 329 workers in the tourism and hospitality industry in

Nigeria. The PsyCap of the participants was dichotomized as positive

PsyCap or negative PsyCap, depending on the total score returned in

the self-rated PsyCap questionnaire. Equally, the educational qualifi-

cations (Edu) of the employees were dichotomized as higher Edu

(Bachelor's and above) or lower Edu (below Bachelor's). Using the

binary PsyCap and binary Edu as dependent and independent vari-

ables, respectively, the study deployed the odds ratio to evaluate

strength of the association. It was concluded that PsyCap is positively

associated with higher educational qualifications among hospitality

employees.

In this study, effect analysis is conducted to ascertain if organiza-

tional tenure (length of service of an employee within an organization)

is capable of altering the association between PsyCap and educational

qualifications among workers. This research is motivated by an

attempt to connect the findings of Atsa'am and Bodur (2020) with

that of Luthans and Youssef (2004) on the one hand, and Peterson,

Luthans, Avolio, Walumbwa, and Zhang (2011) on the other hand.

Luthans and Youssef (2004, p. 15) reported that the four components

of PsyCap: self-efficacy, hope, optimism, and resilience can be posi-

tively improved with time. Self-efficacy of an employee can be

improved over time through coaching, guided mastery experiences,

and on-the-job training. A worker's hope keeps improving as time

goes on if they are given a sense of belonging in their work place by

the way of continuous delegation of responsibility and empowerment.

According to Luthans and Youssef (2004, p. 18), an employee's opti-

mism keeps developing over time through learning from achieved suc-

cesses and building on mastery experiences. Resilience, the fourth

component of PsyCap, develops over time through appropriate orga-

nizational strategies which could be asset-focused, risk-focused, or

process-focused. In another study, Peterson et al. (2011) researched

on whether PsyCap has the capacity to develop over time. The study,

conducted on a sample of 179 employees in the retail advisory

Received: 17 December 2019 Revised: 25 April 2020 Accepted: 8 July 2020

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2272

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https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2272