Effects of disposition on hospitality employee job satisfaction and commitment

Purpose The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship of job attitudes to personality traits in a hospitality setting. Design/methodology/approach The author uses a questionnaire at two hotel chains in the western US to ascertain the variables. Employees that are surveyed are all non‐management personnel. Findings The author finds that job attitudes, specifically, organizational commitment and job satisfaction are significantly related to the personality traits, the big five and locus of control. Research limitations/implications The number of hotel employees studied is 159. A larger sample size could increase the validity of the findings. Practical implications This paper encourages hotel management to consider the use of personality tests in the selection of hotel employees as the results suggest that certain traits are related to an employee's job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Originality/value The paper is original in the sense that prior work has mainly focused on the employee job attitude in relation to how the employee perceives the workplace. There have been limited investigations into the relationship between personality and job attitudes. This paper suggests that dispositions may play a role in the attitude of the employee.