Employee Satisfaction, Talent Management Practices and Sustainable Competitive Advantage in the Northern Cyprus Hotel Industry

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors.

This paper is very well written and proven statistically.

Yet, there are several concerns I'd like to discuss with You.

First, and main problem lays in the talent definition.

You have referred to many approaches but did not consider to implement any....

[com. f.e.

Andrzej Janowski, Talent Management in Life Insurance Industry: Evidence for Central Europe, ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND MANAGEMENT 2017, Volume XVIII | Issue 1 | Part 1 | pp. 123–137. University of Social Sciences Publishing House | ISSN 2543-8190].

or: http://repozytorium.utp.edu.pl/Content/429/Janowski_2011_human_performance.pdf

I strongly suggest to "look back" at the history and origins.

Further. 

Line 16. "The findings revealed that talent development practices had no effect on the hotels(...)"

Is the talent (perceived as a talented person, I suppose) personality or competency based? As You consider it as impossible to develop, the choice of Yours is personality "version". So, the talent is innate...

In this matter, the talent management practices should be narrowed to recruitment processes. As P. Costa and R.R. McCrae claim (there are many publications: https://scholar.google.pl/citations?hl=pl&user=UTRJOukAAAAJ), there is no possibility to change personality traits over 30-th year of human life. Therefore, the rest of Your paper is pointless

The research sample.

Were the participants of the study talents or not?

If yes, what was the criterion to consider an individual as talented?

If not, what was the purpose to question non-talented ones if they will never be talents? (As You have assumed in line 16).

 

 

 

 

Author Response

Please see the attached document. Thank you very much.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

sustainability-1720837-peer-review-v1

 

The subject of the peer-reviewed research is employee satisfaction, talent management practices and sustainable competitive advantages in the Northern Cyprus hotel industry.
The paper covers the results of the research 368 employees from 14 five-star hotels in North Cyprus. “The findings revealed that talent development practices had no effect on the hotels’ sustainable competitive advantages (SCA), whereas talent practices (identify, engage, manage performance and retain) had a significant and beneficial influence on the hotels’ SCA” (line numbers: 16-18). The authors developed the talent management practice model which can help the hotel business gain a sustainable competitive edge. Findings are relevant to academic studies because they provide a conceptual model for hotel personnel management methods. The findings can be used as guidelines for building more appealing workplaces for employees and encouraging them to commit to sustainable service in the hotel business.

 

Originality/Novelty

The way in which knowledge was presented in reviewed paper, was new and clever. It means, that the research problem is original and well defined in conditions high mobility and fluctuation of employees, strong competition in the hotel services market and uncertainty resulting from, inter alia, from the threat of the cronavirus pandemic. Therefore, results provide an advance in current knowledge.

 

Significance

As a result of the research, interesting observations were made and conclusions were drawn. Talent development practices had no effect on SCA because of employees’ negative perceptions of the practise. Talent practices (identify, engage, manage performance and retain) were found to have a significant and favourable effect on hotels’ SCA. These practices improved employees’ skills, knowledge and competences, allowing them to function more efficiently and effectively while reducing turnover. At the same time, their companies increased their profitability, sales and market share, thus achieving superior performance and SCA. Employee satisfaction did not appear to be a mediating factor in the relationship between talent management methods and SCA.

The value and significance of the knowledge presented in the paper and the author’s research experience are large. In the most, the work is methodically and substantively correct. All explanations are understandable and consistent.

 

Quality of Presentation

The summary and introduction of the text lacks a clearly formulated research goal. It would be beneficial to extend the description of the methods in line 13 to the following: in this research work, statistical data analysis software was used: Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), as well as the Mplus statistical modeling program and the Bootstrapping statistical method, for assigning measures of accuracy to sample estimates.

The structure of the research paper is complete. It covers and describes issues such as:

• Introduction (explains the concepts of talent management, employee satisfaction and competitive advantage. The subject and meaning of the research were correctly described. It would be preferable to use the phrase “the purpose of research is ...”),
• Literature Review and Hypothesis Development:
• Identification of talent, employee satisfaction and SCA,
• Employee satisfaction, talent development and SCA,
• Employee satisfaction, talent engagement and SCA,
• Employee satisfaction, performance management and SCA,
• Employee satisfaction, talent retention and SCA,
• Methodology:
• Pre-testing and Pilot Study (3.1.),
• Data collection (3.2.)
• Measures (correct: 3.3. instead of 3.2.),
• Analytical strategy (correct: 3.4. instead of 3.3.),
• Results:
• The Measurement model,
• Correlations and descriptive statistics,
• The Structural model,
• Discussion and Conclusions:
• Theoretical implications,
• Practical implications,
• Limitations and future research.
• Appendix A (since there is only one attachment, it does not need to be marked as “A”. In The word “Constructs” should appear on one line instead of two lines, in the header of table A1).

Above, in the description of the research paper structure, there are recommendations (in brackets) regarding the improvement of minor formal shortcomings.

The following hypotheses were formulated:

• Identifying talent positively influences SCA,
• Developing talent positively influences SCA,
• Talent engagement positively influences SCA,
• The influence of performance management on SCA is positive,
• Retention talent positively influences SCA,
•  
• Employee satisfaction mediates the link between talent development and SCA,
• Employee satisfaction mediates the link between talent engagement and SCA,
• Employee satisfaction operates as a mediating factor in the relationship between performance management and SCA,
• Employee satisfaction plays a mediating role in the relationship between identifying talent and SCA; H10. Employee satisfaction plays a mediating role in the relationship between talent retention and SCA.

The missing H6 hypothesis should be completed – the likely formula for hypothesis H6 is: H6. Employee satisfaction plays a mediating role in the relationship between identifying talent and SCA (line numbers: 119-120).

Only one H10 hypothesis should be used instead of two hypotheses H10 – the likely formula for hypothesis H10 is: Employee satisfaction plays a mediating role in the relationship between talent retention and SCA (line numbers: 216-217 – H10 is used correctly at this point in the text).

In line 218 is: “Figure 1. illustrates the hypotheses in a research model.” and should be “Figure 1. Illustration of hypotheses in a research model.”.

Apart from the shortcomings indicated, the empirical part of the reviewed paper was written in an appropriate way. The data and analyses were presented appropriately. 109 literature items have been correctly used to prepare the scientific paper.

 

Scientific Soundness

The study was correctly designed and technically sound. The analyses were performed with the highest technical standards. The data was robust enough to draw the conclusions. The methods were described with sufficient details to allow another researcher to reproduce the results. One should only beware of using only abbreviations of the names of statistical methods and software where they are first described (see section of the review: Quality of Presentation).

The model developed by the authors of the talent management practice may be the basis for further research on talent management and conceptual support for managers in the hospitality industry.

 

Interest to the Readers

The research results and conclusions may be of interest to readers of the Sustainability magazine, especially managers from the hospitality industry and scientists, who are interested in the concept of talent management.

 

Overall Merit

Work provides an advance towards the current knowledge and author has addressed an important long-standing question with smart experiments.

 

English Level

The English language is appropriate and understandable.

Author Response

Please see the attached document. Thank you very much.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

It is needed to appreciate the authors with their very interesting and well-written paper. Congrats!

In the effort to slightly improve the existing version of the paper, only a few recommendations can be formulated:

- Aims of the paper, methods and procedures intended to be used in the paper, and premises of the paper should be shortly presented at the end of the section of Introduction.

- Small formal imperfections should be excluded, i.e., double or missing spaces between words or sentences.

- Perhaps, it should be better to transform the month income into USD.

- There are incorrect presentations of cited sources at lines 145, 155, 169, 174, 197 and many others.

Good luck!

Author Response

Thank you very much for your comments. Please see the attached file for our reply.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors.

Thank You for Your time and attempts to improve "the lost cause".

As You have written in point 7, You had to choose the trait inventory questionnaire  instead of implemented one or competency based questionnaire (competency approach). You have chosen neither of them.

Point 8 - I do not think there is scientific justification for an assumption that  everybody can be a talent.

Ergo, You paper is skewed in that part.

 Kind Regards

Author Response

Thank you very much for your comments. Please see the attached file for our reply.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf