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1. Introduction
In the hospitality and tourism environment, understanding employee personality can not only enhance the efficiency of human resources management policies and practices but also can ensure the provision of high-quality service to customers (Barrick and Mount, 1991; Bildat, 2013). To sustain customer satisfaction and business success, hospitality organizations heavily rely on the interpersonal interactions between employees, their peers and customers (Kim et al., 2015). While the debate around the influence of individual differences and organizational interventions has been ongoing, many studies have captured the significant consequences of employee personality in the workplace (Bellou et al., 2018; Grobelna, 2019). Particularly, the big five factors of personality (BFF) have been widely used as a theoretical framework (Leung and Law, 2010). At the organizational level, employee personality has been found to be a self-directing factor that influences hiring decisions, job performance management and other organizational interventions to enhance employee positive behaviors and the service experiences of customers (Hurtz and Donovan, 2000). Employees with a particular personality trait could be the most suitable people to perform a job or service (Major et al., 2006). Studies on hospitality employees have found the relationship between specific personalities and job requirements that provided the best fit (Presenza et al., 2020; Tews et al., 2009). However, the studies’ results were inconsistent with respect to the influence of each personality dimension and its effect on employee outcomes. These differences could cause confusion for both researchers and practitioners trying to apply what is known about employee personality in future research and practice.
Additionally, studies in management have not only investigated the influence of a single dimension of personality but also the effects of combinations of various traits within a personality. Because of this combined effect approach, the concept of proactive personality (PP) has recently been attracting much attention from researchers examining the role of employee personality in the hospitality context. Because of the conceptual overlap of PP with four of the dimensions of BFF (conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism and openness; Fuller and Marler, 2009; Spitzmuller et al., 2015), it is necessary to acknowledge PP in the model of BFF as a combined trait dimension of personality. Studies found that the PP of an employee played a significant role...