Two social exchanges and service personnel’s internal service behavioural intention at international tourism hotels

Hospitality is a service industry in which team cooperation and assistance among the co-workers is necessary. Scholars have found that salary or benefits by themselves are not sufficient to motivate employees’ internal service intention and attitude. The norm of reciprocity in which the individuals’ intention results in active behaviour that is driven by the desire to obtain rewards has rarely been applied in the field of hotel internal service. In this study, we used the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) to investigate the effects of leader-member exchange (LMX) and co-worker exchange on internal service behavioural intention and its causes, that is, attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control. In this study, we chose frontline professional service personnel from 30 international tourist hotels in Taiwan as research subjects and collected 684 valid questionnaires for statistical analysis. The results showed that LMX and co-worker exchange significantly affected the internal service behavioural intention and were significantly correlated with the causes of internal service behaviour intention, that is, attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control. The results of this study should provide practical and theoretical assistance guidance for the rapidly growing domestic hospitality industry, in terms of increasing service competitiveness and facilitating the strategic planning of human resource management.