2023

Häkkinen, Reija A.; Kansikas, Juha

In tourism services, the value creation for the consumer is not just transaction- focused transfer of financial capital and services and products sold, but also transactional experience: socially constructed interaction between tourism employees and customers. The challenge in tourism services is that consumers have versatile expectations, which creates demand for unique value-creation in each transaction. Thus, employees often need to respond to customer expectations without prior detailed planning. This paper aims to increase understanding on how entrepreneurial endeavors, aimed towards high performance and good service for customers, are initiated by employees. This study investigates theoretically enabling and preventing idea-generation, behavior, and actions in customer service through the lens of effectuation logics. Focus groups were conducted with the aim to understand the perspectives and reasoning of the participants also empirically. The purpose was to analyze the research data at two levels: among the groups and between the groups. Four focus group discussions were held for three hierarchy groups: the management team, middle-managers, and employees, consisting of six to eight members. Practically, this study creates perspectives on how employee effectuation can be a way to model entrepreneurialism in a SME, as a positive and enabling asset in value-creative mechanisms. The results increase understanding of employee effectuation, suggesting that only a positive attitude of management is not enough in fostering and supporting entrepreneurial and service-related behaviors among employees. A more concrete HR support and acknowledgement of skills and capabilities of employees is needed, in order for the organization to benefit from the entrepreneurial and service-related behaviors. This study also enlightens the process of employee effectuation. Thus, employee effectuation can be cultivated in entrepreneurial organization culture in which employees can use their full potential and become independent entrepreneurial actors, and role models for new employees.