Organizational Cultures Determine Employee Innovation in Response to Seasonality: Regulatory Processes of Openness and Resistance

The existing literature on tourism seasonality focuses on seasonality’s cause and impact but pays little attention to understand employees’ reactions to off-season markets. Drawing from approach-avoidance and regulatory focus theories, we examine the influence of three types of organizational cultures on employee innovative behavior. We also propose two regulatory processes that mediate those relationships: employee openness and resistance to change. Using multisource data from hotel employees and managers, our results indicate that employee openness positively mediates innovative and collaborative cultures’ relationships on employee innovation. In contrast, it negatively mediates the relationship between traditional culture and innovative behavior. On the other hand, employee resistance to change positively mediates the association between traditional culture and employee innovation, whereas it negatively mediates the relationships between innovative and collaborative cultures on employee innovation. We provide managerial implications and directions for future research in response to seasonality.