Factors enhancing employee customer-oriented behavior and organizational commitment in the Lithuanian upscale hotel industry

Lithuanian hotels face two major problems: necessity to improve service quality and high employee turnover. Therefore customer-orientated employee behavior and organisational commitment are crucial factors in gaining and sustaining competitive advantage. The aim of the paper is to study factors that influence customer-oriented behavior and organisational commitment and their interrelationship in Lithuanian upscale hotels. Research results showed a strong positive relationship between psychological empowerment and customer-oriented behavior, and psychological empowerment and affective commitment. Organisational empowerment was found to be strongly related to affective commitment. Therefore development of both organisational and psychological empowerment would lead to increase of organisational commitment and customer-oriented behavior.