Aristotelian ethical values within a tourism/hospitality industry context

Ethical beliefs arc generally held to be among the more potent moderators of human behaviour. Those ethical precepts brought to the workplace by potential employees may have a profound influence, not only upon the outcome of many staff-visitor interactions, but also upon the overall level of success enjoyed by the organization, vet relatively little research has been undertaken in regard to the variety and intensity of ethical precepts as held by potential tourism/hospitality industry employees. Whilst an increasing number of people in the tourism/hospitality industry are now aware of the importance of a clear and articulated ethical framework within which to conduct their operations, relatively little knowledge is currently available with respect to the types of and commitment levels to fundamental ethical precepts that aspirant employees are likely to bring to the industry. Furthermore, it is suggested that such ethical beliefs arc highly likely to manifest themselves within the context of the service encounter, and therefore within the evaluative processes of visitors. This study has sought to examine ideal ethical beliefs together with employment context preferences and also perceived visitor, staff and management ethical expectations among a sample of secondary college students in a major Australian tourist destination, many of whom would likely later seek post-secondary college education or immediate employment within the tourism/hospitality industry. It has been found that ethical ideals generally exceeded those perceived to be held by current tourism/hospitality industry staff and also tourism industry management; respondent ideals were perceived to be similar to those of visitors, except in regard to precepts such as helpfulness and frankness. Those less likely to perceive a divergence between ideal and actual staff friendliness were the ones more likely to favour tourism/hospitality/retail and also tourism/transport employment contexts. Finally, those graduands more likely to perceive themselves as holding ethical beliefs significantly different from visitors in regard to frankness were the ones more likely to deem tourism/hospitality industry employment contexts as undesirable. Implications of these various findings are addressed.