Investigation of the Influence of Knowledge Sharing on Servi

Abstract

With the advent of the knowledge economy era, the hotel to promote service innovation has the increasing emphasis on knowledge sharing. This study, taking the boutique hotels in Shanghai for example, is to study the impact of knowledge sharing on service innovation, and hopes to make some suggestions on knowledge sharing management for the hotels to achieve service innovation.

Firstly, on the basis of reviewed relevant research, this study determines the measurement variables of hotel employee knowledge sharing motivation, http://www.ukassignment.org/lxslw/ behavior, and hotel services innovation performance, by the use of tests and factor analysis, it obtains the dimensions of the hotel employee knowledge sharing motivation and service innovation. Analysis found that: the motivation of the hotel employees' knowledge sharing includes altruism, reciprocity and reputation, and the pursuit of interests of the three dimensions; service innovation includes innovation environment, employee innovation awareness, and employee innovation performance of the three dimensions.

Next, this study analyzes the formation mechanism of the hotel knowledge sharing impact on the service innovation, and proposes the research hypotheses, builds a conceptual model, and then a formal investigation is carried out. By the use of the AMOS structural equation modeling analysis, conceptual model and test hypotheses; by the use of cluster analysis and variance analysis, it divides the types of employees with different knowledge-sharing behavior, and the characteristics of the demographic and social attributes of different types of employees, knowledge sharing motivation, service innovation differences are compared. It has been found that the motivation of altruism and pursuit http://www.ukassignment.org/lxslw/ of interests has a positive impact on knowledge sharing behavior, altruism has stronger influence, and the pursuit of interests has weak influence; knowledge sharing behavior has a strong positive impact on the innovation environment, employee innovation awareness, and employee innovation performance, in which the employee innovation awareness has the strongest influence, followed by the impact on employee innovative behavior, and the impact of innovation environment is the weakest; based on the knowledge sharing behavior, the hotel employee can be divided into positive sharing employees, neutral sharing employees, and passive sharing employees.

Finally, according to the conclusions, this study points out the limitation and research prospects of this study.

Table of Contents
Acknowledgement 2
Declaration 3
Abstract 4
Table of Contents 6
Chapter 1 Introduction 9
1.1 Research background 9
1.2 Research aim & objectives 12
1.3 Framework of this dissertation 12
Chapter 2 Literature Review 13
2.1 Boutique hotel 13
2.1.1 Definition of boutique hotel 13
2.1.2 Status of boutique hotel in China and Shanghai 14
2.1.3 Well-known boutique hotels in Shanghai 16
2.2 Knowledge management 18
2.2.1 Definition of tacit knowledge 18
2.2.2 Features of tacit knowledge 19
2.3 Knowledge sharing 19
2.3.1 Definition and meaning of knowledge sharing 19
2.3.2 Influencing factors of knowledge sharing 21
2.3.3 Research results of knowledge sharing 23
2.3.4 Tacit knowledge sharing 24
2.4 Service innovation 24
2.4.1 Definition of service innovation 25
2.4.2 Service innovation process 26
2.4.3 Service innovation model 27
2.4.4 Service innovation status 28
2.4.5 Influencing factors of service innovation 29
2.4.6 Service innovation measurement 30
2.5 Relationship between knowledge sharing and service innovation 31
2.6 Summary of literature review 33
Chapter 3 Issues for Investigation 34
3.1 Purpose statement 34
3.2 Problem statement 34
3.3 Research objectives 34
Chapter 4 Research Methodology 36
4.1 Research strategy 36
4.2 Research methods 37
4.3 Data collection 39
4.3.1 Secondary research 39
4.3.2 Primary research 39
4.4 Questionnaire design 40
4.4.1 Questionnaire compilation 40
4.4.2 Selection of study variables 41
4.5 Sample selection and survey implementation 45
4.6 Ethical issues 46
4.7 Research limitations 46
Chapter 5 Findings 48
5.1 Findings 48
5.1.1 Findings from interviews 48
5.1.2 Findings from questionnaires 48
5.2 Data analysis process 52
Chapter 6 Analysis and Discussion 54
6.1 Measurement data analysis 54
6.1.1 Methods of data analysis 54
6.2 Research hypotheses and conceptual model 59
6.2.1 Hypothesis of knowledge sharing motivation on the behavioral effects 59
6.2.2 Hypothesis of knowledge sharing behavior on the service innovation 60
6.2.3 Construction of the conceptual model 61
6.3 Reliability analysis of data 61
6.3.1 Reliability test 61
6.4 Model validation and hypothesis testing 62
6.4.1 Overall framework of structural equation modeling analysis 62
6.4.2 Construct validity based on confirmatory factor analysis 65
6.4.3 Path model analysis of knowledge sharing on service innovation 69
Chapter 7 Conclusions and Recommendations 73
7.1 Main conclusions 73
7.2 Limitations of this study 74
7.3 Recommendations 75
References 77
Appendix 87
Part I: Basic information 87
Part II: Interview 89
Part III: Questionnaire 91

knowledge sharing.

Boutique hotel development can be traced back to the 1980s. In 1981, actor, internationally renowned designer Anouska Hempel in London South Kensington Miss founded highly personalized Blakes Hotel (Van Hartesvelt, 2006). In order to highlight specific populations of taste, she created a more intimate hotel room, and she controlled the size of the hotel in 5l rooms, and for the first time introduced the boutique hotel concept; the same year, Bill Kimpton in the United States of Los Angeles Union Square launched his first boutique hotel design-Bedford hotel, which was also the first to lead the development of American boutique hotel trend; Subsequently, in 1984, the famous founder of developer Ian Sehrager and his partner Steve Rubll launched the boutique hotel by the French designer Andree Putnam in Madison Avenue New York in the United States, the hotel's indoor and outdoor with unique personality design, more thoughtful and more personal service is considered as home away from home, so it is the most beautiful hotel in New York praised by "Vanity Fair" magazine, which has led the boutique hotel trend in New York City (Tucker, 2010). These few are the early representatives of boutique hotel. And since then, Ian Schrager continued to launch the boutique hotels, and almost every family is different, which also laid the standard for the current boutique hotel: that is no standard. Ian Schrager therefore is considered to be the originator of the boutique hotel (McNeill, 2008). Living boutique hotel has gradually become a fashionable way of life, and becomes popular accommodation trend around the world.

As the first one of the industries with international standards, China's hotel industry since the reform and opening up develops rapidly. The growing number of hotels increased competition in the industry, customer demand also will be more attention towards the quality of service, the direction of the pursuit of experience, which all contributed to the hotel industry that must continue to improve service quality and innovative service offerings.

Service innovation is an important operation and management activity of hotel industry (Gallouj & Weinstein, 1997). It can improve hotel service quality, improve service efficiency, and improve customer experience value. However, as China's hotel industry’s disorder competition, not high staff quality, the lack of a unique corporate culture, errors in marketing, etc., the hotel's service innovation there are many problems, they are more conservative treatment of innovative ideas, lack of innovation, and has lower success rate of innovation, innovation’s overall quality is low and these issues need effective means of settlement. The previous hotel services innovative research are more than from the service skills aspects, focusing on the implementation level, and are less research from the influence factors that promote the service level and innovation. In recent years, studies have found that knowledge is the factor with the deep impact of service innovation.

As we all know, knowledge can affect aspects of human life, and the important role of knowledge sharing on service innovation also becomes the modern service focus. In the highly competitive hotel industry, service innovation has become an important means to win customers, and knowledge sharing is becoming the hotel's push to service innovation (Victorino et al., 2005). However, the research results in relationship between knowledge management and service innovation are not extensive, use of hotel services to stimulate innovation and knowledge-sharing capabilities to enhance the aspects of the practice is rare, which cannot meet the needs of China's hotel industry. It is urgent call to integrate theory with practical reality research.#p#分页标题#e#

Overall, the development of boutique hotels abroad is thriving the rapid development momentum, in addition to single boutique hotel, the Hotel Group, real estate companies are also added to the market development, and because of its precise market positioning, unique culture, way of personalized service and marketing management in place, it makes in the competition with a number of standardized-star hotels to be with huge price advantages and increase profit margins. The development of the domestic boutique hotel is in the early or initial exploratory stage, compared with foreign boutique hotel, both in management style and characteristics, or in the service and management, etc., are far apart, but its development also has a positive future.

1.2 Research aim & objectives
This aim of this study is to investigate the influence of knowledge sharing on service innovation and customers’ choice in boutique hotel, in order to achieve this aim, it conducts the following objectives:
 To understand the motivation of knowledge sharing by boutique hotel staff and service innovation performance of the hotel, on this basis to identify key motivational factors and service innovation dimensions.
 To build the conceptual model of knowledge sharing in boutique hotel on service innovation, and to use empirical research to prove the conceptual model.
 To analyze the influence of different motivation on the staff’s knowledge-sharing behavior.
 To analyze the influence of the staff’s knowledge sharing behaviors on the various dimensions of boutique hotel service innovation.
 To classify the staffs according to sharing behavior, to analyze the characteristics of different types of staff motivation and knowledge-sharing service innovation performance.

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