Applying complexity theory to solve hospitality contrarian case conundrums: Illuminating happy-low and unhappy-high performing frontline service employees

Purpose – This paper aims to advance a configural asymmetric theory of the complex antecedents to
hospitality employee happiness-at-work and managers’ assessments of employees’ quality of work
performance. The study transcends variable and case-level analyses to go beyond prior statistical
findings of small-to-medium effect sizes of happiness–performance relationships; the study here
identifies antecedent paths involving high-versus-low happy employees associating with
high-versus-low managers’ assessments of these employees’ performances.
Design/methodology/approach – The study merges data from surveys of employees (n 247) and
surveys completed by their managers (n 43) and by using qualitative comparative analysis via the
software program, fsQCA.com. The study analyzes data from Janfusan Fancyworld, the largest (in
revenues and number of employees) tourism business group in Taiwan; Janfusan Fancyworld includes
tourist hotels, amusement parks, restaurants and additional firms in related service sectors.
Findings – The findings support the four tenets of configural analysis and theory construction:
recognize equifinality of different solutions for the same outcome, test for asymmetric solutions, test for
causal asymmetric outcomes for very high versus very low happiness and work performance and
embrace complexity