Contents lists available at ScienceDirect International Journal of Hospitality Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijhm Research Paper Disentangling organizational commitment in hospitality industry: The roles of empowerment, enrichment, satisfaction and gender Daniel Ruiz-Palomo a, *, Ana León-Gómez a , Francisca García-Lopera b a Department of Finance and Accounting, Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Malaga, Campus El Ejido, s/n, 29071 Málaga, Spain b Department of Applied Economics (Mathematics), Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Malaga, Campus El Ejido, s/n, 29071 Málaga, Spain ARTICLE INFO JEL classifications: J71 L83 M12 Z31 Keywords: Organizational commitment Workers satisfaction Job enrichment Empowerment Gender ABSTRACT This Paper identifies how the motivational strategies of empowerment and enrichment affect on the organiza- tional commitment of hotel staff, and how the job satisfaction mediates in these relationships. We applied a Structural Equations Modeling to a sample of 257 front line hotel employees from Madrid, of which 144 were men and 113 were women. Our results provide evidence about several contributions: first, employees em- powerment significantly grows job enrichment and organizational commitment; second, job enrichment increase workers’ satisfaction and commitment; third, job satisfaction enhances organizational commitment; fourth, job enrichment plays a mediating role between empowerment and both satisfaction and organizational commit- ment; fifth, satisfaction mediates between enrichment and commitment; finally, gender moderates the re- lationship between enrichment and commitment. 1. Introduction Research on organizational commitment is a constant concern in the hospitality industry due to companies showing a preference to em- ploying loyal and committed staff, since these employees will employ all their abilities to the work to be realized (Deepa et al., 2014). Moreover, organizational commitment enforces both attitudinal and behavioral loyalty of employees (Yao et al., 2019). However, recent studies have shown that posts in the hotel sector are characterized for having low wages, little job security, long working hours, lack of op- portunities for personal development, and seasonality (Zhao et al., 2016). In addition, working in the hotel industry differentiates from all other industries with regards to the following aspects: rest time, regular shift work, and irregular working Schedule (Wan and Chan, 2013). In consequence, hotels need to achieve a higher degree of commitment among their employees in all areas for reducing turnover intention (Marco-Lajara and Úbeda-García, 2013). Organizational commitment can be defined by the personal benefit from the functions performed, the autonomy to develop the position´s tasks and the strategic management undertaken by the worker (Slåtten and Mehmetoglu, 2011a). Then, it is widely accepted that hotel work is often perceived as a routine with bad working conditions (Kusluvan, 2003), as many employees do their work without giving it any importance and considering they have little influence on the lives of others (Ferreira et al., 2017; Grobelna, 2019). Therefore, prior research considered the need to implement motivation strategies in hotel workers. Thus, enrichment strategies generate enriched working posi- tions, which will produce a greater importance perception to the task to be realized, improving employee motivation, and this will provide the worker with energy and enthusiasm in their job (Grobelna, 2019). Concisely, it is manifested that enriched working positions will improve employee responsibility towards the company (Dost et al., 2012). In the same way, empowerment strategies will also positively affect the or- ganizational commitment of hotel workers (Meng and Han, 2014), due to the empowerment of workers implies guaranteeing that employees have the skills, knowledge and the autonomy to make decisions re- levant to their posts (Kruja et al., 2016). Hence, empowered employees may carry out more efficiently their work which will increase their organizational commitment (Meng and Han, 2014). Furthermore, in the last years there has been a growing interest regarding the relationship existing between job satisfaction of hotel workers and their organizational commitment. It is considered that workers feel satisfied if they are committed to the decision making process, receive suitable job training and employee incentives and have an effective manager (Spinelli and Canavos, 2000). So, job satisfaction is considered a significant predictor for organizational commitment, as https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2020.102637 Received 3 June 2020; Received in revised form 13 July 2020; Accepted 29 July 2020 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: drp@uma.es (D. Ruiz-Palomo), ana.leon@uma.es (A. León-Gómez), pglopera@uma.es (F. García-Lopera). International Journal of Hospitality Management 90 (2020) 102637 0278-4319/ © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T