Front-line employee self-determination in value Co-Creation: Generational profiles

Hospitality value co-creation studies have generally focused on the customer. However, service-dominant logic postulates that all actors must benefit from successful value co-creation. In this study, the employee self-determination factors of autonomy, competence, and relatedness were examined across generations to understand hospitality co-creation perceptions and attitudes. Employee self-determination (strong, weak) was manipulated in online experiments (N = 360) to examine value co-creation outcomes: well-being, perceptions of competitive service advantage, and job satisfaction. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) by generational profiles revealed that Baby Boomers sought relatedness and improved their autonomy in the strong condition, Generation X employees valued autonomy or commitment to resources over competence, and Millennials in the strong condition developed their autonomy and relatedness or worked as a team collective. All generations improved their co-creation outcomes under strong self-determination conditions. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.