TheOrganisationalGapModel
forHotelManagement
Maja Uran
This paper describes the developmentof the organisational gap model
forhotelmanagement.Itdescriesamanagementmeasurementinstru-
mentthat helpsto assessthe3 organizational service gapsthat are pre-
conditions for delivering service quality (the positioning gap, speciﬁ-
cation gap and evaluation gap). The described theoretical model was
constructed based upon the four organisational gaps of the Parasura-
man et al. service quality model, then redeﬁned and reassessed. Data
were gathered on the sample of500 questionnaires from the Slovenian
hotelindustryandanalysedwithexploratoryfactoranalysisandstruc-
turalequationmodelling.Theresultscanbeusefulguidelinesforhotel
managementonhowtoimprovetheservicedeliveryprocess.
Key Words: servicequalitymodel,organisationalgaps,multivariate
analysis,hotelindustry
jel Classiﬁcation:m1 ,l83
Introduction
The business environment in the hotel industry is highly competitive,
each hotel directly or indirectly competing with another hotel. The
highly competitive environment prompts hotel managers to meet their
customers’expectationsasforaspossibletoenablethesurvivalandsuc-
cessofthebusiness(Ivankoviˇ c2005 ,137 ).Inordertocreateasustainable
advantage, ﬁrms seek to develop core competencies: unique combina-
tionofprocesses,skillsand/orassets(Kandampully2007 ;Knowles1999 ,
64 ). As competitors move more closely together in terms of product
quality, it is the service quality, developed by these core competencies,
which will be used more often to create a competitive distinctiveness
(Zeithaml,Parasurman,andBerry1990 ,149 ;Olsen,Ching-YickTse,and
West 1992 , 163 ; Harrington and Lenehan 1998 ; Groenroos 1990 ;Johns
1999 ;Kandampully,MokandSparks,2001 ;Uran,2004 ;Uranetal.,2006 ;
Kandampully 2007 ). Service quality can be utilized in determining how
a business produces and delivers its products and services; in how it
manages its employees; and in how it builds astrong brand identity and
DrMajaUranisanAssistantProfessorattheUniversityofPrimorska,
FacultyofTourismStudiesPortorož,Slovenia.
ManagingGlobalTransitions8 (4 ):405 –422
406 Maja Uran
reputation.Itisaprocessthatincludesboththeresponsivenessoftheser-
vice and the consistency of the service delivery. Firms that learn how to
match service quality as an operational approach with their competitive
methodscancreateaformidableandsustainablecompetitiveadvantage.
The construct service quality has been the focus of many scholarly
studies (Lehtinen and Lehtinen 1982 ; Lewis and Booms 1983 ; Parasura-
man, Zeithaml and Berry1985 ; Cronin and Taylor 1992 ;T eas1993 ; Kan-
dampully, Mok and Sparks, 2001 ; Uran, 2004 ;Uranetal.,2006 ; Kan-
dampully2007 ).Thereisalist,whichcoverstheﬁndingsofinternational
researchers regarding service quality and what characterises successful
servicecompanies:
  The managing director should be the leading practitioner of a
professional and operative leadership. That means, among other
things, creating and spreading a quality policy, developing chal-
lenging goals, plans and rituals, and dividing the responsibility in
theorganisation.
  Service quality has become a strategic area of development and an
importantpartofthebusinessplanandthevisionofthecompany’s
development. Itisalsoacentraltaskformanagement atalllevels.
  Successful service companies are characterised by a multiple focus.
They manage to satisfy the needs and expectations of customers,
co-workers and owners at the same time. They emphasise quality
inresults,processesandprerequisites forthe serviceandhowthese
interact. Thecustomerorientation isespeciallyimportant.
  Quality is considered as everyone’s responsibility. Every co-worker
hasthe knowledge, resourcesandauthority toachieve highquality.
Theco-workersalsocontrolthequality oftheirownwork.
  Service development and service construction, to build-in prereq-
uisites for the right quality when developing new services is a key-
issue.
  Emphasis on the development of quality in all processes in the or-
ganisation.Thepointistopreventfaults,notjusttodetecttheones
alreadymade.
  Todevelopservicequalityisregardedasmaybethemostimportant
measureto takeinorder toimprove productivity and proﬁtability.
  Emphasis on complaint management. Detecting customer dissat-
isfaction, learning to repair mistakes, compensate and explain the
causeofthequality failure.
ManagingGlobalTransitions
TheOrganisationalGapModelforHotelManagement 407
  Emphasis on the co-workers commitment to customer-perceived
totalquality.
  Increased emphasis on systematic measuring of the service quality.
Measuringquality fromthepointofviewofcustomers,co-workers
andotherinterested parties.
In the hotel industry, products are produced and consumed simulta-
neously, whilein other industries production andconsumption aresep-
arated intimeandspace.Forthisreason, ahighquality standardishard
to achieve. Another issue is direct contact between employees and con-
sumers, which inevitably leads to errors that can easily contribute to the
possible collapse of the system. If it is accepted that these errors are in-
evitable, then the goal is to minimize them. The battle for quality de-
termines the path that everyone in the tourist industry needs to follow.
Using a quality system, hotel managers try to eliminate errors and im-
prove the guest’s perception of quality issues. The usual perception is
thatagoodqualityhotelisonewithﬁvestars,butnowadaysitisdeﬁned
diﬀerently. Quality is not deﬁned by category, but by the capability to
deliver products and services that have district characteristics, and are
designed in a way to please the guests and fulﬁl their needs (Groenroos
1990 ).
Since 1985 , most of the debate has centred around the conceptualiza-
tionandmeasurementofservicequalitybasedonthegaptheorystream
ofresearch(Parasuraman,ZeithamlandBerry1985 ;Zeithaml,Berryand
Parasuraman 1988 ; Zeithaml, Parasuraman and Berry 1990 ; Zeithaml,
BerryandParasuraman1993 ;Kandampully,MokandSparks,2001 ;Uran,
2004 ;Uranetal.,2006 ; Kandampully 2007 ). It is evident from the liter-
ature that most of the empirical work had been focussed on the gap 5
perception-minus-expectations framework as operationalized by Para-
suraman, BerryandZeithaml(1985 ).
However, the management of service quality concerns wider issues
of organizational structure, philosophy and culture that can also in-
ﬂuence service delivery and ultimately customer perceptions of service
quality (Bowen and Schneider1988 ; Groenroos1990 ;Heskett1987 ; Kan-
dampully, Mok and Sparks, 2001 ; Uran, 2004 ;Uranetal.,2006 ; Kan-
dampully2007 ). The discrepancy between expectations and perceptions
isreportedtobecausedbyaseriesoforganizationalbehaviouralfactors.
Amodelknownasthe‘gapsmodel’or‘servicequalitymodel’hasbeen
developed to identify problems in service delivery (Zeithaml, Parasura-
Volume 8 · Number 4 · Winter 2010
408 Maja Uran
man, and Berry 1990 ), which deﬁnes quality service through customer
satisfaction. The idea is to identify problems and mistakes through rec-
ognizinggapsinthemodelandtryingtoavoidthem.Hotelmanagement
can inﬂuence service delivery by narrowing organizational gaps and by
improving servicequality and customer satisfaction. The service quality
modelassumesthatthediﬀerencebetweentheservicethatthecustomers
expectandtheservicetheyactuallygetisduetoorganizationalgaps(Zei-
thaml, Parasuraman, and Berry 1990 ; Candido and Morris 2000 ;Mc-
CarthyandKeefe1999 ).Thesegapscanbesplitinto(Uran2003 ):
  positionalgap
  speciﬁcation gap
  serviceexecutiongap
  communicationgap
  evaluationgap
Studying the models shows that the model of Zeithaml, Berry and
Parasuraman (1990 ) gives the best insight into the organisation and its
methodological and conceptual factors, as well as the correlation with
gaps in quality service. Using the four gaps of the basic quality ser-
vice model, it is possible to explain inconsistencies in delivering the ex-
pectedqualityoftheservice.Byconsultingtheliteratureandconducting
a preliminary quality study of organisational gaps, the author discov-
ered some weaknesses in the widely used Zeithaml, Berry and Parasura-
manmodel andtheneed toextend itusingtheoretical supportfromthe
model byCandid and Morris (2000 ).This particular modelidentiﬁes14
gaps in quality service. Even though this author believes that the afore-
mentioned gaps could be downsized into the model presented by Zei-
thaml, Parasuraman, and Berry (1990 ), some elements of the gaps were
presented moreaccurately andextensively.
The extended service quality model (Zeithaml, Berry and Parasur-
aman 1988 ; 1990 ) was the framework used for developing the organi-
sational gap model for hotel management. The original and extended
model of Parasuraman, Parasuraman, and Berry (1988 ;1990 )modelhas
4 organisational gaps with16 dimensions consisting of50 elements. De-
rived from Zeithaml, Berry and Parasuraman’s (1990 ) extended service
quality model, andbaseduponanin-depth reviewofover300 literature
units (Uran 2003 ) on service quality management and existing service
quality models,weareabletodevelop themodel.Thetheoreticalmodel
comprises 26 dimensions with more than 100 elements stemming from
ManagingGlobalTransitions
TheOrganisationalGapModelforHotelManagement 409
the 5 organisational gaps. The focus of this paper is on the three gaps
speciﬁcally aimed at hotel management rather than personnel, namely
the positioning gap, the speciﬁcation gap and the evaluation gap. More
speciﬁcally, the goal of this paper is to test the validity of an instrument
designed toassesstheseservicegapsintheSlovenian HotelIndustry.
thepositioninggap
The hotel management perceptions of guest expectations with regardto
the desired quality of a hotel service may not be in sync with real cus-
tomer expectations. Zeithaml et al. (1988 ) suggest that the size of the
positioning gap in any service ﬁrm is a function of marketing research
orientation, upward communication, and levels of managers. Candido
and Morris (2000 ) stated that the gap is deﬁned as a management lack
of understanding of customer’s expectations and perception of the ser-
vice. It is motivated both by lack of initiatives to listen to the customer
andbythelackofcorrectunderstandingwhentheseinitiativesaretaken.
The authors suggested that the gap could be further enlarged to include
a lack of understanding of other external information, namely a service
positioning gap or service quality strategy. The service quality strategy
identiﬁes the organization’s competitive scope and its concepts of qual-
ity, through a selection of, and positioning on, the fundamental quality
dimensions it wants to compete with. The service quality strategy is a
set of guidelines that provides orientation for everyone in the organi-
zation. Similar dimensions to this gap are noted by McCarty and Keefe
(1999 ), who acknowledge that the gap can be caused by a lack of con-
sumer orientation, management commitment to service quality, service
quality leadershipandmission/visionclarity.
The size of the positioning gap in any hotel is proposed to be a func-
tion of: marketing research orientation, customer orientation, service
quality improvement leadership, management’s commitment to service
quality and concepts of quality. Table 1 provides an overview of each of
theabovefactors.
thespecificationgap
Gap 2, the so-called management perception-service quality speciﬁca-
tion gap, occurs when hotel management correctly perceives guest ex-
pectations, but is unable to translate this information into clear spec-
iﬁcations. Garvin (1988 ) and Zeithaml, Parasuraman, and Berry (1988 ;
1990 ) suggest that four factors may account for this discrepancy,includ-
Volume 8 · Number 4 · Winter 2010
410 Maja Uran
table 1 Factorsofthepositioninggap
Dimension Elements
1.Marketingresearch
orientation
1.Amountofmarketingresearch
2.Usageofmarketingresearch
3.Collectinginformationonguest’ssatisfaction
4.Collectinginformationonguest’sexpectations
5.Extentofdirectinteractionbetweenmanagersand
customers
2.Customerorientation 6 .Tendencytoservicequality
7.Willingnesstochange
3.Management’s
commitmenttoservice
quality
8.Servicequalityresponsibility
9 .Motivating forservicequality
10 .Responsibilityforinnovationandimprovement
11.Priorities
12 .Resourcecommitmenttoquality
13 .Existenceofinternalqualityprograms
4.Servicequality
improvementleadership
14 .Designingtheoperationsaccordingtocustomer’s
expectations
15 .Discrepancybetweenexpectedandperceivedservice
16 .Understandingtheworkingconditions
17.Opennesstochange
18 .Communication
19 .Helpingemployees
20 .Decisionmakingstyle
21 .Spreadingthemission/vision
22 .Understandingthemission/vision
23 .Resourcescommitmenttomission/vision
5.Conceptsofquality(–) 24 .Servicequalityasabusinessgoal
25 .Employeedelegation
26 .Servicequalityawareness
27 .Adequacyofservicequalityconcepts
28 .Meaningofservicequalitydimensions
29 .Goalsetting
30 .Systemofpreventingservicedefects
31.Eﬀectivenessofservicequalityconcepts
ing: management commitment to service quality, existence of goal set-
ting, task standardization and perception of feasibility. Speciﬁcations,
along the service quality dimensions, are useful to deﬁne what quality
is. Frequently, organizations do not possess any kind of formal speci-
ﬁcation, which results in aggravated service variability and lower qual-
ity (Zemke and Schaaf 1989 ). Speciﬁcations are required to guide per-
sonnel in their activities. Speciﬁcations are also required as a means of
ManagingGlobalTransitions
TheOrganisationalGapModelforHotelManagement 411
comparison for eﬀective quality evaluation. Candido andMorris (2000 )
assert that this gap exists because of a lack of analysis, design and def-
inition of service quality speciﬁcations, or when speciﬁcations exist be-
cause of an inconsistency between those speciﬁcations and the strategy
content or the perceptions that management held of customers’ expec-
tations. Several more factors can create this gap, including: short-term
proﬁt orientation (Zeithaml, Parasuraman, and Berry1988 ;1990 ), inter-
nalcommunication-levelsofmanagement(Zeithaml,Parasuraman,and
Berry1988 ;1990 ; Groenroos1990 ; Candido and Morris2000 ),poor ser-
vicedesign,andabsenceofcustomer-driven standards.
Thesizeofthespeciﬁcationgapinanyhotelisproposedtobeafunc-
tion of: designing speciﬁcations, task standardisation, perception of fea-
sibility,levelsofmanagement,hrm andintegration/coordination. Table
2 provides anoverviewofeachoftheabovefactors.
theevaluationgap
The perception gap and its instrument (servqual )aretheonlyservice
qualityevaluationinthemodel.Itisnecessarytogainsomeinformation
about service quality before the so-called moment of truth or service
consumption. After assessing the model, the need for inclusion of the
evaluation gap became clear. The thesis was conﬁrmed as well by the
CandidoandMorris(2000 )gapchartingeﬀorts.Theyfounditnecessary
to have the means of comparison for eﬀective quality evaluation. These
facts are supported McCarthy and Keefe (1999 ), and others. The size of
theevaluation gapinanyhotelisproposedtobeafunctionof:
1. measuring performances
2. feedback
Table 3 provides anoverviewofeach oftheabovefactors.
Methodology
Based on the literature above, an instrument was designed to assess
organisational gaps in the Slovenian hotel industry. Antonˇ ciˇc( 2000 )
stresses the importance of validation of the constructs that have an
Americanbasis,inSloveniancontexts.Thisiswhyreasonweapproached
the qualitative analysis of theoretical concepts by employing 15 experts
from the Slovenian hotel industry. The results of qualitative analysis
provided the basis for the ﬁnal operationalisation of the measurement
instruments. This analysis also pointed out that the theoretical concept
Volume 8 · Number 4 · Winter 2010
412 Maja Uran
table 2 Factorsofthespeciﬁcationgap
Dimensions Elements
1.Designingspeciﬁcations 1.Existenceofformalspeciﬁcations
2.Speciﬁcationsasabusinesseﬃciencymeasure
3.Servicespeciﬁcationsdesignprecision
4.Havingenoughinformationforspeciﬁcationdesign
5.Consistencybetweenspeciﬁcationandbusiness
strategyandconsumerexpectations
6 .Servicespeciﬁcationdirectedtowardslowcost
2.Taskstandardisation 7.Usageofautomatization
8.Necessityofinvestmentinqualitysystems
9.Operationsprocedures
10 .Amountofresources
3.Perceptionoffeasibility 11.Costperceptions
12 .Totalserviceﬁttoconsumers’expectations
13 .Perceptionofservicequality
4.Levelsofmanagement 14.Numberoflayers
15 .Flatteningandinvertingthehierarchicalpyramid
16 .Gettinginformationfromemployees
17.Meansofcommunication
18 .Jointproblemsolvinganddecisionmaking
5.Integration/coordination 19 .Cooperationbetweenmanagers
20 .Control/supervision
21.Compatibility
22 .Lack ofcoordination
23 .Connectionbetweensubjectsintheorganisation
24 .Educationandjointprojects
25 .Cooperationwithotherorganizations
6 .hrm 26 .Selection
27.Levelofautonomy
28 .Conﬁdence
29 .Meaningofeducation
30 .Delegation
31 .Helpingemployees
32 .Perceptionsofmanagementstyle
cannot be tested directly, but should be divided into two models. First,
the service quality model for the hotel management with the following
gaps: positioning gap, speciﬁcation gap and evaluation gap. Here a 7-
point Likert scale was used. And the second, a model for the contact
personnel with the service delivery gap and the communication gap,
or a 5-point Likert scale. This paper presents only the ﬁrst model. The
sample,datacollectionanddataanalysis methodwerechosen.
ManagingGlobalTransitions
TheOrganisationalGapModelforHotelManagement 413
table 3 Factorsoftheevaluationgap
Dimensions Elements
1.Measuringperformances 1.Benchmarkingmeasures
2.Responsibility
3.Self-evaluation
4.Servicequalityperception
5.Progress
2.Feedback 6 .Timeneededforcollectinginformation
7.Spreadinginformationabouteﬃciency
sample
Data were collected by using the mail survey administered in Slovenia:
38 hotel companies were included, comprimising 95 % of all employees
intheSlovenian HotelIndustry.Altogether,500 questionnaires forhotel
managers were sent, for all the levels of management, while 100 ques-
tionnaries were addressed directly to the general managers. Some33 .6 %
ofthesamplereturnedusablequestionnaires.
dataanalysis
Thegathereddatawerethenanalysedwiththechosenstatisticalmethods
as suggested by Zeithaml, Berry,and Parasuraman (1988 ). For exploring
the gap structures the exploratory factor analysis (efa ) was used with
the support of spss software. To conﬁrm the gap structures the struc-
tural equation modelling (sem ) was employed with the support of eqs
software. Each gap was explored individually byefa until the appropri-
ate structure was reached. This phase resulted in the integrated organi-
sationalgapconstructthatwasthentestedwiththesem .
Results
Theresultsaredividedinto3 parts.First,theresultsofefa arepresented.
Specialattention isdedicated totheconvergentanddicriminantvalidity
of the construct. Second, the conﬁrmation process of the constructs is
presented. Finally, the end result of the organisational gap assessment
forSlovenian hotelmanagement ispresented.
exploratoryfactoranalysis
Alltheelementsdeﬁnedintheoryforeveryidentiﬁedgapwereused(po-
sitioning gap with6 dimensions and31 elements, speciﬁcation gap with
6 dimensions and 32 elements, and evaluation gap with 7 elements) for
Volume 8 · Number 4 · Winter 2010
414 Maja Uran
conductingefa by using the overall sample (163 cases). Before the anal-
ysis,allmeasurementitemswereexaminedfornormality.Nosigniﬁcant
departuresfromnormalitywerefound.Theexistenceofsuﬃcientcorre-
lationsisamorecriticalissue.Theappropriatenessoffactoranalysiswas
determined by examining the correlation matrix of gap items. The ma-
trix had a suﬃcient number for justiﬁed usage of efa .TheBartletttest
of sphericity, which statistically tests the presence of correlations among
underlying variables, showed that the correlation matrix had signiﬁcant
correlations (signiﬁcant at 0 .05 for all items as well as retained items).
The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy was 0 .749 for
retaineditems, whichsuggestsmediumadequacy.
The number of factors to be extracted was determinedapriorion the
basisofthenumberofdimensions.Theconstructhad13 dimensions.Be-
cause the gap dimensions were identiﬁed according to the diﬀerent gap
models(neverempiricallytested),weassumedthattheinitialnumberof
the factors would be lower. The number of factors was then determined
byusingthelatent root,percentage ofvariance andscreetestcritea.The
screeplotofinitialrunindicatedthat2 to8 factorsmaybeanappropriate
number,whereasthelatent rootcriterion indicated5 factors(eigenvalue
above1).Thepercentageofvariancewiththeﬁnalnumberofitemsfor2
factorswas47 .447 %to69 .583 %forthe5-factor solution.
Three-to-eight factor solutions were tested. In the end, the solution
withhighestnumberofitemsandlowestnumberofthefactorswascho-
sen, as suggested by Hair et al. (1998 ). The majority of the items were
excluded because of low communalities or factor loadings. Some were
excluded because they were loaded on the wrong dimensions, or else
on two dimensions. The retained solution had 4 factors with 18 items
(eigenvalue 1.280 , percentage of variance 63 .478 %). The communalities
of retained items were above0 .400 (with the exception of itemsp15 and
p20 ).Theretained4 dimensions,with18 items of organisational gapfor
hotelmanagement, arepresented intable4.
The factors were named: marketing research orientation (f1 ), ser-
vice quality improvement leadership (f2 ), designing speciﬁcations (f3 )
andmeasuringresults(f4 ).Alldimensionshavetheoreticalsupportand
presentkeyfactorsoftheorganisationalgapforhotelmanagement.
confirmatoryfactoranalysis
A conﬁrmatory factor analysis was conducted in order to validate the
ﬁndings of efa and to examine the convergence of the organisational
ManagingGlobalTransitions
TheOrganisationalGapModelforHotelManagement 415
table 4 Factorloadingsoftheorganisationalgapforhotelmanagement
nkv -f1 nkv -f2 nkv -f3 nkv -f4
Marketingresearchorientation(nkv -f1 )
p3 Collectinginformationonguest’s
satisfaction
1.031
p1 Amountofmarketingresearch 0 .608
Servicequalityimprovementleadership(nkv -f2 )
s28 Conﬁdence 0 .861
p9 Motivatingforservicequality 0 .723
s29 Meaning of education 0 .704
s20 Control/supervision 0 .668
s31 Helpingemployees 0 .661
s24 Educationandjointprojects 0 .656
s27 Levelofautonomy 0 .635
p20 Decisionmakingstyle 0 .632
s17 Meansofcommunication 0 .521
p28 Meaningofservicequalitydimensions 0 .410
p15 Discrepancybetweenexpectedand
perceivedservice
0 .322
Designingspeciﬁcations(nkv -f3 )
s2 Speciﬁcationsasabusinesseﬃciency
measure
0 .788
s3 Servicespeciﬁcationsdesignprecision 0 .635
Measuringresults(nkv -f4 )
e2 Responsibility 0 .712
e7 Spreadinginformationabouteﬃciency 0 .657
e5 Progress 0 .626
gap for hotel management dimensions. The methodology suggested by
Antonˇ ciˇc( 2000 ) was used and ﬁve model ﬁt indices were calculated:
nfi (normedﬁtindex),nnfi (non-normed ﬁtindex),cfi (comparative
ﬁt index), srmr (standardized root-mean-square residual) and rmsea
(root-mean-square error ofapproximation).
Twosampleswereused,oneforanalysistheotherforvalidation.Con-
ﬁrmatory factor analysis conﬁrmed the above ﬁndings on the construct
of dimensionality. All items had positive, high and signiﬁcant coeﬃ-
cients. No items were found to diﬀer between the samples in terms of
Volume 8 · Number 4 · Winter 2010
416 Maja Uran
table 5 Theorganisationalgapforhotelmanagementdimension’sscaleconvergence
Dimensions (1)( 2)( 3)( 4)( 5)( 6)( 7)( 8)( 9 )
Marketingresearchorientation 20 .7800 .608 1 .031 *****
Designingspeciﬁcations 20 .765 0 .635 0 .788 *****
Measuringresults 30 .705 0 .633 0 .765 1 .000 ****
Servicequalityleadership 11 0 .883 0 .322 0 .861 0 .937 0 .850 0 .950 0 .050 0 .143
Mean 0 .783 0 .550 0 .861
Total 18 (8) 0 .798 0 .322 1 .031 0 .9040 .930 0 .9600 .050 0 .060
notes Column headings are as follows: (1)no.ofvariants,( 2) Cronbach Alpha, (3)
Interval stand. loadings min., (4) Loadings max. Index: (5) nfi ,( 6 ) nnfi ,( 7) cfi (8)
srmr ,(9 )rmsea .
coeﬃcients and errors. Statistical information on each dimension’s in-
ternal consistency (Cronbach alpha reliability statistic) and convergence
(model goodness-of-ﬁtindices) basedon overall sample(N =163 )isin-
dicated intable5.
The marketing research orientation scale showed very good reliabil-
ity (Cronbach alpha0 .780 ) and convergence in terms of coeﬃcients (all
were positive, high and signiﬁcant). Model ﬁt indices were not calcu-
lated, due to the low number of items (less than3). The designing spec-
iﬁcation scale showed very good reliability (Cronbach alpha 0 .765 ) and
convergence in terms of coeﬃcients (all were positive, high and signif-
icant). Model ﬁt indices were not calculated, due to the low number of
items (less than 3). The measuring results scale showed good reliabil-
ity (Cronbach alpha0 .705 ) and convergence in terms of coeﬃcients (all
were positive, high and signiﬁcant). Only nfi was calculated and it de-
mostrated goodconvergence in terms of the goodness-of-ﬁt indice. The
service quality improvement leadership scale showed very goodreliabil-
ity (Cronbach alpha0 .883 ) and convergence in terms of coeﬃcients (all
were positive, high and signiﬁcant) and some of the goodness-of-ﬁt in-
dices(nfi andcfi over0 .90 ,nnfi isabove,butstillgood,srmr is0 .05 ,
asrecommended, criticalisjustthermsea value). Overall,thedimen-
sions’ scale showed good reliability and good convergence in terms of
coeﬃcients, and moderately good convergence in terms of model ﬁt in-
dices.
Theorganisationalgapsforhotelmanagementdimensionsweretested
for convergent and discriminant validity together in the organisational
gap for the hotel management construct structural model, where di-
ManagingGlobalTransitions
TheOrganisationalGapModelforHotelManagement 417
table 6 Theorganisationalgapforhotelmanagementconstructconvergentand
discriminantvalidity
Dimensions (1)( 2)( 3)( 4)( 5)( 6)( 7)
Marketingresearchorientation(otr ) 0 .696 0 .540 0 .446 1 0 .191 0 .252 0 .397
Designingspeciﬁcations(os ) 0 .679 0 .493 0 .409 0 .191 1 0 .323 0 .439
Measuringresults(mr ) 0 .656 0 .449 0 .356 0 .252 0 .323 1 0 .291
Servicequalityleadership(viz ) 0 .746 0 .685 0 .665 0 .397 0 .439 0 .291 1
notes Fit index: nfi = 0 .904 , nnfi = 0 .930 , cfi = 0 .960 , srmr = 0 .050 , rmsea =
0 .060 .Models:(1)compositereliability,(2)varianceextracted,(3)varianceshared.Cor-
relations: (4)otr ,(5)os ,(6 )mr ,(7)viz .
mensions were modeled as ﬁrst order latent constructs and correlated
witheachother.Themodelshowedreasonablygoodﬁt:nfi0 .904 ,nnfi
0 .930 , cfi0 .960 ,with the exception of srmr0 .050 and rmsea0 .060 ,
all coeﬃcients were found to be positive, high and signiﬁcant (between
0 .507 and0 .862 ). These results were very similar across diﬀerent control
groups: size of the company, random split. The model reliability, vari-
ancestatisticsandinter-dimension correlations areindicated intable6 .
Twodimensions demonstrated goodcompositereliability –atorover
thethresholdof0 .700 (Hairetal.1998 ),twowerejustalittlebelow.Vari-
ance extracted was found to be somewhat below the threshold of 0 .500
for 2 dimensions. Correlations among the dimensions were all signiﬁ-
cantandrangedfrom0 .191 in0 .439 ,demonstratingconvergence,butnot
redundancy,ofthedimensions.Overall,themodel’sﬁtindices,compos-
ite realiability, variance extracted, and correlations indicate moderately
good convergent validity. There is also evidence of discriminant valid-
ity, because correlations are not too high (not over0 .70 ) and even more
importantly,becausethevarianceextractedforeachdimensionishigher
thanthevariancesharedwithotherdimensions.
Multidimensionality of the organisational gap for hotel management
constructwas alsotested bycomparingtherelative contributions oftwo
models. The ﬁrst is the model that includes only one common organ-
isational gap ﬁrst order factor (the one common factor model) and is
basedonthe assumptionof unidimensionality oftheorganisational gap
concept. The second is the dimensions-only model that is based on the
assumptionofnon-unidimensionalityoftheorganisationalgapconcept.
These 2 models are nested in the model with both dimensions and the
commonfactor,amethodthatallowsforcomparisonofthemodels.The
comparisonisshownintable7.
Volume 8 · Number 4 · Winter 2010
418 Maja Uran
table 7 Thedimensions-onlyvs.theonecommonfactormodel
Dimensions (1)( 2)( 3)( 4)( 5)( 6)( 7)
m1 :Onecommonfactormodel 145 .956 20 0 .448 0 .254 0 .467 0 .150 0 .197
m2 :Dimensions-onlymodel 25 .516 16 0 .904 0 .930 0 .960 0 .053 0 .061
m3 :Modelwithbothfactoranddim. 14 .491 11 0 .945 0 .962 0 .985 0 .048 0 .045
m1 –m3 :Contributionofdimensions 131 .465 4 0 .901 0 .820
m2 –m3 :Contrib.ofthecommonfactor11.025 5 0 .432 0 .174
notes Columnheadingsareasfollows:(1)χ
2
(allChi-squaressigniﬁcantat0 .001 ),(2)
df,(3)nfi ,(4)nnfi ,(5)cfi ,(6 )srmr ,(7)rmsea .
The one common factor model indicated overall poor ﬁt and low
ﬁt relative to the dimensions-only model in all goodness-of-ﬁt indices.
Model ﬁt indices of the dimensions-only model and model with both
thedimensionsandthecommonfactoraresimilar.Thecontributionsof
the2 modelsareshowninthelast2 rows in table4.BothChi-squaredif-
ferncesaresigniﬁcant,indicatingthatbothmodelsmaycontributetoex-
planatorypower.Howeverthenfi andnnfi fortwomodels’diﬀerences
demonstrate that thecontribution of dimensions seems tobequite sub-
stantial (nfi0 .901 ;nnfi0 .820 ), whereas the contribution of the overall
factor seems to be rather minimal (nfi0 .432 ; nnfi0 .174 ). Overall, the
one common factor model seems to be inferior to the dimensions-only
model. This canbeconsidered astrong indication of multidimensional-
ityoftheorganisationalgapforthehotelmanagementconstruct.Hence,
theorganisationalgapforthehotelmanagementconstructdevelopedin
this study can be seen as a good measure of the organisational gap for
hotelmanagementthatcapturesbothdimensionalityaswellastheover-
allsharedcharacteristics oftheorganisational gapforhotelmanagers.It
presents all the necessary evidence for the existence of convergent and
discriminant validity of theconstruct.Theorganisational gapmodelfor
hotelmanagement has4 dimensions with18 elements.
theorganisationalgapmodelforhotelmanagement
inslovenia
The redeﬁned organisational gap model for hotel management was
testedintheSlovenianhotelindustryinordertoassessthesizeoforgan-
isationalgapsinSlovenian hotels.Theresultsarepresented intable8.
According to the result of the research, the biggest problem of the
Slovenianhotelindustryisthelackofdedicationofthehotelmanagersto
deﬁne hotel service speciﬁcations (mean3.90 ). On the other hand, this
ManagingGlobalTransitions
TheOrganisationalGapModelforHotelManagement 419
table 8 TheorganisationalgapofSlovenianhotelmanagement(163 cases)
Elements/dimensions Min Max Mean
p3 Collectinginformationonguest’ssatisfaction 275 .47
p1 Amountofmarketingresearch 375 .19
Marketingresearchorientation 5.33
p20 Decisionmakingstyle 275 .06
p9 Motivatingforservicequality 274 .93
p15 Discrepancybetweenexpectedandperceivedservice 375 .69
s28 Conﬁdence 275 .73
s20 Control/supervision 275 .65
s31 Helpingemployees 276 .02
s24 Educationandjointprojects 375 .10
s29 Meaning of education 476 .31
s17 Meansofcommunication 275 .55
s27 Levelofautonomy 275 .72
p28 Meaningofservicequalitydimensions 376 .33
Servicequalityimprovementleadership 5.64
s3 Servicespeciﬁcationsdesignprecision 173 .48
s2 Speciﬁcationsasabusinesseﬃciencymeasure 174 .33
Designingspeciﬁcations 3.90
e2 Responsibility 175 .47
e5 Progress 174 .43
e7 Spreadinginformationabouteﬃciency 375 .50
Measuringresults 5.13
is the area that can beaddressed and developed to increase service qual-
ity. Still, the general assessment of the organisational gap of hotel man-
agement (average value5.00 )is that,although the managers understand
the meaning of conducting marketing research, of service speciﬁcation,
of performance measurement and of implementation of service quality
systems, it is nevertheless a rare practice in Slovenian hotel industry for
variousreasons.
Conclusion
The extended service quality model was the framework for assessing or-
ganisational gaps.Theoriginalandextended Parasuraman’s etal.model
has 4 organisational gaps with 16 dimensions with 50 elements. Due to
Volume 8 · Number 4 · Winter 2010
420 Maja Uran
the reason that the model was not tested in the tourism or hotel indus-
try, or explored and conﬁrmed with appropriate statistical methods, we
decidedtoredeﬁneandreassessthemodel.Basedonthein-depthreview
of over300 literature units on service quality management and identiﬁ-
cation of the existing service quality models, we were able to construct
the conceptoftheservicequality gaps.
Becauseintheoriginalmodelservicequalityisevaluatedthroughgap
5 or the perception gap, we found it necessary to add the ﬁfth gap in
the service quality model- evaluation gap. It is essential to have supervi-
sion and control – or better to say assessment – of the service delivery
before the consumption of the services. The service quality gap theoret-
ical concept consists of 5 gaps (positioning, speciﬁcation, service deliv-
ery,communicationandevaluation)thathave26 dimensionswithmore
than100 elements.Thefocusofthispaperisonthethreegapsspeciﬁcally
aimedathotelmanagementratherthanpersonnel,namelytheposition-
ing gap, the speciﬁcation gap and the evaluation gap. To overcome the
weaknesses of prior researches, a complex research was undertaken to
identify therepresentative structureanddimensions.
Authors (Parasuraman et al.) of the extended service quality model
suggestthatthemodelshouldbetestedwiththeappropriatemultivariate
statistical methods such as factor analysis. Measures of the theoretical
construct aﬀecting each gap can be viewed as an indicator of that gap.
Therefore, it is possible to recast the conceptual model in the form of
a structural equations model. The model was tested by collecting data
on the indicators of gaps through questionnaires and by analyzing data
with exploratory factory analysis, and then conﬁrming the structure of
theconstructswithstructuralequation modelling.
Theresultsofthisstudysuggestthattheassessmenttestedhereisboth
valid and reliable. Clearly, although further testing is required, the ﬁnd-
ingsareneverthelessencouraging.IntheSloveniancontext,somedilem-
maswererevealed.TheSlovenianhotelmanagersshouldputmoreeﬀort
intoobtainingtherightinformationabouttheirguestsandplanningthe
eﬀective service quality systems. In order to fully use service quality as a
competitive advantage, service positioning, speciﬁcation and evaluation
mustbefurtherexplored.
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