Ethical contexts and employee job responses in the hotel industry: The roles of work values and perceived organizational support

• This study contributes to the theoretical understanding of the role that ethical context (EC), work values (WVs), and perceived organizational support (POS) play in job responses in the hotel industry.
• The results indicated that POS was a partial mediator between EC and JS but that POS was a full mediator between EC and TI.
• ‘Employees’ WVs played a moderating role in the relationship between EC and job responses.

The hotel industry faces continual ethical dilemmas that present important, interesting and complex challenges. This study had two objectives. The first was to investigate the relationship between ethical context and job satisfaction and to examine the moderating role of work values and the mediating role of perceived organizational support in the relationship between ethical context and job satisfaction. The second objective was to examine the influence of these same variables on turnover intention. A survey of Taiwanese hotel employees showed that ethical context was a significant predictor of job satisfaction and turnover intention and that work values and perceived organizational support moderate and mediate respectively the relationship between an ethical context and job responses. These data suggested ways by which hotels can deal with ethical context, perceived organizational support, and employee work values to increase job satisfaction and decrease the turnover intention of employees.