Procedural corruption in the North American hotel industry

Procedural corruption is the intentional use of legal-rational authority based on formal rules for personal gain instead of organizational goals. The present study builds on the Opportunity-Motivation-Justification framework to examine the outcomes of procedural corruption in service organizations using the example of the hotel industry. Specifically, it uses a multiple case study strategy to investigate journalistic accounts and employee narratives on critical incidents of managerial authority abuse in four North American hotel properties. This study draws upon the cross-case synthesis technique to find subtle, collective, repeat, and multiple procedural offenses in the North American hotel industry. The investigation results lead to further proposition that effect, frequency, participation, and variety are the four dimensions of procedural service outcomes. These findings imply that service technology could represent an antecedent of procedural corruption.