How and when supervisors’ information sharing reduces new employees’ errors

Abstract

Background: Effective supervision through information sharing meaningfully influences employee performance and error reduction. Though the benefits of information sharing are well investigated, its specific impact on new employees’ error reduction in competitive fields, like hotels with various mediators and moderators, is less explored. This research, using the conservation of resources theory, examines how supervisors’ information sharing affects novices’ error reduction, giving attention to the roles of social skills and information seeking.

Aim: The study investigates the effect of supervisors’ information sharing on new employees’ error reduction, focusing on how this behaviour, through the moderating effect of social skills and the mediating effect of information seeking, fosters positive affect and reduces errors in the workplace.

Setting: The research was conducted among 330 new employee-supervisor dyads at five-star international hotels in Ethiopia.

Method: The research is a descriptive and explanatory study using cross-sectional and quantitative methods to analyse data using structural equation modelling.

Results: The results indicated that supervisors’ information sharing positively influences error reduction in new employees, enhances positive affect and information seeking and decreases emotional exhaustion.

Conclusion: Effective information sharing is crucial for reducing errors and enhancing performance within the hospitality setting, facilitated by the mediation of information-seeking behaviours and the moderation of social skills effects.

Contribution: The study has the following theoretical contributions. Firstly, it contributes to a deeper understanding of the importance of supervisors’ information-sharing effects on the behavioural outcomes of new employees during their socialisation stage. Secondly, the study fosters the Conservation of Resources [COR] theory, initially resource gain may not always reveal resource gain in the future as well by looking at the mediating mechanisms between the outcomes of new employees’ error reduction and the supervisor information sharing.