*2.3. Theoretical Underpinning*

The theories that explain this study are human capital theory popularized by Gary Becker and Theodore Schultz (Becker 1964) and social exchange theory by Homans (1958). Human capital theory affirms that people in the formal workplace are valued resources due to their skills and knowledge, which gives the organisation advantage over their competitors (Pogodayev 2013; Thunnissen 2016; Oliinyk et al. 2021). Mkamburi and Kamaara (2017) argued that human capital theory assumes that individual talent represents the intellectual capital in the organisation. Social exchange theory, on the other hand, affirms that employees exhibit certain behaviours that are positive in the workplace because of the expected reward attached to the behaviour (Ivancevich et al. 2014; Robbins and Judge 2018; Tsaras et al. 2018). In this case, employees display discretionary work behaviour by going beyond their job description and specifications with the high expectation of a reward from management.

#### **3. Materials and Methods**

Survey research design was adopted in this study because it supports the use of a primary source of data such as a questionnaire to collect data from participants over the course of a week, a number of months or a year with the specified geographical scope (Sekaran and Bougie 2016; Saunders et al. 2009). Target population of 60 4-star hotels that are registered with Enugu State Ministry of Commerce and Tourism were sampled with simple random sampling technique. Sample frame of 820 participants—HR manager, supervisor, operations manager, accountant and junior level employees—were surveyed from 60 selected 4-star hotels in Enugu State, Nigeria. Sample size of 263 was determined from the sample frame of 820 with Krejcie and Morgan (1970). Participants' consent was sought formally through their head of operations, such that research on talent management and discretionary work behaviour would be carried out by a group of researchers and that their cooperation was needed. Participants were also informed that their identity would not be made public; rather, their responses would be used for the purposes of the research. It was after this that the researchers administered 263 copies of the questionnaire to the participants face to face, since COVID-19 protocols were no longer in place, and it was discovered that 240 copies of the questionnaire were filled correctly, while 21 copies were wrongly filled. The reason why 21 copies of the instrument were identified as wrongly filled is because the participants did not tick some of the options provided in the instrument. Thus, they were sorted out from the ones that were filled correctly. Copies that were correctly filled were found valid and used for analysis.

A 14-item validated Talent Management Questionnaire (TMQ) consisting of talent attraction, talent development and talent retention was adapted from Lyria (2014). These indicators were further affirmed by Aina and Atan (2020) in their empirical investigation. On the other hand, the English version of the Podsakoff et al. (1990) 14-item adjusted and validated questionnaire was used to measure Discretionary Work Behaviour (DWB) measures, which are altruism, conscientiousness, and sportsmanship in the organisation. All indicators were ranked as follows: 5 = strongly agree; 4 = agree; 3 = disagree; 2 = strongly disagree; 1 = neither agree nor disagree. Frequency distribution was used to analyse participants' demographic characteristics, while linear regression was used to analyse the formulated research hypotheses with the aid of IBM statistical package for the social sciences (20.0).

#### **4. Results**

Table 1 (below) shows the demographic profiles results of the participants in this study. The gender of the participants revealed that 86 respondents (representing 35.8%) are females, while 154 respondents (representing 64.2%) are males, implying that males are greater in number in the hospitality industry under investigation. The working experience of the respondents indicated that 123 participants (representing 51.3%) have worked in the hospitality industry for 6–10 years; 31 participants (representing 12.9%) have worked in the industry for 11 years and above; and 86 respondents (representing 35.8%) have worked in the hospitality industry. On the age bracket of the participants, 87 respondents (representing 36.3%) fall within the range of 46 years of age and above; 113 participants (representing 47.1%) fall within the range of 36–45 years of age; and 40 respondents (representing 16.7%) fall within the range of 20–35 years of age. The educational qualifications of the participants revealed that 8 respondents (representing 3.3%) hold a PhD degree; 46 participants (representing 19.2%) are master's degree holders; 78 participants (representing 32.5%) hold diploma certificates; and 108 respondents (representing 45.0%) hold a bachelor's degree. This implies that participants with a bachelor's degree are greater in number compared to other respondents with several educational qualifications.


**Table 1.** Demographic profiles of participants.

Source: Survey

Regression results in Table 2 (below) revealed that talent management dimensions (talent attraction, talent development, talent retention) have significant effects on discretionary work behaviour in hospitality organisations. Specifically, the result shows that talent attraction has a significant positive effect on altruistic behaviour in hospitality organisations (0.669 \*; *p* < 0.05) with an increase in progression followed by talent development, which also has significant and positive effects on sportsmanship (0.703 \*; *p* < 0.05). This is also followed by talent retention, which is significant and has positive effects on conscientiousness (0.844 \*; *p* < 0.05). The R<sup>2</sup> of the models shows that 45% of the total variation in talent attraction can be explained by altruism. The second model indicated indicates that 49% of total variation in talent development can be explained by sportsmanship, while the third model revealed that 71% of total variation in talent retention can be explained by conscientiousness. The results also show that the difference between R2 and adjusted R<sup>2</sup> in the models is less than 5%, which satisfies the absence of a sample error (Saunders et al. 2009). The authenticity of the models was significant, since the F Stat. values calculated (192.797; 232.586; 590.363) are greater than tabulated 3.89, which affirms the rejections of null hypotheses, while alternate hypotheses are accepted.

**Table 2.** Hypotheses results.


Predictor: Talent Management (talent attraction, talent development, talent retention). Criterion: Discretionary work behaviour (altruism, sportsmanship, conscientiousness).

#### **5. Discussion**

Drawing from the results above, it was found that talent management dimensions have significant effects on the measures of discretionary work behaviour, which affirms that talent management is a predictor of discretionary work behaviour in the hospitality industry. The finding of this study has shown that talent management practices aimed at attracting, developing, and retaining have strong potential to contribute to changing methodologies used to manage talent in the hospitality industry (Maxwell and MacLean 2008). In specific terms, it was found that talent attraction has significant positive effects on altruism. This result corresponds with the Jepchumba (2021) finding which revealed that talent attraction, talent retention, and talent development has a significant positive effect on hotel performance. In support of the above result, the Ollor and Harry (2020) finding indicated that talent management dimensions have a significant positive association with employee commitment in Le Meridien hotel in Nigeria. On the other hand, talent development has significant effect on sportsmanship. This is in congruence with the Wangechi et al. (2020) result which revealed that talent development has a significant positive effect on service delivery in selected hotels in Kenya. In addition, the Yeswa and Ombui (2018) result revealed that talent management indicators predicted employee retention in Kenyan hotels. Lastly, it was found that talent retention has a significant effect on conscientiousness. This result corroborated the Mnim et al. (2018) finding which revealed that the indicators of talent management such as talent attraction, talent development, talent utilization, and talent retention have a significant association with innovation in Nigerian hotels. Another finding that supports the hypothesis three result is the Ramadan et al. (2021) result, which affirmed that talent management practices have a significant effect on employee retention in Egyptian hotels.

Research has shown that talent do not really want to leave their organisation for another, but their decision could be changed when they perceived that they were not being remunerated appropriately (Kaleem 2019; Baba 2018). From the foregoing findings, it can be deduced that most of the previous aforementioned empirical evidence in the literature failed to oppose any of the three results reported. The reasons are that hotel businesses across the world have a common culture and can easily absorb any forces of change from the external work environment (Nzonzo and Chipfuva 2013; Maxwell and MacLean 2008).

### **6. Conclusions**

In line with the findings, this study concludes that talent management measured in terms of talent attraction, talent development and talent retention has significant effects on the indicators of discretionary work behaviour. Attracting talent is an essential part of human resource management function especially when there is a need to fill a vacant position, but it does not end at that. Attracted talent must be equipped with current technological skills, service innovations and customer retention strategies through continuous training. Thereafter, retaining talent becomes the last option for the human resource function to implement using both direct and indirect compensation packages. It was based on these findings that the study affirms that discretionary work behaviour can be promoted through effective implementation of talent management in the hospitality industry. The implications of this study are that human resource professionals and organisational leaders should utilize talent management as a strategy to enhance discretionary work behaviour in their respective organisations. The results of this study have further affirmed the benefit of talent management on improving hospitality business performance and sustainability through discretionary work behaviour of talent in the hospitality industry. The implications of this study are that leaders of hospitality organisations, such as managers and supervisors, should engage the services of human resource professionals who would assist them to identify potential talent that are capable of withstanding any changes that tend to disrupt their stability. Secondly, recruited talent should be trained on a yearly or quarterly basis in order to adapt to changing technologies in the hospitality industry. Lastly, recruited talent should be rewarded with various compensation policies that would prevent them from leaving for another organisation. Regarding limitations, the use of one method of data collection is already a shortfall, and hence, methodological paradigm triangulation should be used in future investigations as it supports both qualitative and quantitative methods. In addition, the absence of moderating or contextual factors may have limited the research. Thus, subsequent investigation should include a moderating variable to discover if the findings would be the same. Another limitation of this research is concerned with the number of questionnaires that were wrongly filled by the participants. The result of the study would have been different assuming all the instruments were correctly filled by the

respondents. Lastly, the finding of this study may not be generalised, since the geographical scope was Nigeria, and thus, future investigations should explore both developing and developed countries before a generalisation can be established.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, F.O.E. and N.M.Z.; methodology, V.N. and F.O.E.; software, N.M.Z. and I.P.; validation, H.K., N.M.Z. and I.P.; formal analysis, F.O.E. and V.N.; investigation, F.O.E.; data curation, H.K.; writing—original draft preparation, F.O.E. and N.M.Z.; writing—review and editing, F.O.E. and V.N.; visualization, I.P.; supervision, V.N. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Ethical review and approval were waived for this study because the identities of the participants were not mentioned.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.

**Data Availability Statement:** Not applicable.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.

#### **References**

