Improving the Review Policy and Process for Authors and Reviewers

[Excerpt] In this issue’s “From the Editor,” I describe a new review policy and process for both authors and reviewers. Authors should find that this new policy and process provides them with faster editorial decisions, higher quality feedback, and greater clarity about required revisions, as well as greater freedom to disagree with reviewers and to write the papers they (the authors) want. Reviewers should find that this new policy and process saves them from having to review obviously flawed papers and from having to review different versions of the same paper over and over again.

From the Editor

[Excerpt] Cornell Hospitality Quarterly editor, Michael LaTour, lost his battle with cancer and passed away peacefully at his home on November 8, 2015. Mike LaTour’s in memoriam, which was written by his wife, Kathryn LaTour, reminds us of his legacy as an editor, scholar, and person. I want to use this “From the Editor” to highlight and discuss another of his editorial legacies. Before he passed away, Mike decided to introduce a “research note” section to the CQ—the first accepted one appears in this issue. I strongly supported Mike’s decision to have the CQ publish research notes and I intend to continue publishing them during my editorship.

The Business Case for (and Against) Restaurant Tipping

Recent interest in replacing tipping with service charges or higher service-inclusive menu pricing prompted this review of empirical evidence on the advantages and disadvantages to restaurants of these different compensation systems. The evidence indicates that these different pricing systems affect the attraction and retention of service workers, the satisfaction of customers with service, the actual and perceived costs of eating out, and the costs of hiring employees and doing business. However, the author comes away from the data believing that the biggest reason for restaurateurs to replace tipping is that the practice takes revenue away from them in the form of lower prices and gives it to servers in the form of excessively high tip income. The biggest reason for restaurateurs to keep tipping is that it allows them to reduce menu prices, which increases demand. Thus, restaurateurs’ decisions to keep voluntary tipping or not should ultimately depend on the relative strengths of these benefits. The more that a restaurant’s servers are overpaid relative to the back of house and the wealthier and less price-sensitive a restaurant’s customers are, the more the owner of that restaurant should consider abandoning tipping. By this reasoning, many upscale, expensive restaurants (especially those in states with no or small tip credits) probably should replace tipping with one of its alternatives.

My Attitudes and Beliefs about Different Types of Research

[Excerpt] In this issue’s “From the Editor,” I describe a new review policy and process for both authors and reviewers. Authors should find that this new policy and process provides them with faster editorial decisions, higher quality feedback, and greater clarity about required revisions, as well as greater freedom to disagree with reviewers and to write the papers they (the authors) want. Reviewers should find that this new policy and process saves them from having to review obviously flawed papers and from having to review different versions of the same paper over and over again.

Does Tipping Help to Attract and Retain Better Service Workers?

A survey of several hundred restaurant servers in the United States found that servers’ attitudes toward working for tips and average tip sizes were weakly related (at best) to their service-orientation, intended job-tenure, and occupational-tenure. These findings suggest that tipping does not substantially help to attract and retain more service-oriented workers. Restaurateurs can eliminate tipping at their restaurants without fear that doing so will reduce the quality of their wait-staff.

Black-White Wage Gap Among Restaurant Servers: A Replication, Extension, and Exploration of Consumer Racial Discrimination in Tipping

There is a rich history of social science research centering on racial inequalities that continue to be observed across various markets (e.g., labor, housing, and credit markets) and social milieus. Existing research on racial discrimination in consumer markets, however, is relatively scarce and that which has been done has disproportionately focused on consumers as the victims of race-based mistreatment. As such, we know relatively little about how consumers contribute to inequalities in their roles as perpetrators of racial discrimination. In response, in this paper we elaborate on a line of research that is only in its’ infancy stages of development and yet is ripe with opportunities to advance the literature on consumer racial discrimination and racial earnings inequities among tip dependent employees in the United States. Specifically, we analyze data derived from a large exit survey of restaurant consumers (n=378) in an attempt to replicate, extend, and further explore the recently documented effect of service providers’ race on restaurant consumers’ tipping decisions. Our results indicate that both White and Black restaurant customers discriminate against Black servers by tipping them less than their White coworkers. Importantly, we find no evidence that this Black tip penalty is the result of interracial differences in service skills possessed by Black and White servers. We conclude by delineating directions for future research in this neglected but salient area study.