Talent management for the proactive behavior of tour guides

Purpose In an increasingly competitive market, tourism managers are aware of the importance of talent management. Because tour guide behavior has an important influence on tourists’ experience in the process of group touring, how to motivate a tour guide’s proactive behavior becomes an important issue. Based on social exchange and cognitive theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of particular human resource management practices on proactive behavior. Design/methodology/approach This research takes the tour guide as the research object. The questionnaire survey method was used to obtain data. At last, 351 valid questionnaires were obtained. Finally, the hypotheses of this research are tested using structural equation modeling and percentile (bias-corrected percentile) bootstrapping method. Findings The results show that human resource management practices positively influenced proactive behavior of tour guides. Moreover, both perceived organizational support and self-efficacy were found to mediate the relationship between human resource management practice and proactive behavior. Originality/value This study contributes to the tourism literature by finding that both perceived organizational support and self-efficacy can foster the effect of human resource management practice, resulting in proactive behavior of tour guides.