Rethinking tourism’s definition, scope and future of sustainable work and employment: editorial for the Journal of Sustainable Tourism special issue on “locating workforce at the heart of sustainable tourism discourse”

Abstract

This special issue of the Journal of Sustainable Tourism showcases research that addresses an identified gap that is the relative neglect of the sustainability concept in a workforce context. The special issue presents 10 papers, each making a unique and distinct contribution to knowledge. This extended review/editorial presents a critique of current definitions of sustainability in an employment, and specifically in a tourism employment context, acknowledging and critiquing extant literature. The review then moves on to summarising all the submissions to this special issue, uniquely recognising the themes from both submissions as well as accepted papers. These exercises culminate in the presentation of a refreshed conceptualisation of sustainable employment, before we introduce the final selected papers. The submissions are mapped onto a proposed conceptual framework, which recognises the multi-dimensional influences of the evolving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), recent Sustainable Human Resource Management (SHRM) and tourism literature, and the hot-off-the-press contributions to theory of this special issue. Finally, the paper offers concluding remarks that we hope will influence and guide future research endeavours.

Keywords:

• Sustainable work/employment
• tourism
• SDG’s
• sustainable HRM
• gender

Acknowledgment

Rene Bennett for his skillful coordination of the submitted abstracts and articles during the review process

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shelagh Mooney

Shelagh Mooney, Associate Professor, School of Hospitality and Tourism, Auckland University of Technology. Shelagh’s research is focused on diversity and sustainable workforce issues. Shelagh is interested in how gender intersects with other aspects of individual identity and the interactions between individual, organisational and societal levels.

Richard Robinson

Richard N.S. Robinson, Associate Professor, The University of Queensland Business School. Richard’s research explores tourism and hospitality workforce issues including sustaining employment for disadvantaged groups and culinary workers.

David Solnet

David J. Solnet, Associate Professor, The University of Queensland Business School. David’s research focuses on hospitality and service employees, work and employment, focussing on human resource management, service climate and culture and generation Y and Z.

Tom Baum

Tom Baum, Professor, Department of Work Employment and Organization, University of Strathclyde and Distinguished Visiting Professor in the University of Johannesburg. He is interested in the relationship between work and its wider social, cultural and economic context in frontline services.