Effect of Empowerment on Perceived Person-Environment Fit and Work Engagement: Focusing on Online Travel Platform Employees

Purpose - COVID-19 has dramatically changed the business landscape, and the travel industry is no exception. The industry is undergoing a paradigm shift to the platform business, and traditional travel agencies are moving their businesses to online platforms. However, in this irreversible global paradigm shift, it is not easy for travel companies to hire and retain employees, especially companies in the IT sector. Studies typically study consumers, such as selection attributes and satisfaction with travel platforms. However, to the best of our knowledge, there have been almost no studies on employees. This study explored how the empowerment of online travel platform employees influences their perceived person-environment (P-E) fit and work engagement. Design/Methodology/Approach - We analyzed data from 352 employees of 26 domestic online travel platforms who were surveyed in January and February 2021. After coding the collected data, we analyzed it using frequency, exploratory factor, reliability, correlation, and multiple regression analyses using IBM SPSS Statistics, ver. 20.0. Findings - First, enhancing the meaningfulness of work and organizational autonomy influences personjob (P-J) fit and person-organization (P-O) fit. Second, enhancing the meaningfulness of work significantly influences vigor, dedication, and absorption in terms of work engagement, while organizational autonomy significantly influences work engagement vigor. Third, P-J fit and P-O fit influence the vigor of work engagement, and P-O fit influences dedication and absorption. Research Implications - This study demonstrated that the empowerment of travel platform employees can improve perceived P-E fit and work engagement. Thus, if organizations guarantee some degree of empowerment, employees will be energized and engaged more in their workplace. Finally, this helps expand the scope of online travel platform research from the perspective of personnel organization.