The neglected role of customers in the decent work equation in the service sector Available to Purchase

Tom Baum PhD DLitt, Professor of Tourism Employment, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland and University of Johannesburg, South Africa. Tom’s academic interests address the social and strategic contexts of low skills employment, with particular focus on hospitality and tourism. This interest stems from over 40 years of experience in the strategic planning and development of vocational and professional education and training, as a research director within the public sector, as an educator in universities and as consultant to the private sector and to public sector, internationally funded projects across five continents. A key focus of his work addresses the role of public and private stakeholders in planning and HRD for the diverse employment environment of hospitality and tourism. Tom adopts a critical perspective on work and the workplace in frontline services that include hospitality, tourism and retail and use academic research as the basis for advocacy or intellectual activism designed to promote change. In this context, he is a founder member of the Global Hospitality Research Alliance (GHRA), a community of scholars from around the world with a common commitment to promoting change to work, the workplace and working conditions in hospitality. Post-COVID, he has been actively engaged with a number of policy-focused initiatives that have focused on this area, including the Scottish Fair Work Convention’s Inquiry into Hospitality and the ReWage report on hospitality pay and working conditions.

Anke Winchenbach PhD, Senior Lecturer, University of Surrey, Guildford, England. Anke’s research and consultancy is primarily focused on social dimensions of sustainability in tourism and related industries, intersecting with fisheries and marine social sciences, sociology and social psychology. She researches topics such as dignity and decent work, labour and human rights, social change, identity, livelihood transitions, coastal community resilience, as well as how we assess social value across individual, organisational and governance levels. She is a Fellow of Surrey’s Future of Work Research Centre and the Institute for Sustainability, as well as the Centre for Sustainability and Wellbeing in the Visitor Economy. Currently, she serves as the elected co-president of the International Tourism Research Committee (RC50) of ISA and holds several advisory roles with industry organisations.