From Hospitality Culture to Work Readiness: The Mediating Role of Self-Discipline in a Teaching Factory
The persistent gap between vocational education and industry expectations highlights the need to understand how industry-based learning environments shape students’ work readiness. This study examines the effects of hospitality organizational culture and Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) compliance on the work readiness of vocational hospitality students, with self-discipline as a mediating variable. Drawing on Social Cognitive Theory, the study employed a quantitative explanatory design involving 134 Grade XI and XII hospitality students participating in Teaching Factory practices at an educational hotel in East Java, Indonesia. Data were collected through a census approach and analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) with SmartPLS 4. The results demonstrate that hospitality organizational culture and SOP compliance have positive and significant effects on both self-discipline and student work readiness. Self-discipline also significantly enhances work readiness and partially mediates the effects of hospitality organizational culture and SOP compliance on work readiness. Notably, SOP compliance emerged as the strongest predictor of self-discipline, suggesting that repeated exposure to structured workplace procedures plays an important role in developing students’ self-regulatory behavior. The model explained 69.0% of the variance in self-discipline and 65.1% of the variance in work readiness. These findings extend Social Cognitive Theory to the vocational hospitality education context by demonstrating that environmental factors can shape work readiness both directly and through students’ self-regulatory mechanisms. Practically, the study highlights the importance of strengthening SOP internalization, professional role modeling, and industry-oriented learning practices within Teaching Factory programs to better prepare vocational students for employment.