1 INTRODUCTION..........................................................................
1.1 Background and rationale
The performance of front-line staff has been recognised as being critical for
service-orientated organisations in general (e.g. Schneider et al. 1980: 423) and
also for hospitality organisations (e.g. Hartline and Ferrell 1996: 52-53; Lashley
1996: 334; Wilkins et al. 2007). Concerns surrounding service employees’ job
performance and service quality are at the heart of hospitality management (e.g.
Davidson 2003: 72; Wilkins et al. 2007: 841), not least owing to the inseparable
nature of production and consumption in services. This concept describes how,
unlike goods, services are produced and consumed simultaneously; services,
therefore, cannot readily be quality-assured prior to delivery. This means that, to
a large extent, the quality of the customer’s experience is determined at the point
of delivery and based on the performance of the service delivery employee (Go et
al. 1996: 5). Carlzon (1987) described these service encounters between
employees and customers as ‘moments of truth’, the point at which the success
or failure of a service organisation is determined.
In addition to customer satisfaction, Buttle (1996: 8) describes a number of other
productive organisational outcomes associated with quality of service in
hospitality such as profitability, costs, customer retention and positive word-of-
mouth customer evaluations. Given the critical role of hospitality service
personnel, there is some irony that many front-line hospitality service jobs offer
relatively low pay, long and unsociable hours, poor levels of job stability and a
lack of promotional opportunities (Hesselink et al. 2004: 11; Wildes 2007: 5-6;
Wong and Ko 2009: 195). Wood provided a particularly unflattering picture,
describing hospitality work as often being:
...largely exploitative, degrading, poorly paid, unpleasant, insecure
and taken as a last resort or because it can be tolerated in the light of
wider social and economic commitments and constraints
(Wood 1997: 198)According to Herzberg’s Two-Factor theory of motivation (Herzberg 1966),
characteristics such as these militate against employees enjoying high levels of
motivation and Keegan, with reference to improving hospitality jobs through