Simons’ (2003) review of hospitality motivation studies is significantly more useful
than Nebel’s – not least because the intervening 25 years hospitality researchers
had actually undertaken a number of motivation-related hospitality studies (Nebel
cited no hospitality-motivation studies and this review has not identified any such
research pre-dating the Nebel review).
Simons identified some 48 published hospitality articles describing empirical work
related to motivation either directly or tangentially. Studies that were
tangentially related to work motivation included articles describing: antecedents
of motivation such as incentives and service climate; outcomes of motivation such
as organisational commitment, job satisfaction, job performance; and counter-
productive behaviours such as employee turnover/intention to quit. Of these 48
identified studies, 17 are directly/primarily focused on motivation issues and draw
upon theories of work motivation. Of this 17, four were deemed not relevant to
this study as they focused on travel product sales (Bartkus et al. 1994; Bartkus et
al. 1997; Bartkus and Howell 1999) and hotel sales and marketing professionals
(Hawkins and Lee 1990). The remaining ten articles are discussed below.
The method used by Simons (see below) to structure his article - and thus,
perhaps also influencing the selection of keywords for the literature search - may
have contributed to the nature of the articles recovered. Specifically, to generate
an organising framework for his review, Simons used Mitchell’s (1997) summary
of generalisable findings to have emerged from the body of (generic) work
motivation studies. Mitchell (1997: 58) found that, in general, people are more
motivated in work situations where: (i) their needs are met; (ii) goals are set; (iii)
good performance is rewarded; (iv) there is fairness and equity; (v) jobs are
stimulating and engaging; (vi) hard-working friends and team members are
present; and (vii) there is an organisational culture of effort and commitment. It
may be that using these categories to guide a literature search has shaped
Simons’ review in such a way while that many of the articles deal with
antecedents and outcomes of motivation, fewer of the identified studies deal
specifically with work motivation processes and/or employ work- (or general-)
motivation theories.
Otherwise, that such a large proportion of the papers identified by Simons do not
have a primary focus on ‘core’ motivation issues (i.e. studies employing
constructs and/or theory drawn from the work motivation literature) may in part