In a practical hospitality management context, enhancing job satisfaction can
militate against counterproductive organisational outcomes such as employee
turnover (e.g. Carbery et al. 2003; Kim et al. 2005; Tutuncu and Kozak 2007;
Kuruüzüm et al. 2009; Yang 2010) and absenteeism (Kuruüzüm et al. 2009; Yang
2010). Beyond these examples there is a wide range of antecedents,
consequences and correlates of job satisfaction for hospitality researchers to focus
on. Deery’s (2008) recent review, for example, found a number of organisational
attributes and strategies and individuals’ characteristics that can influence job
satisfaction in hospitality contexts.
Recent empirical hospitality studies that have included a focus on job satisfaction
have found that:
role conflict (e.g. having to bend organisational rules to achieve work goals)
and burnout can contribute to reduced job satisfaction (Yang 2010);
good co-worker relationships and employee autonomy can act as positive
determinants of job satisfaction (Yang 2010);
self-determination (autonomy) can positively influence job satisfaction (Chiang
and Jang 2008);
the nature of an organisation’s environment/culture can influence employees’
job satisfaction (Øgaard et al. 2008; Yiing and Ahmad 2009); and
job involvement (an employee’s degree of active participation in their job)
positively influences job satisfaction (Carbery et al. 2003).
This research has tested and (cautiously) found that the ‘holy grail’ of
organisational studies, the job satisfaction → job performance relationship
appears to be manifest in the hospitality service employees sampled for this
research. Given the theoretical significance of this finding, a priority for future
research should be to test this relationship in an independent sample. As
described above, there is a significant range of organisational and individual
variables that are related to job satisfaction for future research to address as
appropriate. Considering, however, the way in which the job satisfaction
construct was not found to be empirically distinct from the other two employee
attitude constructs (work meaning and affective organisational commitment), for
any future research that seeks to improve our understanding of the relationships
between leadership and employee attitudes – and the inter-relationships between
different types of employee attitudes - a further priority should be to build upon
the findings of this research to investigate further the composition of employee
attitudinal constructs and how they inter-relate.