Microsoft Word 2007 ichrie conference Proceedings Final-Final 06-06-07. doc

 
Key Words:
employees, supervisors, motivation, motivating factors, food service, culture

INTRODUCTION 
Understanding what motivates employees could improve employee retention, increase organizational 
performance, improve employee satisfaction, and increase productivity (Ramlall, 2004). The working conditions, 
wages and demographics in the hospitality industry, especially the food service sector, inherently contribute to high 
turnover rates (Ghiselli, La Lopa, & Bai, 2001). With the increasing demand for employees and high turnover rates 
within the food service sector, motivating employees should be a high priority for food service managers.
Kovach’s (1980, 1987, 1995) research in employee motivation found that supervisors ranked job reward 
factors for their employees differently than how the employees ranked job reward factors for themselves. Job 
rewards are the factors that motivate employees at their workplace. Employees chose “full appreciation of work 
done” and “interesting work” as the most important motivators, while supervisors chose “good wages” as the factor 
they believed employees would rank as their most important motivator.
The central hypothesis of this study was that hourly hospital food service employees would rank motivating 
factors differently than their hospital food service supervisors. Further, researchers expected to find that supervisors 
would choose “good wages” as the factor they thought employees would find the most motivating.