Motivation and its effect on employee performance in the hospitality industry : a systematic review

Abstract

This paper will be reviewing articles from the Journal of Human Resources in Hospitality from 2017 to 2020 to establish a database of studies that have evaluated various relationships between motivation and performance of employees within the hospitality industry. This journal ranked amongst one of the highest within hospitality and tourism journals in 2021 (SJR: Scientific Journal Rankings; Scopus) From one hundred and twenty-two articles, twenty-six met the final criteria for further analysis. This systematic literature review set out to establish the most current research articles pertaining to what these motivations equate to and how thus far, they have been used or said to contribute to the measure of employee performance. Prominent concepts identified from this review suggest that performance is proven positively mostly by certain intrinsic motivational factors that are the main driving forces within organisations. The general understanding is that employees need to feel psychologically connected and safe in their work environment, to be motivated and engaged to work. The natural disposition of this highly volatile and fast-paced industry is that it makes it harder to measure performance accurately, and because of its essence of immediacy routine is not consistent. Therefore, teams need to be highly proactive and motivated on a deeply personal and individual level, in order to perform at their best. Results of the database which were analysed and reviewed were presented and discussed. Recommendations follow, to assist the platform of research about these theories, to encourage more assessments and to assist in further data collection where applicable.