ANÁLISIS DE LOS RESULTADOS DE LA CUENCA DEL

RESTAURANT PERFORMANCE

Schneider and Bowen (1985) argued that consumers are better served if an

organization meets the needs of and satisfies employees, as it results in positive outcomes in terms of service quality for the consumer. Indeed, organizationaldynamics have a direct influence upon employee performance, attitudes, and customer satisfaction

(Davidson & Manning, 2003). Along these lines, studies have shown that job satisfaction and organizational commitment are highly correlated with employee performance, productivity, and job involvement (Ghiselli et al., 2001; Huang, 2003). For example, in a study that focused on the effect of four management commitment to service factors (i.e., organizational support, rewards, empowerment, and training) on employees’ job

satisfaction and service behaviors in ten hotels, a structural equation model using Thai hotel workers indicated that job satisfaction has a significant influence on employees’ extra-role customer service behaviors and cooperation (Kim, Tavitiyaman, & Kim, 2009). Extra-role customer service behaviors referred to desirable behaviors performed by frontline employees to serve customers that go beyond their official role requirements (Brief & Motowidlo, 1986), while cooperation dealt with the helping behavior of

frontline employees towards other members of their work group (Kim et al., 2009). Thus, when employees are satisfied with their jobs, they tend to perform better with regard to both customers and team members.

In a study by Young and Corsun (2010) that analyzed the influence of work aspects, injury, and job satisfaction on unionized cooks’ intentions to leave the cooking occupation, a survey of 213 respondents revealed that job satisfaction is highly correlated with work engagement and negatively correlated with turnover intentions. Work

engagement is a measure that explains how engaging employees find their work to be and is concerned with how exciting, interesting, motivating and important the work is (Young & Corsun, 2010). Thus, when employees are satisfied with their jobs, they feel more engaged and have fewer intentions to quit. These findings go along with the social exchange theory, which posits that when employees perceive that they are obtaining enough support from their organization, they feel obligated to repay their organization through positive attitudes and behaviors (Eisenberger et al., 1990). Based on this theory, increased engagement and job satisfaction from employees could eventually improve their job performance, translating into such things as higher productivity and customer satisfaction, which could result in increased restaurant sales and profits.

In another study by Gazzoli et al. (2010), which analyzed the answers from 474 restaurant employees and 1,259 customers to determine the effects of empowerment and job satisfaction on customers’ perceptions of service quality, a structural equation model suggested that both constructs (i.e., empowerment and job satisfaction) have a significant influence on customers’ perception of service quality. Since the authors’ objective was to measure the service quality delivered directly from frontline employees, the service quality scale used in their study included the sub-constructs of interaction quality (attitude, behavior, and expertise) and outcome quality (waiting time, tangibles, and valence), and also included two items related to the overall service quality of the

restaurant. Valence is a construct that represented customers’ perceptions about employees’ best intentions and performance at work, and included such items as “I believe that this service employee tries to give me a good experience” and “I believe that this service employee knows the type of experience his or her customers want” (Gazzoli et al., 2010). Consequently, having satisfied employees positively affects restaurant customers’ service perceptions.

Along these lines, previous studies have shown the influence of organizational commitment on several behavioral outcomes. For example, in a study by Kim and Brymer (2011) that investigated the effects of ethical leadership on hotel middle managers’ job satisfaction and affective commitment, organizational commitment was the only construct to influence both middle managers’ behavioral outcomes (i.e., extra effort and turnover intention), and these behavioral outcomes produced in turn positive effects on hotel performance. This study distributed mail surveys to 30 U.S. hotels and 324 middle managers participated in the survey. Kim and Brymer (2011) were able to show that the ethical leadership of executives was positively related to middle managers’ job satisfaction and affective organizational commitment. Although middle managers’ job satisfaction was also found to be positively related to their organizational

commitment, job satisfaction did not lead to a willingness to exert extra effort. The organizational commitment of hotel middle managers was the only construct to lead them to exert extra effort, which in this case was represented by a measure portraying how much extra customer service they were willing to perform.

Based on the aforementioned literature, the researcher suggests the following hypotheses:

Hypothesis 9: Employees’ job satisfaction is positively related to restaurants’

performance (i.e., as measured by their sales, cost of sales, and customer satisfaction scores).

Hypothesis 10: Employees’ organizational commitment is positively related to

restaurants’ performance (i.e., as measured by their sales, cost of sales, and customer satisfaction scores).

Having described the relationships among employees’ job satisfaction,

organizational commitment and restaurant performance measures, the following section examines the literature that discusses the possible differences in the levels of job

satisfaction, organizational commitment, and turnover intentions that could occur after employees evaluate their co-workers’ and restaurant general managers’ perceived warmth and competence in a casual dining restaurant setting.