The twenty-first century is seeing structural changes in the world due to globalization, digitalization and knowledge informatization, accompanied by transformation from manufacturing industry centered economy to service industry centered one. Thus, s...
The twenty-first century is seeing structural changes in the world due to globalization, digitalization and knowledge informatization, accompanied by transformation from manufacturing industry centered economy to service industry centered one. Thus, service industry is making special efforts management and control of human resources in order to survive the changed in management environment and to improve organizational effectiveness.
In service industry, food service industry can be said as the representative human resources service industry in that human component factors account for a large proportion and that it offers service to customers. However, though it is emerging as an industry with enormous expected effects socially and economically, there are still a lot of problems with human resources management with workers' low job satisfaction and high turnover rate.
What is especially required in relation with food service industry with such practical problems is the very manager . supervisor's leadership ability. In particular, it is desperately necessary for a leader of an organization to make organizational members feel psychological success by means of the organization so as to cope with such situations and to develop organization in food service industry. As well, the idea of empowerment is recently emerging with the importance of leadership. The importance of empowerment introduction is also important because empowerment, when conducted to workers of service industry, is known to maximize job performance of individual workers.
Thus, this study aims to increase effectiveness of human resources management of food service industry by identifying relationships if influence among leadership of manager·supervisor, workers' empowerment and organizational effectiveness in food service industry.
To achieve the purpose of this study, documentary study was conducted along with empirical study. For the first step, a research model was developed based upon theoretical considerations on leadership, empowerment and organizational effectiveness in food service industry and theoretical systemization of constituent concepts. And then, measurement test items were induced and measurement criteria were developed to be used to analyze the suggested research model. Based upon these, a survey was given to workers in food service industry. The statistics for empirical study were put through the processes of data coding and data cleaning, and were analyzed by using SPSS 12.0 for Windows and AMOS 4.0 statistics program.
The results and suggestions from empirical analysis on the basis of the research model verification and hypothesis verification are as follows:
First, in terms of the effect of leadership in empowerment, it is found that resorting to transformational leadership is more effective to strengthening workers' empowerment than transactional leadership, and that transactional leadership has either negative or little effect on empowerment.
Second, in terms of the effect of leadership on organizational effectiveness, it is found that in overall sense, transformational leadership is more effective than transactional leadership in exercising leadership to improve organizational effectiveness.
Third, in terms of the effect of empowerment on organizational effectiveness, it is revealed that empowerment is generally effective to organizational effectiveness.
Fourth, both transformational leadership and empowerment are effective to improve organizational effectiveness of food service industry. Especially, it is found that the intermediary role of empowerment is more important to organizational effectiveness than the direct effect of transformational leadership.
Based upon the relationships among leadership, empowerment and organizational effectiveness in food service industry, comprehensive methods for human resources management can be presented as follows:
The first method is to exercise powerful transformational leadership. Thus, policies to exercise transformational leadership in the management level should be made and sought for. The specific methods include increase in educational investment to promote transformational leadership, establishment and settlement of leader's role which can present visions to workers and powerfully drive them, selection and development of human resources with transformational leadership, resolution of individual grievance for individual comfort, raising leadership anility that can maintain objectivity and fairness and satisfy workers' individual needs, and workers' participation in decision making and setting up goals of organization to maximize intellectual stimulation. On the other hand, concerning transactional leadership, manager ?supervisor in food service industry should develop and enforce fair and objective evaluation system and reward system, promote effective organization operation through the satisfaction of middle managers and workers by entrusting practical authority to middle managers in closer relationship with workers, manage workers by dividing management by exception into active and passive methods, and need to include individualized considerations of transformational leadership.
The second method is to introduce active empowerment to food service industry. It is desirable to actively examine introduction of empowerment programs that suit characteristics of establishments or stores. In introducing empowerment, they should establish programs in consideration of characteristics by job, and conduct detailed and objective situational analysis by establishment and store in consideration of corporate situations. Again, in implementing empowerment, the methods of improving organizational effectiveness through appropriate situational rewards based upon assigned job authority by department or by team in consideration of group empowerment as well as individual empowerment.
In conclusion, for food service industry as the representative human service industry to promote organizational effectiveness, it is desirable to properly consider transactional leadership, though leader's transformational leadership is effective more than anything else. Especially, it means that it is necessary to introduce empowerment along with leadership in order to improve job satisfactions and organizational commitment that directly affect human resources management and reduce turnover rate.
However, this study has a few limits despite of the above research results, and the following are the points to be complemented in further studies.
The first limit is that this study fails to reflect a variety of factors and measurement variables because it dies not include more experts' opinions in drawing constituent elements and measurement items for leadership, empowerment and organizational effectiveness. The second limit is that this study cannot be applied to the whole food service industry as the number of the food service businesses operated in corporate forms is limited. The third is that future studies are expected to conduct comparative studies between representative food service businesses and food service establishments operated by hotels.