Determinants of Delegation — A Study in Five Star Hotels

Abstract

In a competitive business scenario, attracting and retaining customers is a daunting task for managers of the service industry in general and five star hotels in particular. The present study has tried to suggest a few measures through which customer care can be improved or in other words–well defined job, better superior subordinate relationship and effective delegation may help frontline employees to take extra care of customers and retain them. Direct and interaction effect of determinants of delegation i.e., job characteristics and superior-subordinate relationship has been studied. Effect of these determinants on factors of delegation i.e., amount of delegation, process of delegation and facilitating factors of delegation, has also been studied. A sample of 319 frontline employees of five star hotels of Mumbai was chosen. It has been found that job characteristics and superior subordinate relationship significantly influences delegation. Interaction effect of job characteristics and superior-subordinate relationship were also found to be influencing significantly.