Employee Empowerment Practices and Performance of Star-Rated Hotels in Kenya: Moderating Effect of Working Conditions

Abstract

Employees are significant resources in any organization; thus, they can make or break an organization. Therefore, successful organizations are cognizant of ways to engage and empower employees. The main objective of this study was to explore the influence of employee empowerment practices and the performance of star-rated hotels in Kenya. The specific objectives were: Involvement and participation, Training and development, and Information sharing. The moderating variable was working conditions, while the dependent variable was the performance of star-rated hotels in Kenya. The theories used to support the study variables were: Structural empowerment theory and Herzberg's two-factor theory. The study used a descriptive research design; the target population was 180 star-rated hotels, and a sample of 116 star-rated hotels was selected from each hotel region using stratified random sampling. A structured questionnaire was used to collect primary data. Collected data was analyzed using a statistical package for social science version 23. Descriptive and Inferential statistics, correlation and linear regression were used to measure the relationship between dependent and independent variables. Multiple regression analysis was used to determine the moderating effect of working conditions on the independent variable employee empowerment and dependent variable performance of star-rated hotels. The study results show that employee empowerment had a significant and positive relation with the performance of star-rated hotels in Kenya. The correlation results indicated (r= 0.374) between working conditions and employee empowerment. The descriptive statistics results indicated, with a mean average of 3.72 and a standard deviation of 0.952, that employee empowerment practices had a significant and positive relationship with the performance of star-rated hotels in Kenya. Similarly, the inferential statistics indicated that with the introduction of working conditions as the moderating variable between employee empowerment and the performance of star-rated hotels in Kenya, employee empowerment still had a significant influence on the performance of star-rated hotels in as the β1 was 0.451 (p-value =.026) before the introduction of moderating variable. While β2 was 0.248 (p-value = 0.008) after the introduction of the moderating variable working conditions.