روابط بین صلاحیت حرفه ای، رضایت شغلی و اعتماد به نفس توسعه حرفه ای برای سرآشپزها در تایوان

This study explores the relationship among professional competence, job satisfaction and the career development confidence for chefs, and examines the mediators of job satisfaction for professional competence and career development confidence in Taiwan. The analytical results demonstrate that work attitude was the most influential construct for professional competence, and culinary creativity had the lowest reported ratings. Job selection satisfaction showed higher ranking than current job satisfaction. The structural equation modeling results showed that professional competence significantly affects job satisfaction, and that job satisfaction predicts actual career development confidence. Additionally, job satisfaction mediated the influences of professional competence and career development confidence. The implications of these findings are discussed.

The hospitality and tourism industry is economically significant for many areas of Taiwan, particularly the food and beverage sector. According to the Executive Yuan, the service industry accounts for more than 70% of Taiwan's GDP, meaning that Taiwan's economy has transformed from manufacturing-oriented to service-oriented (Lin et al., 2011). Though a growing food and beverage industry provides positive economic effects the problems encountered by employees, such as high levels of stress, long hours, high turnover rates, and narrow career paths, along with rapid changes and severe competition, have caused widespread low job satisfaction in Taiwan (Wang and Horng, 2008). Hospitality is an industry that has been long been plagued by turnover rates traditionally ranging from 60% to 300%, resulting in lost training wages, frustrated accountants and financial statements crying for reductions in wasted human resource dollars (Jones, 2008). The entire global tourism and hospitality industry faces difficulty in attracting and retaining quality employees and seeks a solution to the shortage of skilled hospitality personnel (Deery and Shaw, 1999 and Ferris et al., 2002). Chefs, the subject of this paper, frequently leave the hospitality industry due to job dissatisfaction, poor working conditions and heavy work load, resulting in high staff turnover and wastage of trained and experienced employees (Jenkins, 2001). The low job satisfaction is contradictory to the current trend of personal pursuit for achievement and self-direction (Wang et al., 2011). Studies show that employees are less satisfied with their current job, the low professional career development potential and the absence of motivating factors in the hospitality industry (Jenkins, 2001, Kong et al., 2011 and Kong and Baum, 2006). College students generally do not believe that a career in tourism and hospitality will enable them to fulfill career needs they find important (Richardson, 2009). A good way to retain qualified employees is by helping them to increase their job satisfaction and developing their own careers in hospitality industry (Barnett and Bradley, 2007). Chefs are involved in strategic planning, product sales, and presentation, as well as food quality, safety and sanitation, in the food and beverage industry. The current competitive environment is such that, in order to succeed, restaurants must hire high-quality chefs and maximize their contributions (Richardson, 2009). However, the serious problem retaining quality employees in the hospitality industry has led to a shortage of skilled employees (Pratten and O’Leary, 2007). Pratten (2003) showed that almost half of students beginning a course for chefs never work in the catering industry and many leave within a few years. The reasons given by chefs exiting the market include low salary, heavy hours, and poor work environment in the kitchen. Because chefs are critical to the success of food businesses, enabling them to find satisfaction in their professional competences and in their job is important for hospitality industry managers. The current highly competitive and rapidly changing environment requires chefs to be professionally trained and to have completed advanced education and training in producing large quantities of appetizing food (Alexander et al., 2009 and Hu, 2010). Maintaining high culinary quality requires chefs to continuously upgrade their skills. Successful professional competence development dictates that chefs remain in the industry over the long term. This investigation thus explores how the professional competencies of chefs contribute to their high performance (Birdir and Pearson, 2000). Career planning is important, as are job satisfaction and opportunities for promotion and development. Employee job satisfaction is particularly relevant in service-based organizations because of the practical relationship satisfaction has with turnover intention (Davy et al., 1991), organizational commitment (Brooke et al., 1988), job performance (Meyer et al., 1989), and customer satisfaction with and involvement in service exchanges (Frye and Mount, 2007). In the hospitality industry, employees who are satisfied with their jobs are more likely to treat customers respectfully (Arnett et al., 2002 and Karatepe et al., 2003). Identifying specific determinants of job satisfaction is a first step toward developing organizational strategies to reduce employee turnover and increase employee retention. Positive employee behavior, service quality, and customer satisfaction are all correlated to job satisfaction (Arnett et al., 2002). Taiwanese research on hospitality has focused on management (Horng et al., 2011, Horng and Wu, 2002 and Yang, 2001), and the literature on chefs, professional skills, and job satisfaction is scant. The purpose of this study is thus to investigate the relationship between professional competence, job satisfaction and the confidence of chefs in their career development, as well as the mediators of job satisfaction. These study findings may help in planning continuing education courses for chefs and in providing a reference for hospitality industry professionals regarding human resource management. A conceptual framework of this study is depicted in Fig. 1. We suggest that professional competence and job satisfaction have a positive affect on career development confidence. However, this study also proposes that job satisfaction plays a mediating role in the relationship between professional competence and career development confidence. The hypotheses and supporting literature are discussed in detail below.

The study findings indicate that, overall, chefs exhibit good working attitudes and retain sufficient culinary knowledge to maintain their professional competencies. However, lower professional competence is evident in communication skills and culinary creativity. Additionally, job selection satisfaction exceeds current job satisfaction. Furthermore, this investigation contributes to the literature by examining the mediating influence of job satisfaction on the relationship between professional competencies and career development confidence. The results of this study have both educational and managerial implications for the hospitality industries. Development of professional competence is important for chefs. Furthermore, chefs lack creativity and communication skills. Consequently, institutions offering continuing education for chefs should offer courses to remedy these deficiencies. Continuing-education courses for chefs should contain content that varies according to the chefs’ ages, educational levels, and specialties. Enterprises and corporations should learn more about the demands of chefs with different personal backgrounds, such as opportunities for promotion, personal development, and sense of achievement, in order to discourage employee turnover. Training designed to improve knowledge, skills and attributes can increase job satisfaction and result in employees remaining in the hospitality industry (Santich, 2004). In particular, managers learning about employee needs, and improving both communication and management support, can enhance training quality. As noted earlier, job satisfaction influences career development confidence. Therefore, enterprises should provide more opportunities for chefs to receive continuing education to promote their professional competence. In addition to helping chefs to create high-quality, delicious dishes, employers offering such continuing education can help chefs to develop within the workplace and to plan career paths. Cron identified four stages of a typical career, exploration, establishment, maintenance, and disengagement. During the career “exploration”, employees must continually upgrade their skills and knowledge according to their job requirements and fully understand what is required of them. Thus, career tasks at this stage involve obtaining the knowledge necessary to ensure successful job performance. During the “establishment” stage, career development involves increasing professional knowledge and autonomy to boost job performance, creativity and innovation. Subsequently, during the “maintenance” stage, development focuses on seeking wider job perspectives while maintaining current performance. The final stage of career development, the “disengagement” stage, involves maintaining acceptable performance while preparing for retirement (Cron, 1984). To meet the career needs of chefs during the disengagement stage, this study suggests that career development programs should assist employees with self-assessment to maintain their current performance in professional associations. One valuable finding of this study was that job satisfaction appears to play a mediating role between professional competence and career development confidence. Since the role of job satisfaction should be obvious, food service managers should understand the needs and characteristics of their chefs, which would elicit chefs’ job satisfaction. In the real world, food service managers need to develop screening programs in order to chose candidates whose traits are fit to be a good chef. Moreover, the development and application of more relevant measures for professional competence and job satisfaction will enhance employee confidence for career development. This will reduce chef turnover. Another implication of this research is the need for current job satisfaction to recognize the importance of job satisfaction. It is advisable that management should give more emphasis to extrinsic issues in job satisfaction. The organization must establish a comprehensive well-being and salary system for chefs. Several limitations of this study should be considered alongside the conclusions. First, as the study participants were drawn from the population of certified chefs in Taiwan and as most were involved in the school-restaurant or catering businesses, the generalizability of the results to chefs elsewhere is unknown. Second, this study employed questionnaires, which are based on self-reporting, and, thus, the researcher had to assume participants were answering honestly. Third, the questionnaires were limited in that respondents had to finish the questionnaires during their lunch breaks; therefore, the number of valid questionnaires might have been larger. Finally, other factors besides job selection satisfaction and current job satisfaction among job satisfaction may influence career development, including job environment or personal characteristics. Future studies thus may identify additional factors affecting the career development of chefs. A cross-sectional comparison of chefs may also be undertaken to reveal whether the results differ across groups and regains. Interviews and focus groups may also prove practical in identifying additional psychological variables that might mediate or moderate the results reported herein.