ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the context of hospitality work, the psychological needs approach to motivation, and the range of functions of motivation, and suggests that integration in the wider society affects motivation. An outside view of the industry might regard relative low pay, high labour mobility and the extent of immigrant labour together with a range of jobs that are either low or semi-skilled as evidence that managers face problems in terms of motivation. Seeing differences in performance as attributed to motivation has made management interested in influencing motivation in order to increase performance and in trying to select on the basis of identified motivation. Seeing motivation in terms of a continuous dimension of satisfaction or dissatisfaction has the effect of suggesting that all facets of the work situation have the capability of being both satisfiers or dissatisfiers and therefore of being motivators. The simplest way to see the process of motivation is to see it as a stimulus-response mechanism.
