Skills of Foodservice Managers within foodservices in public hospitals in Gauteng Province, South Africa.

Abstract

In the study on which this article reports, a greater understanding of the middle management skills that are critical to manage a foodservice unit in public hospitals in South Africa effectively, were investigated. A quantitative research approach using survey design was employed for this study. Data was collected from 131 foodservice supervisors and foodservice assistants using a structured questionnaire. A fourpoint Likert-type scale was used to determine the participant’s perceptions regarding the importance of Belemu’s (2000) framework for foodservice managers. The responses were “Of Some Importance (OSI, “Important But not Essential (IBE)”, “Definitely of Importance” (DOI) and “Of Vital Importance” (OVI) respectively. A visual analogue scale was also used to evaluate the perceptions of employees. Descriptive statistics (frequencies and means) were used to describe the data set. Knowledge of policies and procedures were identified as the most important skills category when the average of the responses (66.54%) of OVI was calculated followed by Risk management (64.58%). General management was perceived as the least important with 49.27% of respondents rating it as OVI. Technical skills was perceived as the second least important (51.92%) of respondents rating it as OVI. A similar pattern was detected from the visual analogue scale results. Knowledge of policies and procedures was also rated as the most important and General management as the least important. The Risk management category was more important to foodservice managers compared to the Quality control skills category.

Keywords

• Skills
• middle management
• foodservice units
• public hospitals
• foodservice managers