Drivers of HR management effectiveness in restaurant enterprises under contemporary challenges

Abstract

The article provides a theoretical justification and systematization of the drivers of HR management effectiveness in restaurant enterprises under contemporary challenges. The article substantiates the need for a comprehensive assessment of HR management effectiveness, considering the service-oriented nature of the restaurant business and the interrelationships among HR, behavioral, service, and economic outcomes. This study proposes five interrelated criteria: labor productivity, service quality, team stability, economic efficiency of HR management processes, and employee engagement and customer orientation. Integrating them shifts the focus from optimizing individual indicators to comprehensively assessing the HR management system’s effectiveness. Using systematic scientific approaches, the study identifies five groups of factors: leadership and managerial, HR process-related, HR organizational, individual and behavioral, and service and communication factors. The study distinguishes between factors as conditions and characteristics of the HR management system and drivers as mechanisms that positively affect its effectiveness. The scientific novelty lies in developing an integrated logic explaining how HR management drivers translate into the performance outcomes of restaurant enterprises. Three interrelated levels of effectiveness are substantiated: the individual level, which characterizes employees’ state and attitudes; the group level, which encompasses productivity, team stability, and customer-oriented behavior; and the organizational level, at which HR management outcomes are transformed into the quality of service interactions, customer experience, and the enterprise’s economic outcomes. The proposed approach avoids directly equating HR decisions with financial indicators and reveals the intermediate mechanisms through which restaurant business performance is formed. A promising direction for further research is to empirically test the relationships between HR management drivers and outcomes and develop an indicator system to assess the strength of their effects. Keywords: HR management, effectiveness, restaurant industry, customer orientation.