Impact of Work Environmental Factors on Job Performance , Mediating Role of Work Motivation : A Study of Hotel Sector in England

The study tested the relationship between work environmental factors and job performance with work motivation and the extent to which this relationship is mediated by work motivation among a sample of hotel workers in England. In this cross-sectional study, a questionnaire survey was conducted among 254 hotel workers at twenty-five chain hotels in Bristol, England. The results suggest that there is a significant relationship between work environmental factors and job performance and that work motivation mediates the relationship between working conditions and job performance. The results also suggest that there is a significant relationship between work motivation and job performance of the hotel workers. The results point to the importance of working conditions and work motivation in explaining job performance of hotel workers in the framework of work environmental conditions and job performance. The limitations and implications and the study are also discussed.


Introduction
Job performance is a very significant factor affecting profitability of an organization (Bevan, 2012).Inefficient job performance will bring about a tragedy to the organization as associated with lower productivity, profitability and impairment of overall organizational effectiveness (Cooke, 2000;Okoyo & Ezejiofor, 2013).As pointed out by Viswesvaran and Ones (2000), job Performance is the core construct of today's work place.Job performance is defined as behaviors or activities that are performed towards achieving the organization's goals and objectives (Motowidlo, Borman, & Schmit, 1999).Performance is important for organizations as employee performance leads to business success and performance is important for individual as accomplishing tasks can be a source of satisfaction (Muchhal, 2014).
Existing research has established a link between working conditions and job performance (Fine & Kobrick, 1978;Mohapatra & Srivastava, 2003;Naharuddin & Sadegi, 2013, Brill, Margulis, & Konar, 1985;Naharuddin & Sadegi, 2013;Chandrasekarr, 2011;Dolden & Ward, 1986;Davis, 1984;Vischer, 2008).Having the right environmental factors both physical and psychosocial will lead to increase performance (Buhter, 1997;Chandrasekar, 2011).Khan et al. (2011) investigated in their study the impact of workplace environment and infrastructure on employees' performance among a sample of 150 respondents from the education sector in Pakistan and concluded that incentives at workplace had a positive impact on employee's performance while infrastructure at workplace had no significant impact on employees.A large number of work environmental studies have been conducted in office environments.For example, one study suggested the management should make an additional investment in ergonomic tables and chairs to enhance worker's productivity (Miles, 2000).Additionally, some studies have examined the impact of work environmental factors such as the height and thickness of workstation partitions, furniture measurements and the amount and availability of file and work storage on individual and team performance (Visher 2008).Kahya's (2007) study concluded that there is an impact of job characteristics and working conditions on job performance in a manufacturing setting.Studies in the context of hotel sector have shown that working conditions in the hotel sector are poor (Wight & Pollert, 2006).Yet, no study has been conducted to examine the environmental conditions on job performance in the context of hotel workers in Britain, to the best of researcher's knowledge so far.With regard to the hotel sector jobs, environmental conditions range from ordinary to extreme conditions in terms of the factors such as heat, humidity, noise, smell, light, and dust.Identifying the impact of work environment on job performance of hotel employees will contribute to understand ways in which managers can enhance job performance of workers.Therefore, in an attempt to fill this research gap, this study investigates the impact of work environment factors on performance related matters within the context of hotel sector in Britain.
One of the most known constructs of job performance adds to the association between motivation and job performance.Motivation directs certain behavior toward achieving a specific goal (Sansone & Harackiewicz, 2000).Previous research have demonstrated that motivate employees are inclined to be more productive than non-motivated employees (Chaudhary & Sharma, 2012;Afful-broni, 2012).Aisha and colleague's (2013) found that the variables incentives, motivation and working conditions have a significant effect on employee performance in an Indonesian university.Previous studies have also examined the impact of moderating and mediating role of motivation on workplace characteristics and outcomes relationship.Therefore, scholars have suggested that more research on mediating variables in workplace conditions and outcome studies are needed (Carr, Schmidt, Ford, & Deshon, 2003;Ostroff, 2003).For example, Kuvaas (2006) found that intrinsic motivation both moderated and mediated the relationship between performance appraisal satisfaction and work performance.Also, Geister and Hertel (2006) found that initial motivation moderated the online feedback-performance improvement relationship.Guo and colleague's study (2014) examined the mediating role of intrinsic motivation on the relationship between developmental feedback and employee job performance.Barrick, Stewart and Piotrowski (2002) tested a model that examines the mediating effect of motivation on the relationship between personality traits and performance in a sales job.Parker and colleague's (2003) tested the mediating role of motivation in a combination of several studies.In light of the above empirical evidence presented, I propose that motivation may act as a moderator in the work environment and job performance relationship.Therefore, the model in the current study is a mediate one where it is proposed that motivation act as mediator: "mediators explain how external events take on internal psychological significance" (Baron and Kenny, 1986).The mediating effect of motivation on the relationship between work environmental factors and Job performance has not been examined in previous researches.The aim of this study was to test the relationship between work environmental factors and job performance (e.g., task and contextual performance) with work motivation and the extent to which this relationship is mediated by work motivation among a sample of hotel workers in the Great Britain.The study proposed to test a probable unified hypothesis: motivation, as a very conspicuous and handy factor in the context of hotel workers, is an essential functional [or buffer] link between physical work conditions and the final outcome from job performance.

Background Variables
This section of the questionnaire asked questions about sex, age (a five-point response scale), educational qualification, job position, years of employment in the hotel and in the hotel sector (a five-point response scale).All participants responded to a questionnaire concerning background variables.

Work Environmental Factors
The domain of work environment contains two parts: physical and psychosocial working conditions (Arsalani et al., 2011).A questionnaire was developed using the physical items to quantify specific heavy lifting, bending/uncomfortable posture and prolonged standing position within the hotel profession taken from the report " Protecting workers in hotels, restaurants and catering" (2008) published by the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work.The scale was a five point likert scale, with scores ranging from 1 to 5, the higher scores indicated higher exposure.
Psychosocial working conditions were measured using a modified version of the medium-length version of the COPSOQ-I questionnaire that contains 11 subscales: quantitative demands, emotional demands, influence at work, meaning of work, role clarity, quality of leadership, sense of community, insecurity at work, job satisfaction and two scales for measuring general health and mental health (Kristensen et al., 2005).The scales measuring general health and mental health were excluded for the current study.Participants were asked to indicate on a Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).

Work Motivation
Work motivation was measured using the 18-item WEIMS.The scale WEIMS contains 18 items and assesses six types of motivation postulated by SDT (i.e., intrinsic motivation, integrated, identified, introjected and external regulations, and amotivation).Participants were asked to indicate on a Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (does not correspond at all) to 5 (corresponds exactly) the extent to which the items represent the reasons they are presently involved in their work.

Job Performance
Task performance: As a part of this research, a sample of hotel managers were asked to identify the appropriate criteria for measuring task based job performance based on hotel's job analysis.Job knowledge, physical ability to carry duties, communication skills, teamwork skills, punctuality and concentrating to duties were identified as important criteria for measuring job performance based on the results of the job analysis.In addition, four of the criteria developed by Motowidlo and Van Scotter (1994) were included.Managers were asked to rate the job performance of their workers on a five-point Likert scale ranging from (1) very poor to (5) excellent.
Contextual performance: A questionnaire was developed based on the sixteen items of contextual performance identified by Borman and Motowidlo (1993).Managers were asked to rate the job performance of their workers on a five-point Likert scale ranging from (1) very poor to (5) excellent.It was guaranteed that their responses would remain completely confidential.All of the managers completed the performance rating questionnaires for all their employees.

Samples and Data Collection Method
A questionnaire was distributed to hotel workers who were randomly selected from 25 hotels in Bristol in this cross sectional study.The questionnaire was distributed among 600 workers but received 254 questionnaires.The questionnaire included a letter that explained the purpose of the survey and guaranteed confidentiality.These responding subjects were also sent reminders and requested that each question answered in order for the questionnaire to be considered complete, ensuring there were no missing data.

Ethical Considerations
The research proposal was approved by the Ethics Committee of the University of Bristol, United Kingdom.Permission was granted from the managers of the chosen hotels to conduct this survey.Further, permission and written consent have been obtained from all participants and they were given information about the aim of the study.Before filling in the questionnaires, all participants were informed that participation was anonymous, and that they could terminate their participation at any time during the study.

Reliability Test
Table 1 shows the Cronbach's Alpha for the independent variables and also for the dependent variables.The closer the Cronbach's Alpha is to 1, the higher the internal consistency reliability.As point out by Sekaran (2003), the reliability that is less than 0.60 is considered as poor and if it is in the range of 0.70, it is considered as acceptable.As for those, which are more than 0.80, is it considered as good.
The analysis shows that the Cronbach Alpha for the job performance is 0.936, for physical work environmental factors is 0.942, for psychosocial environment is 0.961 and for motivation is 0.954.Accordingly, all of the variables are considered as good because they are more than 0.8.

Descriptive Analysis and Correlational Analysis
The demographic results of the respondents gained by the questionnaires of this study are presented in the figure 1.According to the figure 1, the percentage of the male respondent is 69.29.Meanwhile, as for the female respondent, the percentage is lower with 30.70 percent.Majority of the respondent were aged less than 30 years with 77.94 percent.In terms of qualifications, majority of the respondents were educated at the www.ccsen

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The descr variables i between o considered environme inspect the findings.P significant 0.481).A

Discussion, Limitations and Implications of the Study
In conclusion, the significant findings of this study can be highlighted as below: (a) Environmental conditions significantly affected job performance.The results are consistent with the previous studies showing an association between working environment and job performance (Fine & Kobrick,1978;Mohapatra & Srivastava, 2003;Naharuddin & Sadegi, 2013).It implies managers and supervisors must consider improving work environment while considering both physical and psychosocial factors to promote job performance of their staff.(b) Motivation has a significant effect on job performance and the findings are consistent with the previous research findings (Lyons, Duxbury, & Higgins 2006;Maidani 1991;Cerasoli et al., 2014).It reveals that employees perform better when they are motivated.It means that the management must take initiatives to promote motivation among workers, both intrinsically and extrinsically by provide increments in pay and benefits and acknowledging employee perspectives and encouraging initiatives; (c) motivation holds a mediating effect between the relationship between working conditions and job performance.This suggests that those workers who perceive working conditions to be poor or bad are less motivated and consequently are not performing satisfactory.
The participants of the study held different jobs within the hotels.The data was not collected on the participant's job title.It is likely that that there are variations with regard to working conditions and job performance across different job titles.Therefore, it is recommended that future studies examine the relationship between work and job performance across different job titles.This study was limited and only focused on the role of environmental conditions, work motivation on job performance of hotel workers in 20 selected hotels in Bristol, United kingdom.Further research is suggested to collect data over a wider range like the employees of the different departments of the hotel sector overall in Britain to make sure if the findings of this study can be generalized.A further research can also be conducted on the effect of personality, which is found to be effective on job performance in many researches.
The study shows that job performance is very much influenced by work environment and motivation of workers.
The study also confirms the mediating role of motivation in working conditions and job performance relationship within regard to hotel workers.Hotel industry needs to consider improving its environmental factors and ways to improve work motivation to boost employee performance.
Similar to the work of Kahya (2007), the present research provides evidence that it is helpful to consider the impact of motivation on job performance while taking motivation into account.With regard to motivation, good working conditions will enhance motivation of workers.Considering the positive impact of work place environmental characteristics and work motivation on job performance, it is suggested that the management should take initiatives to motivate employees and improve work environments.As employees have motivation, their job performance will increase.The present findings show that working conditions can predict job performance better when individuals are motivated toward the job; that is, when they are wanting to achieve the desired outcomes and goals of the job.In any case, I hope that motivation will turn out to be a valuable mediate and moderate variable in future job performance research.

Table 1 .
The reliability analysis for independent and dependent analysis

Table 3
hotel workers, is an essential functional [or buffer] link between physical work conditions and the final outcome from job performance is supported.

Table 4 .
Results of hierarchical regression analysis