| Author: | Hu, Xiao Ricky |
| Title: | Do hospitality internships work? : a pretest-posttest study |
| Advisors: | McKercher, Bob (SHTM) |
| Degree: | DHTM |
| Year: | 2018 |
| Subject: | Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations Hotel management -- Study and teaching -- China Internship programs |
| Department: | School of Hotel and Tourism Management |
| Pages: | 136, 5 pages : illustrations |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | This study aims to identify the importance of hotel students' internship experience by comparing the difference of internship expectation & perception and job commitment of hospitality students before and after. As a result of rapid economy growth, the Chinese hospitality industry is regarded not only as one of the largest industry and also as a fertile field of future expansion. By given the fast growth of the hospitality industry, the demand of quality and stability of manpower also increased. Although a majority of China has low unemployment rates, the rate of staff turnover in the hospitality industry has been increasing. Having the high requirement of personalized service, the hospitality industry is a labor-intensive business which depends on a well-qualified workforce. The scarcity of talents becomes the most serious challenge for the industry. The quality of hospitality talent is determined by effectiveness of hospitality education. As a key component of hospitality education, internship programme plays a role of bridging the school learning and on-job learning. Therefore, the paper tries to review the outcome and effectiveness of the internship programme by assessing the internship experience and job commitment of the student after the internship. Quantitative research methodologies were applied in the study. First, both the pre and post survey has been designed to collect primary data about students' internship expectation and perception; next, a pilot test was undertaken in the group of students to assess the reliability; and finally, the pre- survey was conducted, and all the respondents were tracked for conducting the post survey. A total of 222 valid questionnaires were collected. All the data analyzed base upon the pre- and post- survey result of these 222 samples. Base on the result of data analysis, the relationship and the change of all the variables have been tested. All of the research objectives are achieved. The results indicate that the internship experience is generally acceptable but affected by moderating factors like gender and education programme. The overall satisfaction of the internship decreased in most of the variables whilst the commitment change is not significant. Henceļ¼the post job commitment is not related with the internship satisfaction, which is not aligned with the prior research. The theoretical contribution of this study to the literature is three parts. Firstly, this study contributes a research framework by adopting a pre- and post- tracking methodology. Next, the results develops a unique commitment change group. Thirdly, the study makes contribution by identifying and upgrading 51 determinants which can influence students' internship satisfaction and commitment. The practical contributions of this study benefit both hotel education and the hotel industry. The findings could enable both education side and industry side to gain a better understanding of internship programme. Thus, both sides can work together to better design internship programme to achieve desired outcomes and could effectively improve the job commitment for students after the completion of internship. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | restricted access |
Files in This Item:
| File | Description | Size | Format | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 991022180958403411.pdf | For All Users (off-campus access for PolyU Staff & Students only) | 1.96 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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