Research gap and objective statement formulation: a practice note for the agile literature review approach

Research gap and objective statement formulation: a practice note for the agile literature review approach (for the academic-oriented type):

Article 1: Manolopoulos, D., Peitzika, E., Mamakou, X.J. and Myloni, B. 2022. "Psychological and formal employment contracts, workplace attitudes and employees’ turnover intentions: Causal and boundary inferences in the hotel industry" Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management 51, Elsevier: 289–302

".. existing hospitality research in crisis periods: (i) is mainly centered on tourism demand modelling and forecasting (e.g. Song & Li, 2021; Zhang et al., 2021), and hotel performances (e.g. Shin et al., 2021), leaving employees’ perceptions of and reactions to the employment relationship relatively untouched (Sigala, 2020), (ii) does not differentiate between luxury, mid-ranged, and budget hotels, despite their distinctiveness not only in the quality of services’ provision (Wirtz et al., 2020), but also in their human resource practices (Gannon et al., 2015)….”

The underlying research gap statement 1: The existing academic literature neglects to study employees' perceptions of and reactions to employment relationship for different types of hotels in crisis periods.

Article 2: Nguyen, T.H. and Loo, P.T.. 2024. "“Boss, I am gonna to quit!!!” The resignation experiences of hotel employees in Vietnam" International Journal of Hospitality Management 119, Elsevier 103726.

"Phuong and Vinh’s (2017) study provides some implications for employee turnover issues, investigating factors impacting job satisfaction of employees in the hospitality industry. The factors are pay, promotion potential, relationships with co-workers, relationships with supervisors, fairness and workplace environment. However, they did not investigate reasons why hotel employees left their jobs or the whole resignation process of employees".

The underlying research gap statement 2: The existing academic literature neglects to study why employees leave their jobs and the whole process of employee resignation in the hospitality industry".

Article 3: Yang, J.T., Wan, C.S. and Fu, Y.J. 2012. "Qualitative examination of employee turnover and retention strategies in international tourist hotels in Taiwan" International Journal of Hospitality Management 31, Elsevier:  837– 848.

"An extensive body of literature pertaining to strategies for employee retention shows that motivated compensation policies and well-established training and development programs minimize turnover (e.g., Cho et al., 2006; Davidson et al., 2006). However, many studies indicate that the turnover rate remains a huge operational challenge, with some countries, such as South Korea, increasing in its rates (Kim et al., 2010)"

The underlying research gap statement 3: The existing academic literature do not offer adequate and clear situation-specific guidance to improve employee retention strategies in the hotel industry".

Based on the three research gap statements identified in an interpretive way from the academic literature, I offer the following three research objective statements for the following overall research objective statement:

To evaluate the current employee stay factors and retention practices for the young middle managers of the Hong Kong luxury hotels.

More specifically, three research objective statements are proposed under the overall research objective statement:

Research objective statement 1: to find out how the young middle managers' perceptions of their employment relationship affect their stay intention in the Hong Kong luxury hotel sector, notably in the crisis period.

Research objective statement 2: to find out the reasons why the young middle managers quit their jobs in the Hong Kong luxury hotel sector.

Research objective statement 3: to evaluate and formulate useful employee retention strategies for the the young middle managers of the Hong Kong luxury hotel sector.

By incorporating the statements formulated, I now produce the following agile literature review approach (for the academic-oriented project type) deliverable: 

The research gap-objective table for the overall research objective: To evaluate the current employee stay factors and retention practices for the young middle managers of the Hong Kong luxury hotels.

Research gap statements	The associated research objective statements
Research gap statement 1: the existing academic literature is unclear how the young middle managers' perceptions of their employment relationship affect their stay intention in the Hong Kong luxury hotel sector, notably in the crisis period.	Research objective statement 1 (minor):  to find out how the young middle managers' perceptions of their employment relationship affect their stay intention in the Hong Kong luxury hotel sector, notably in the crisis period.
Research gap statement 2: the existing academic literature is unclear on the reasons why the young middle managers quit their jobs in the Hong Kong luxury hotel sector.	Research objective statement 2 (main): to find out the reasons why the young middle managers quit their jobs in the Hong Kong luxury hotel sector.
Research gap statement 3: the existing academic literature does not offer clear and useful employee retention strategies for the young middle managers of the Hong Kong luxury hotel sector.	Research objective statement 3 (main): to evaluate and formulate useful employee retention strategies for the young middle managers of the Hong Kong luxury hotel sector.

There are 2 main research objective statements and 1 minor research objective statement in the research gap-objective table. Also note that the formulation of the research gap statements and the associated research objective statements involves explicit localization efforts as well as the personal intellectual preference of the researcher (e.g., the MBA student doing his/ her dissertation project).

** One can say that the overall research objective statement is the upper-level research objective while the ingredient research objective statements (as presented in the research gap-objective table) are the lower-level research objectives.