Reactive Maintenance Practices and Employee Job Performance: The Moderating Role of Management Support in Five Star-Rated Hotels in Nairobi City County, Kenya
Keywords:
Reactive maintenance, Management Support, Employee job performance, Five star rated hotel, Nairobi, KenyaAbstract
Reactive maintenance remains prevalent in luxury hospitality, yet its human resource consequences are poorly understood. Drawing on Organizational Support Theory and the Conservation of Resources framework, this study examines how reactive maintenance practices influence employee job performance and whether management support moderates this relationship among maintenance staff in five-star hotels. A concurrent triangulation mixed-methods design was employed across all nine five-star-rated hotels in Nairobi City County, Kenya. Quantitative data were gathered from 323 maintenance employees via structured questionnaires, supplemented by semi-structured interviews with nine maintenance managers. Pearson correlation and hierarchical multiple regression were used to analyze the data. Correlation analysis revealed that reactive maintenance was significantly and negatively associated with employee job performance (r = −.566, p < .01), while management support was significantly and positively associated with performance (r = .483, p < .01). Hierarchical regression confirmed that reactive maintenance exerted a significant negative direct effect (β = −0.478, p < .001, R² = .320). The interaction between reactive maintenance and management support was negative and significant (β = −0.579, p < .001, ΔR² = .047), indicating that management support amplified rather than attenuated the adverse effect. Conditional effects showed that at low levels of management support, reactive maintenance had no significant impact on performance (β = −0.094, p = .380), whereas at high levels of support, the negative effect intensified (β = −0.737, p < .001). Hotels should prioritize transitioning from reactive to preventive maintenance infrastructure rather than relying on managerial support alone to mitigate operational disruptions. Where immediate transitions are infeasible, leaders should recalibrate supportive communications to narrow the expectation-reality gap that drives performance erosion.
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