Managerial attitudes, acceptance and efficiency of HACCP systems in Hungarian catering
Highlights
► Results of a survey, based on 1100 questionnaire on HACCP systems in Hungarian catering. ► Considerable differences in opinion of managers on utility of HACCP systems. ► Identification of different managerial approaches. ► determination of interrelationships between managerial attitudes, strategy and the hygienic conditions of the kitchen.
Introduction
The catering systems were developed rather rapidly in Hungary between the 1960s and 1980s. The so-called socialist industrialisation was based on an extensive use of manpower and the two-earner family model made it necessary to establish relatively well-equipped canteens in the proximity of public institutions and work places. The hygienic conditions of these facilities were supervised by rigid state inspection. The former social system, based on public ownership of means of production, collapsed at the end of the 1980s and this historic process exercised a deep-rooted effect on the catering industry too. In the 1990s, during the period of socio-economic transition, the role and structure of catering changed profoundly. There was a proliferation of numerous, small-scale catering enterprises, as a consequence of privatisation and a transformation of large-scale catering service providers. One part of public institutions and works kept the kitchens and canteens under their supervisions, while the others outsourced them. There was a rather rapid shrinking in monetary resources of public institutions (e.g. hospitals and schools) for catering. The majority of the catering enterprises began their activities with a rather low capital. The state inspection was reorganised and the food inspection declined. As a consequence of these processes the numbers of foodborne diseases increased rapidly.
As a result of the economic competition, owners tried to decrease their operational costs by decreasing the efforts to keep up hygiene. In our preliminary interviews with catering managers it became obvious that the acceptance of legal documents on the compulsory introduction of HACCP systems was rather mixed. The aim of this article is to determine the relationship amongst the strategy of catering enterprises, the managers’ qualifications and attitudes, and the practical effects of the HACCP system.
Section snippets
Literature background and hypothesis development
In the last decade food safety issues have played an increasingly important role in catering managers’ thinking. Coleman, Griffith, and Botterill (2000) proved that 96% of Wels caterers stated that compliance with the legislation would make them feel more confident about food safety. At the same time, the authors’ results raised doubts about the ability of some caterers to transfer positive attitudes about food safety in general into the implementation of specific actions and to identify steps
Data collection
The attitudes and opinions concerning the introduction and application of HACCP systems have been determined based on a direct question survey of catering managers, questioned by local members of the National Public Health and Medical Officer Service. In addition, these officers, who carried out these surveys, have been asked to evaluate the actual food hygienic situation of the given catering service provider. The content of this evaluating questionnaire is presented in Annex 1. The content of
Strategies of catering service providers
In the first phase of investigations we asked the catering service providers to evaluate the importance of some strategy elements (applying the vocabulary of strategic planning: elements of functional partial strategies) from the perspective of their business vision.
The main directions of thinking and business approaches were analysed by using the CATPA method (Fig. 1). Based on Cronbach’s alpha, two dimensions could be determined.
In his seminal work, Porter (1980) determined three types of
Acknowledgement
The research has been partially supported by OTKA K81594 project.
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