A survey of literature relating to administrative dietetics

This article provides insight into the complexity of hospital foodservice operations by reviewing selected published material and identifies subject areas that are well developed in the literature. A survey was made of leading professional journals, and an annotated bibliography was compiled of pertinent articles from the Journal of American Dietetic Association from 1965 to 1982. Also, the research abstracts published annually by the Society for the Advancement of Foodservice Research were consolidated for the period 1971-1982. Analysis of over 500 professional articles and research abstracts indicated that personnel management was the most studied area, followed by financial management, productivity, and computer use. Topics which seemed to be overlooked included unionization, cafeteria policies, and allocation of production labour cost.