The role of strategic groups in understanding strategic human resource management

Purpose – This article explores how understanding the challenges faced by companies’ attempts to create competitive advantage through their human resources and HRM practices can be enhanced by insights into the concept of strategic groups within industries. Based within the international hotel industry this study identifies how strategic groups emerge in the analysis of HRM practices and approaches. It sheds light on the value of strategic groups as a way of readdressing the focus on firm and industry level analyses. Design Methodology/Approach – Senior human resource executives and their teams across eight international hotel companies (IHCs) were interviewed in corporate and regional headquarters, with observations and the collection of company documentation complementing the interviews. Findings – The findings demonstrate that strategic groups emerge from analysis of the HRM practices and strategies used to develop hotel general managers (HGMs) as strategic human resources in the international hotel industry. The value of understanding industry structures, dynamics and intermediary levels of analysis are apparent where specific industries place occupational constraints on their managerial resources and limit the range of strategies and expansion modes companies can adopt. Research limitations/implications - This study indicates that further research on strategic groups will enhance the theoretical understanding of strategic human resource management (SHRM) and specifically the forces that act to constrain the achievement of competitive advantage through human resources. A limitation of this study is the dependence on the human resource divisions’ perspectives of realising international expansion ambitions in the hotel industry. Practical implications - This study has implications for companies’ engagement with their executives’ perceptions of opportunities and threats, and suggests companies will struggle to achieve competitive advantage where such perceptions are consistent with their competitors. Originality/value - Developments in strategic human resource management have relied upon the conceptual and theoretical developments in strategic management, however, an understanding of the impact of strategic groups and their shaping of SHRM has not been previously explored

Using segmentation to compete in the age of the sharing economy: testing a core-periphery framework

Airbnb has emerged as a credible competitive threat to the hotel industry. Consequently, hotel brands are having to rethink the experiences they provide to customer in an increasingly competitive environment. Despite these trends in the industry, experience-related research that examines and informs these developments remains under-represented in the hospitality and tourism literature. The present study offers a systematic approach to examine the potential differences in experiential consumption in the accommodations industry. Using a multiple-group analysis approach, it examines the moderating effects of individual characteristics and situational factors on the nature and dynamics of experiential consumption in the accommodations industry. The findings of the study culminate in the core-periphery framework of the hospitality consumption experience that can provide a relevant theoretical lens for future research into the different sectors and types of experiences within the hospitality and tourism industry. The study also outlines important implications for the hotel industry’s strategic experience design initiatives, from the standpoint of product development, the segmentation, targeting and positioning (STP) process, and marketing communications.Accepted manuscrip

Trans-national approaches to locally situated concerns: exploring the meanings of post-socialist space

The need to examine critially existing understandings of processes of societal change in Russia and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) has formed a key area of debate in recent years. Suggested means for furthering this debate include an examination of the meaning and usefulness of the post-socialist category, a critique of the conceptual and practical divides between East and West, attention to the various impacts of change at the local level, and an active engagement with a wide range of actors (academics, policymakers and practitioners) working both in the UK and in the regions in question

Foucault and the Iranian revolution: gender and the seductions of Islamism [Review]

Review of Foucault and the Iranian Revolutio

Rethinking network governance: new forms of analysis and the implications for IGR/MLG

Our position is that network governance can be understood as a communicative arena. Networks, then, are not defined by frequency of interactions between actors but by sharing of and contest between different clusters of ideas, theories and normative orientations (discourses) in relation to the specific context within which actors operate. A discourse comprises an ensemble of ideas, concepts and causal theories that give meaning to and reproduce ways of understanding the world (Chouliaraki and Fairclough 1999). Consequently, network governance can be understood as the inherently political process through which discourses are produced, reproduced and transformed. Democratic network governance thus becomes the study of the way in which the core challenges of democratic practice are addressed – how is legitimacy awarded, by what mechanisms are decisions reached, and how is accountability enabled. Three approaches to the discursive analysis of democracy in network governance are considered - argumentation analysis, inter-subjectivity, and critical discourse analysis – and their implications for the study of intergovernmental relations and multi-level governance (IGR/MLG) are discussed. Case examples are provided. We conclude that the value for the study of MLG/IGR is to complement existing forms of analysis by opening up the communicative and ideational aspects of interactions between levels of government and other actors

Half in Ten: Why Taking Disability into Account is Essential to Reducing Income Poverty and Expanding Economic Inclusion

Disability is both a fundamental cause and consequence of income poverty. The income-poverty rate for persons with disabilities is between two to three times the rate for persons without disabilities. Yet, contemporary policy debate and research about income poverty in the United States is largely silent about disability. This paper argues that we need to have a broader view of what poverty is and also that disability must be taken into account in anti-poverty policy

Strategic human resource management: insights from the international hotel industry

In the strategic human resource management (SHRM) field three approaches have dominated, namely, the universal or best-practice, best-fit or contingency and resource-based view (RBV). This study investigates evidence for the simultaneous or mixed adoption of these approaches by eight case study firms in the international hotel industry. Findings suggest there is considerable evidence of the combined use of the first two approaches but that the SHRM RBV approach was difficult to achieve by all companies. Overall, gaining differentiation through SHRM practices was found to be challenging due to specific industry forces. The study identifies that where companies derive some competitive advantage from their human resources and HRM practices they have closely aligned their managers’ expertise with their corporate market entry mode expertise and developed some distinctive, complex and integrated HRM interventions, which have a mutually reinforcing effect

Critical review of strategic planning research in hospitality and tourism

Strategic planning remains one of the most popular management tools, but theoretical and empirical developments in the academic literature have been a slow burn. This paper addresses this gap and provides an up-to-date review of hospitality and tourism strategic planning research. We review strategic planning research from 1995 to 2013 in seven leading tourism academic journals, and adopt a modern and broad conceptualization of strategic planning. While there is some awareness of effective tourism strategic planning processes, academic research has not kept pace with practice. To stimulate a resurgence of research interest, we provide future research directions. We observe a methodological introspection and present some new research methodologies, which are critically important in researching the turbulent, chaotic and nonlinear tourism environment