Living a Vision at Hillerman Hotels

This case describes the efforts of Hillerman Hotels to turnaround the operating performance of the Westward Hilton and Towers, a hotel they purchased out of bankruptcy when the previous owner was forced to sell the property. The general manager charged with the turnaround, Carl Gregg, began by developing a clear strategy and then innovatively devising human resource activities to implement his vision. Carl Gregg is now the executive vice president of operations and oversees the dozen-plus mid- and upscale hotels, owned and operated by the hotel subsidiary of the parent firm, Hillerman Enterprises. Before Gregg and the other corporate officers is a business decision to sell the Westward Hilton and Towers. As Gregg wrestles with this opportunity he worries about the impact of the decision on the hotel staff of Westward, and wonders how this decision might alter the culture and employee morale of the entire hotel group

Predicting Psychological Empowerment among Service Workers: The Effect of Support-Based Relationships

Data from 292 service workers in 21 private clubs show that supportive peer and customer relationships are predictive of higher levels of employee experienced empowerment. Both organizational and employee-customer relationships accounted for significant variation in the dimensions of empowerment: meaningfulness, influence, and self-efficacy. Peer helping and supportive customer relationships were the two most influential predictors of all three empowerment dimensions. Implications for future research and for management practice are discussed

Motivating Hotel Employees: Beyond the Carrot and the Stick

Although motivation must come from within, outside incentives can encourage employees to do a good job. Managers who know what their employees want can design the work environment to complement those desires

Discounting Works in the Hotel Industry: A Structural Approach to Understanding Why

This case study provides an empirical assessment of the relationship between discounting hotel room rates and hotel financial performance. The dynamics of the lodging industry are accounted for through the adoption of an error correction model. Recent research suggests that the use of discounting room rates may not be an effective pricing strategy as it results in increased occupancy rates at decreased average daily rates, thereby reducing a common financial performance indicator – revenue per available room (revPAR). The recommendation made to hotel managers, then, is to avoid discounting and instead adopt an average rate. This study generates opposing findings and reveals that discounting may be a practical short-term pricing solution that may compensate for market disequilibria. The results suggest that using statistical residuals rather than room rate averages may more accurately forecast appropriate hotel room rates and balance supply and demand. Thus, the recommendation of adopting average room rates may provide incorrect implications for managers in the short run

On the Observability of Meso- and Macro-scopic Quantum Coherence of Domain Walls in Magnetic Insulators

Results are presented of a numerical calculation of the tunneling gap for a domain wall moving in the double well potential of a pair of voids in a magnetic insulator. Both symmetric and asymmetric double well potentials are considered. It is found that, even in the absence of dissipation, the prospects for observing quantum coherence on a meso- or macro-scopic scale appears unlikely.Comment: 15 pages, Plain LaTex, UBC TP-93-1

Should NYC’s Restaurateurs Lighten Up? Effects of the City’s Smoke-Free-Air Act

This study indicates that legislation that mandates smoke-free restaurants attracts more business (and money) than it drives away

The Wess-Zumino term and quantum tunneling

The significance of the Wess--Zumino term in spin tunneling is explored, and a formula is established for the splitting of energy levels of a particle with large fermionic spin as an applied magnetic field is switched on.Comment: Latex, 7 page

Instanton picture of the spin tunneling in the Lipkin model

A consistent theory of the ground state energy and its splitting due to the process of tunneling for the Lipkin model is presented. For the functional integral in terms of the spin coherent states for the partition function of the model we accurately calculate the trivial and the instanton saddle point contributions. We show that such calculation has to be perfomed very accurately taking into account the discrete nature of the functional integral. Such accurate consideration leads to finite corrections to a naive continous consideration. We present comparison with numerical calculation of the ground state energy and the tunneling splitting and with the results obtained by the quasiclassical method and get excellent agreement.Comment: REVTEX, 32 pages, 3 figure

Nonadiabatic Landau Zener tunneling in Fe_8 molecular nanomagnets

The Landau Zener method allows to measure very small tunnel splittings \Delta in molecular clusters Fe_8. The observed oscillations of \Delta as a function of the magnetic field applied along the hard anisotropy axis are explained in terms of topological quantum interference of two tunnel paths of opposite windings. Studies of the temperature dependence of the Landau Zener transition rate P gives access to the topological quantum interference between exited spin levels. The influence of nuclear spins is demonstrated by comparing P of the standard Fe_8 sample with two isotopically substituted samples. The need of a generalized Landau Zener transition rate theory is shown.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figure

Low-Temperature Quantum Relaxation in a System of Magnetic Nanomolecules

We argue that to explain recent resonant tunneling experiments on crystals of Mn$_{12}$ and Fe$_8$, particularly in the low-T limit, one must invoke dynamic nuclear spin and dipolar interactions. We show the low-$T$, short-time relaxation will then have a $\sqrt{t/\tau}$ form, where $\tau$ depends on the nuclear $T_2$, on the tunneling matrix element $\Delta_{10}$ between the two lowest levels, and on the initial distribution of internal fields in the sample, which depends very strongly on sample shape. The results are directly applicable to the $Fe_8$ system. We also give some results for the long-time relaxation.Comment: 4 pages, 3 PostScript figures, LaTe