Conceptualising the impact of culture and language upon hospitality service management

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature and definitions of culture and its relationship to language and cultural sensitivity in hospitality management services. Design/methodology/approach: The paper takes the form of a critical literature review followed by a phenomenological exploratory pilot study, using template analysis. Findings: Previous studies indicate that the more individuals understand and embrace notions of intercultural sensitivity, then the better they become at being able to recognise and discriminate between cultural differences. Furthermore, as a by-product, there is an increased appetite and tendency towards adopting cultural perspectives other than ones’ own. However, the operationalisation of this process encourages benchmarking along linear scales, which is problematic and over-simplifies the dynamic and fluid nature of effective cultural transmission. The paper’s findings suggest that rather than there being singular cultural and language constructs, there are cultures, which in places overlap, but elsewhere do not and therefore cannot be placed on universal scales; second, the critical success factor is less about linguistic literacy linked to vocabulary and explicit rational comprehension, and more about a pre-emptive cultural interpretive intelligence which identifies emotion and sentiment. Research limitations/implications: This is largely a conceptual paper, which, it is suggested, needs further empirical investigation – both longitudinally and on a larger scale. Originality/value: This perspective moves management, marketing and service delivery away from zero-sum games and transactional exchanges, whether financial, social or linguistic, towards collective wealth creation and empowerment – manifest in social cultural capital and the generation of tacit knowledge. The challenge that remains is how this process can be formalised and the tacit and implicit knowledge gained and created can be preserved

A Study of Teamworking in Hotels.

The aim of this study is to explore the little-researched concept of teamworking as it applies to multi-unit hotel operations in the UK. Hotel operations in the UK and elsewhere are being subjected to market and structural changes that may affect their strategic approaches to managing human resources. The study explores the perceptions of teamworking as evidenced by hotel employees through interviews, surveys and a series of action research meetings with two major multi-unit hotel groups in the UK. The literature search led to the conclusion that much of the current writing concerning teamwork is discursive and fails to take into account the characteristics of service industries and the hospitality industry in particular. The systems view of teamwork suggested by Schermerhorn et al (1995) was adapted to provide a theoretical basis for studying hotel teams. The qualitative data support the view that teamworking in hotels is a complex activity and that solutions vary according to unit and employee perception. One constraint to effective teamworking is a perceived gap between staff and managers which inhibits communication and the understanding of objectives. The quantitative data suggests that the innovative teamworking initiatives used by Hotel company 2 leads to a team climate that is better than that in some Hotel company 1 hotels. Nevertheless, all the hotels studied scored worse than a norm set of teams in diverse organizational settings, and this suggests that teamworking in hotels needs more development. Another aim is to evaluate the action research technique as a method of continuous improvement in hotels. The experience of the study led to the conclusion that action research is a valuable tool, but that it is time-consuming and difficult to facilitate, and this may not suit the practical and operations-centred nature of many hotels. The study concludes that traditionality and the hierarchical structure of many hotels can constrain effective teamwork. If hotels are to make better use of their human resources, they will need to look critically at the way that employees work together. Teamworking is a desirable strategic objective but it is difficult to achieve