Peter Jones and Andrew Lockwood identified some of the reasons that hospitality management research and education is in a potential spiral of decline. Undeniably one of the main reasons is that the existence of the independent Hotel School model, within a university business school, is being questioned. Marketing, human resource management, finance, operations can all be taught by subject specialists, ideally underpinned by leading research. Hotel Schools per se are not a thing of the past, far from it, world-class centres exist, they are just not the subject of this reflection

O'Gorman, Kevin D.

English

University of Strathclyde Institutional Repository

Strathprints Institutional RepositoryO’Gorman, Kevin D. (2008) Getting on with the job: a response to Jones and Lockwood. HospitalityReview, 10 (4). pp. 19-22. ISSN 1464-9101Strathprints is designed to allow users to access the research output of the University of Strathclyde.Copyright c© and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authorsand/or other copyright owners. You may not engage in further distribution of the material for anyprofitmaking activities or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute both the url (http://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/) and the content of this paper for research or study, educational, ornot-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge.Any correspondence concerning this service should be sent to Strathprints administrator:mailto:strathprints@strath.ac.ukhttp://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/  O'Gorman, Kevin D (2008) Getting on with the job: a response to Jones and Lockwood. The Hospitality Review, 10 (4). pp. 19-22. ISSN 1464-9101     http://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/7308/   This is an author-produced version of a paper published in The Hospitality Review, 10 (4). pp. 19-22. ISSN 1464-9101. This version has been peer-reviewed, but does not include the final publisher proof corrections, published layout, or pagination.  Strathprints is designed to allow users to access the research output of the University of Strathclyde. Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. You may not engage in further distribution of the material for any profitmaking activities or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute both the url (http://eprints.cdlr.strath.ac.uk) and the content of this paper for research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge. You may freely distribute the url (http://eprints.cdlr.strath.ac.uk) of the Strathprints website.  Any correspondence concerning this service should be sent to The Strathprints Administrator: eprints@cis.strath.ac.uk  P eter Jones and Andrew Lockwood iden-tified some of the reasons that hospitality management research and education is in a potential spiral of decline. Undeniably one of the main reasons is that the existence of the independent hotel school model, within a university business school, is being questioned. Marketing, human resource man-agement, finance, operations can all be taught by subject specialists, ideally underpinned by leading research. Hotel schools per se are not a thing of the past—far from it, world-class centres exist—they are just not the subject of this reflection.Research in a business schoolEvolution in academia is not a new phenomenon. When universities were established advanced degrees were offered initially only in the vocations of medi-cine, law, and theology. Over time, the universities have adapted to changing economic and social struc-tures and demand for skills. Indeed, Whitehead in an essay welcoming the opening of the Harvard Business School observedThe universities are schools of education and schools of research. But the primary reason for their existence is not to be found either in the mere knowledge con-veyed to the students or in the mere opportunities for research afforded to the members of the faculty… The justification for a university is that it preserves the connection between knowledge and the zest for life, by uniting the young and the old in the imaginative consideration of learning…1When the Harvard Business School began the university was the learning environment and some compromise had been reached between the idealist liberal vision and what Newman called ‘the disciples of a low utilitarianism’.2 John Paul II elaborated the 	t h e ho spi ta l i t y r ev i ew 	19	 o c t obe r 2 008Getting on with the job	A	response	to	Jones	and	LockwoodNow that positivist research and the Large Hadron Collider have not caused a black hole to appear somewhere between France and Switzerland and we have not all been sucked to our doom, Kevin O’Gorman takes time to reflect upon some the issues raised.HR_10iv_3i.indd   19 24/10/08   09:48:51	t h e ho spi ta l i t y r ev i ew 	20	 o c t obe r 2 008mission of a university and stated that is it the duty of academics and researchers to make ‘universities “cultural laboratories” in which theology, philosophy, human sciences and natural sciences may engage in constructive dialogue’ and observes that in universities ‘there is an increased tendency to reduce the horizon of knowledge to what can be measured and to ignore any question touching on the ultimate meaning of reality.’3 All research must be robust and should avoid what Benedict XVI describes as a ‘dictatorship of rela-tivism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one’s own ego and desires.’4 There is considerable scope within a university business school for a genu-ine plurality of views, and disagree-ment leading to constructive dialogue and contributing to enhancement of scholarship.Science, engineering and technol-ogy, medicine, the law, and divinity were firmly established and a balance between the vocational and the liberal was pursued. Today, voca-tional courses may need to recapture some of the values and characteristics of the traditional higher vocations. However, unfortunately this is not always possible, so often contract trumps covenant in a wide range of contemporary occupations. But this can be further exacerbated by a failure to recognise the dichotomy and deal with it, rather than engaging in the introspective debate that has been a characteristic of hospitality academics. Far from the demise of the middle-class career predicted by some, professional-ism and flexibility are highly desirable general features of graduateness; learning to learn and the formation of capacities in general should take precedence over the acquisition of specific content.5 Imagination and creativeness must complement flexibility as prepara-tion for a world of rapid and continuous change; it’s a question of balance. Theories in practice In many sections of society, science is seen as being lit-tle short of infallible; anything else must be dismissed as fancy. Even in hospitality journals there is the ten-dency to trust the so-called hard facts of statistically analysed quantitative data rather than the interpre-tive results that qualitative analysis tends to produce. However, the physicist Richard Feynman warned his students when they did research that, before publish-ing their results, they should think of every possible way in which they might be wrong; while another physicist, Alan Lightman, explains the vital impor-tance of this self-questioning approach: ‘In science, as in other activities, there is a tendency to find what we’re looking for.’6The ability to take an imaginative leap, beyond accepted scientific dogma and the entrenched views of academic colleagues, disciplinary boundaries or even apparent common sense, has been at the heart of a significant number of scientific or technological advances in the last few hundred years. For example, throughout most of the 20th century, the conven-tional wisdom was gastric juice caused ulcers, until a pioneering doctor infected himself with a bacterium thus proving that conventional wisdom was incorrect and wining the Nobel Prize for medicine.7 Even areas that appear to be based on objective fact or cold hard logic can be questioned, as the physicist Max Planck said, ‘New ideas are not generated by deduction, but by an artistically creative imagination... Science, like the humanities, like literature, is an affair of the imagination’.8Hospitality researchTo subsist within a contemporary research-focused business school, hospitality research must be robust and falsifiable. This unfortunately has not always been the case. One example is an early conceptualisation of the phenomenon of hospitality by Muhlmann who argued that in essence, the organic and spiritual qualities of hospitality have disappeared, replaced in the pub-lic sphere by a formally rational system of (usually monetary) exchange whereby hospitality is provided in particular institutional forms (hotels, restaurants) that are essentially impersonal… for the most part, hospitality is no longer about the personal giving of Richard	Feynman	warned	students…	that,	before	publishing	their	research	results,	they	should	think	of	every	possible	way	in	which	they	might	be	wrongHR_10iv_3i.indd   20 24/10/08   09:48:51	t h e ho spi ta l i t y r ev i ew 	21	 o c t obe r 2 008the host’s own food and accommodation but a matter of impersonal financial exchange.9This reflection on the hospitality industry within a narrow and poorly defined commercial context has permeated though hospitality scholarship and illustrates some of the errors inher-ent in aspects of hospitality research that need to be avoided if hospitality scholarship is to grow and develop. These are sweeping statements, not backed up with any apparent empiri-cal research evidence. They are also given some credibility by the fact they sound plausible and echo characteris-tics of other hospitality research, that humanity’s organic and spiritual quali-ties have disappeared and everything is being replaced with commerce. Fortunately, this is at worst simply not true, or at best a myopic and one-sided view of society. This example illustrates the poten-tial danger of considering a hospital-ity transaction out of its proper time or context and comparing it to another hospitality transaction from another time or context, a process referred to as the teleological fallacy.10 The organic and spiritual qualities that subsist within the domestic context, and indeed can be shown by individu-als offering hospitably in the commercial context, have not been replaced; the contexts are simply differ-ent. Analysing texts from a different time or culture, then looking for examples of similar practices in traditional cultures in the world today, whilst being illuminating, can have its difficulties. What was lack-ing from the analysis provided was a clear under-standing of contexts of hospitality. Hospitality offered in the home has been, and still is, used for various ulterior or nefarious purposes. The commercial hospitality industry has at least 4,000 years of history underpinning it. Although, as yet, no archaeological evidence of commercial hostels and taverns in ancient Mesopotamia has been found, however there is a large diorite stela in the Louvre Museum containing inscrip-tions commonly known as the code of Hammurabi (illustrated above). The original purpose of the stela is somewhat enigmatic; however, from the inscrip-tion these are laws governing commercial hospitality from at least 1800BC: decreeing that the punishment for charging more than the beer was worth was death by drowning and there was a requirement that tavern keepers, on pain of death, to report all customers who were felons.Commercial hospitality (provision of food, beverage and often accommoda-tion within business) has not suddenly replaced anything. Hospitality research should focus on deepening under-standing of the industry, not how people behave in their own home; that is best left to anthropologists and soci-ologists who have the necessary train-ing and research skills. As hospitality academics, researchers, students and practitioners we should be immensely proud of the rich and incredibly diverse heritage that our industry has. There is nothing wrong with provid-ing a commercial hospitality service within particular institutional forms (now called the hospitality industry, but known by an assortment of differ-ent names in the past). In Strathclyde we are entering both an exciting and demanding new phase as hospitality and tourism are becom-ing a central focus for the Business School’s research agenda. A faculty-wide research centre is being established, with expertise being drawn from the entire university and beyond. If hospitality research is to grow and develop in a busi-ness school it should stay focused on the particular goal of increasing knowledge and understanding of hospitality management and the hospitality industry; albeit enriching that research through different meth-odological perspectives. This, as Jones and Lockwood said, ‘is about doing it better’; but most importantly is getting on and doing it. Not only should we use the ‘m’ word we must use it and we should be proud to use it; after all hospitality has a very long history and has always been managed.References1 A N Whitehead Aims of Education and Other Essays (London, HR_10iv_3i.indd   21 24/10/08   09:48:52	t h e ho spi ta l i t y r ev i ew 	22	 o c t obe r 2 008Williams & Norgate 1932) p 138f2 J H Newman The Idea of a University, Defined and Illustrated (London, Longmans 1907) p p. 1563 John Paul II ‘Jubilee Of University Professors’ Address Of John Paul II to University Professors of All Nations (2000). Retrieved 24/09/08 from http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/speeches/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_20000909_jubilteachers_en.html4 Benedict XVI Missa Pro Eligendo Romano Pontifice (2005) Retrieved 25/09/08, from http://www.vatican.va/gpII/docu-ments/homily-pro-eligendo-pontifice_20050418_en.html5 J Gray False Dawn: The delusions of global capitalism (London, Granta 2002); J H Gill Learning to Learn: Toward a philoso-phy of education (New Jersey, Humanities Press 1993)6 A Lightman Dance for Two (London, Bloomsbury 1996) p 104. Feynman’s comment is found on p 1067 M B Van Der Weyden, R M Armstrong & A T Gregory ‘The 2005 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine’ Medical Journal of Australia 183 (11/12) 2005 612–148 S McFague Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language (London, SCM Press 1982)9 W E Muhlmann ‘Hospitality’ in E R A Seligman (ed) Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences (New York, Macmillan 1932) succinctly summarised by R Wood in ‘Some theo-retical perspectives on hospitality’ in A Seaton, C Jenkins, R Wood, P Dieke, M Bennet, L MacLellan & R Smith (eds) Tourism: The State of the Art (Chichester: John Wiley 1994) pp 737–4210 M I Finley Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology (Harmondsworth, Penguin 1983KEvIn d o’GoRMAn is a lecturer in Hospitality and Heritage in the department of Hospitality and Tourism Management, University of Strathclyde, in Glasgow. His doctoral research focused on an identification of the essence of hospitality from the texts of Classical Antiquity and the development of a hermeneutical helix to identify the philosophy of the phenomenon of hospitality. Previous postgraduate study in Salamanca, Rome and Glasgow has encompassed the areas of philosophy, theology and classics. His research interests include the history and philosophy of hospitality and he is currently undertaking fieldwork in Iran, exploring the evolution caravanserais and bazaars from their charitable and hospitable origins.HR_10iv_3i.indd   22 24/10/08   09:48:53

A Lightman Dance for Two (London, Bloomsbury

A N Whitehead Aims of Education and Other Essays (London,

A N Whitehead Aims of Education and Other Essays (London, HR_10iv_3i.indd 21 24/10/08 09:48:52 t h e ho spi ta l i t y r ev i ew

Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology (Harmondsworth, Penguin

False Dawn: The delusions of global capitalism (London, Granta

Feynman’s comment is found on p 106

Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language (London,

Missa Pro Eligendo Romano Pontifice

Newman The Idea of a University, Defined and Illustrated (London, Longmans

Nobel Prize in Physiology or

succinctly summarised by R Wood in ‘Some theoretical perspectives on hospitality’ in A

Getting on with the job : a response to Jones and Lockwood

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Getting on with the job: a response to Jones and Lockwood

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Getting on with the job : a response to Jones and Lockwood

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