Organisational Behavior in Hospitality Industry - Literature review Example

Organisational behavior impact upon employee loyalty in the hospitality industry Organisational behavior in the British hospitality industry reveals inter-related constraints in evaluating the connection between employee's workplace emotions and employee loyalty. Employee loyalty is the most significant factor in hospitality where contended employees are likely to recommend their employer to others and remain determined to work for their employer for a longer span. However, the contrast depicts vulnerable employment relations that not only annoy the staff by vulnerable management policies but also diminish their control over solving problems for guests. This scenario requires effective managerial behavior to measure employee loyalty within a distinctive and significant part of the British culture and economy. Therefore, it would not be wrong to assert that organisational behavior impacts employee loyalty and vice versa. The scope of this paper is to assess the positive or negative impact of organisational behavior upon employee relations and to what extent employment relations are flexible to adapt to the changing trends of service training and leadership. This paper describes a unique combination of how and why managers despite using supportive leadership vision remains unable to make effective usage of managerial control strategies to change, maintain or build a specific type of 'employee committed' culture and face challenges in the form of high turnover rate. Various factors that affect employee loyalty in the British hospitality workplaces in the context of national and private service sector patterns cannot ignore the fact that employment in service sector is subject to regulation in areas such as minimum wages, lack of pay and reward system, traditional managerial approach, gender issues etc. But beside regulations what matters, is the different economic, social, legal and political factors that create particular cultures and diverse employment systems to understand the context in which employee loyalty can be understood and measured. Despite the efforts to make employment relations in the British service industry from 'vulnerable' to 'secure', there is a difference when national service sector is compared with the private one. On one hand, employment policies and practices are responsible for conforming to the management-driven ungoverned individualism thesis which is based on cost-control, whereas on the other they reflect a more affiliated and liberal managerial approach within a customer-service attribute. It is not necessary to alienate employees, however they may trade off low pay for other compensations demonstrating enfranchised pragmatism. The employment relationship is based upon transactional, relational, and exploited recruitment. What is important in employee management is to realise that front-office or other hotel employees are different and they are subjected to a unique compelling task that trade unions face. Managers need to develop an attitude to measure their attempts in recruiting members and organise workplaces while understanding the nature of the common barriers between managers and employees. This help them to visualise what they do not share as commonly held assumptions of 'good' employment relations. This paper analyses the leadership and management style adopted in circumstances which escorts the managers to face challenges like employee shortage and lack of loyalty. The impact of Leadership on Employee Loyalty There was a time when managers used to deploy strict procedures and peer support while approaching bureaucratic managerial style. Contemporary management has no room for bureaucracy and prefer charismatic leadership, and when it comes to hospitality management, leadership does not require a simple set of traits to function but is more likely to be dependent upon a range of interacting elements that require genetically as well as culturally determined traits like attitudes towards employees, rational expectations, accent and emotions towards employees performance and attitudes to work along with them (Boella, 2000, p. 252). Leader requires to be highly adaptive in the hotel industry because he confronts not only the problems of employees but also guests, who are the first priority in selling any service or product business. Motivation works well with performance and skill of the service, resulting in customer satisfaction. But to make an employee contended is a highly complex phenomenon particularly in contemporary epoch where competition rules. In this scenario motivation alone is not sufficient to gain employee loyalty, what matters is to supervise working environments in order to analyse and shape the nature of employee's attitudes and assess the problems that underlies their attitudes. This is important so as to analyse how long the problems in their attitudes persist even long after the reasons that created them have seized to exist. Employee satisfaction is gained when leader reacts according to employee's expectations levels and he finds ease in working along the expectation of the leader. We can say that the link between happiness and worker productivity is the gateway to employee loyalty. This establishes and demonstrates the relationship while alleviating communication barriers, thereby enhancing interactions between hotel staff and management. This also extends productivity and increases the happiness and satisfaction of employees who then consider the loyalty factor and takes into account the mutual benefit of both organisations and employees. But the problem that remains within the organisational behavior according to Barrick & Ryan (2003, p. 30) is to empirically count the evidence that associates and brings about happiness and productivity on the pillars of good performance. This on the basis of a series of qualitative and quantitative studies reveal that in hospitality the association between happiness and productivity is negligible to the extent that often employers do not prioritise considering it (Barrick & Ryan, 2003, p. 30). Therefore, there is a need to identify those factors that reflect the vulnerability between organisation and employees. The workplace stress Stress and health are inter-related factors that are significant worth considering in the hospitality industry for two reasons, economic and humanitarian. The economic rationale provides logical reasoning for the concern for workplace stress to be based on the direct and indirect organisational costs that incur from workplace stress and results in absenteeism, high turnover rate, accidents, medical costs, and compensation awards (Greenberg, 2003, p. 54). Furthermore, what impacts organisation relationship and incur as multi cause problems are the communication breakdowns, faulty decision making, and poor quality of working relations with senior hotel staff. Apart from these factors, other reasons behind internal disputes that causes employees to leave are the emotional suffering endemic to organisational life that possess both economic costs as well as a human burden. The humanitarian ground for the explanation for workplace stress suggests the moral and ethical grounds on the basis of which employees in themselves should be treated with dignity and respect. Change Global competition is another factor that reduces employee loyalty by creating a new organisational reality on the hospitality landscape. Tourism industries in this context are confronting increasingly competitive environments where employees are placed at risk of obsolescence, job loss, adverse health systems, processes, and structures. Catering industries must support their employees in meeting the ever-increasing challenges that both individuals and organisations face in the present economic climate. The keyword to use here is 'change' that is resulting from the global competition and highlights the trends of 'work life' throughout Europe. On one hand change is experienced as a threat to well-being or survival as a result of which the inclination to experience change as a threat, individuals, and organisations often respond to the modified environment of reality that they should not have been felt appropriate. This tension and rigidity on behalf of the organisations escort even their experienced employees to ponder upon their own capability and productivity. As a result being dubious about their energy and resources they feel less committed to defense and ends up in demotivation which cause them to leave the organisation. On the other hand this change carries with it the fear of impending loss and of costs for individuals and workplaces. Hobfoll's (2001) proposed theory of stress based on conservation of resources that revealed that the experience of loss is the major contribution to a person's perception of change. Therefore, it is in the best interest of organisational strategies to guard against loss that incurs mergers and acquisitions or employment or asset downsizing (Greenberg, 2003, p. 65). Such are those strategies that are deployed by service workplaces so as to enhance to some extent managerial and executive control while placing many employees on the defensive side. This ends up in lesser exposure to new management controls and behavior tends more strict towards defensiveness in the face of the new organisational reality. Conflicts at workplaces Contemporary organisations, particularly those pertaining to hospitality are usually indulged in experiencing various types of conflicts, however the managers probably fail to recognise the variety of conflict that occurs in everyday affairs. Conflict refers to those differences in opinions that incur because of the increasing competition within marketplace as a result of globalisation and varies according to the values, attitudes, perceptions, languages, cultures, and national backgrounds of employees (Sims, 2002, p. 245). Since hotel and tourism management pertains to deal with different kinds of cultures and nationalities, conflict management is one of the important aspects of hospitality and incurs not only between staff and management but also between customers and employees. In most of the cases the rise of conflicts between departments, such as restaurant and kitchen, housekeeping and reception (Jayawardena & Nettleford, 2002, p. 118) depicts lack of appropriate training and absence of formal management reviews that escorts employees towards adopting unsatisfied image of their workplace. Lucas (2003, p. 16) emphasizes that what establishes relationship between guests and hosts is the association which is triangular in nature and possess areas of potential dispute that do exist between managers and workers, between managers and other managers, and between workers and customers, all reflecting the same notion that workplaces are pluralistic. In these cases retaining employees are the second main concern after retaining and entertaining their customers. Therefore, the nature of management behavior is more towards keeping a radical perspective towards their employees by observing areas of common interest that not only serves their workers, but also self-evidently exist in the best of organisation's well-being otherwise all these relationships ends in breaking apart. In this perspective conflict management upholds significance to the extent where consent serve the basis for resolving conflict and achieving cooperation. Since cooperation is built solely on trust between workers and employers, therefore the utmost priority of the management must be to resolve conflicts while respecting their employees identity rather than through prioritising their organisational mechanisms. Nonetheless, it is true that securing workers' consent is neither a straightforward nor certain process and a mix of open and indirect conflict and cooperation underpins all employment relationships. In hospitality the social function of service work is fulfilled through emotional work that only works with the assumption of a social-self, which effectively masks the individual's own personal temperament to act including the need to smile and be pleasant in an uninvolved way. In this situation how can a worker be expected to illustrate cordial reception when he or she is not contended with his workplace Such service work cannot be alone highlighted as a resultant of economic rationality, because the supposition that service work is the intended outcome of a necessarily social process requires some social interaction that incur between one or more producers and one or more consumers (Lucas, 2003, p. 21). As stated above it is a triangular relationship that occurs between three groups of people, managers, workers and guests and substantiates the potential for negation between uncertainty and unpredictability, while on the other hand consent and team effort based on concerted performance. It is not necessary that a worker is of expected significance to the hotel management but what matters is that the use of contingent workers to the extent to which they are useful depends on management's ability to minimise the risk of low quality performance. It is seen that in hotels possessing a strong traditional departmental culture by departmental managers have considerable influence and hold over engendering loyal emotions that retains useful employees and squeeze out misfits. This not only regulates hospitality performance levels but also serves to diffuse all the possible factors responsible for arising dispute while reinforcing the managerial privilege. Organisational control and Service Encounter Kivela and Chu (2001) suggests that an effective management technique experiencing the service encounter in restaurants requires an in-depth analysis of the understanding of the behavior of front office staff and the ways the staff deals with guests. Since this behavior results in positive or negative service encounters, the onus comes on the front office staff to either encourage repeat guests who bring revenue to the business, or to discourage them from being entering into the hotel the second time. The three-way conflict that usually starts or ends up in front office desk is mostly on room servicing issues pertaining to maintainable housekeeping or the performance and efficiency depending on maintenance's response. This usually ends up in frequent disputes that incur because of different perspectives on the main priorities between male maintenance workers and female housekeeping staff. Many researchers indicated rivalry between waiting and kitchen staff, aggressive tendencies in waiters, and instances of verbal abuse by senior to junior waiters which must be discouraged since for not only such conflicts hold a negative influence upon guests, but they distract employees towards adopting disloyalty towards the hotel or organisation. HR Systems, Policies, and Employee Satisfaction There is a strong interconnection between HR systems, practices and organisational effectiveness which can be measured through their efforts through employee attitudes towards customers and organisation. As we have discussed above the role of HR practices in influencing both direct and indirect impacts on employee behaviors through service culture that later influences organisational outcomes. In the hospitality industry empirical studies suggest that a positive relationship between HR systems and measures of organisational performance brings employee satisfaction and loyalty. This when further researched In a case study of a luxury hotel escorted Haynes and Fryer (2000, cited in Kusluvan, 2003, p. 41) to discover that a number of progressive HR management practices were associated with positive effects on a hotel's performance. Such management practices were communication enhancement, rewards, and performance appraisal that not only brought employee satisfaction but also extended customer satisfaction and increased financial performance of the hotel. Proper management of HR resources and employee attitudes for organisational success is done through implementing internal marketing. Developed by marketing scholars Rafiq and Ahmet (2000 cited in Kusluvan, 2003, p. 41) identified five elements of internal marketing as "employee motivation and satisfaction, customer orientation and customer satisfaction, inter-functional coordination and integration, marketing like approach to the above factors, and implementation of functional strategies". Hospitality and tourism employment is significant not only in terms of serving guests, but also highlights the recruitment process which is usually problematic for it requires a professional attitude from employees. Unprofessional behavior on part of organisation or employees may impede business success in developing and transitional economies. Such characteristics that displease employees may contribute to factors what might be termed as 'vulnerable' employment. Therefore such vulnerability must be alleviated by regulating through employment relationship in areas such as minimum wages, equal pay and working time. Employee satisfaction is directly linked with employee loyalty, because the more a worker is satisfied with his working environment, the greater he remains loyal to the organisation. This notion must be understood on the basis of managerial level so as to embed necessary steps in measuring employee's loyalty twice or thrice a year. References Barrick, R. Murray & Ryan Ann Marie, 2003. Personality and Work: Reconsidering the Role of Personality in Organizations: Jossey-Bass: San Francisco. Boella, Michael John, 2000. Human Resource Management in the Hospitality Industry. 7th edition (HCIMA). Greenberg Jerald, 2003. Organizational Behavior: The State of the Science: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates: Mahwah, NJ. Hobfoll, S. E., 2001. The influence of culture, community, and the nested-self in the stress process: Advancing conservation of resources theory. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 50, pp. 337-370. Jayawardena Chandana & Nettleford Rex, 2002. Tourism and Hospitality Education and Training in the Caribbean: University Press of the West Indies: Kingston, Jamaica. Kivela, J. J. and Chu, C. Y. H., 2001. Delivering quality service: diagnosing favorable and unfavorable service encounters in restaurants. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research, 25(3), pp. 251-71. Kusluvan Salih, 2003. Managing Employees Attitudes and Behaviors in the Tourism and Hospitality Industry: Nova Publishers. Lucas, E. Rosemary, 2003. Employment Relations in the Hospitality and Tourism Industries: Routledge: London. Sims, R. Ronald, 2002. Managing Organizational Behavior: Quorum Books: Westport, CT. Read More