The Ritz-Carlton - Essay Example

Researched Report Researched Report Introduction The Ritz-Carlton is a brand of a luxury hotel and resort, which owns seventy properties that are situated in the main cities and exclusive resort destinations in twenty-three countries around the world. The Ritz-Carlton is a brand under the management of Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company LLC, which is an auxiliary of Marriott International, and their headquarters are located at Chevy Chase, Maryland. Ritz-Carton focuses on offering quality services to customers and their leaders have the responsibility of running this icon in the luxury market (Basu, 2009). They have been focusing on the international growth, planning, identifying the good location to set up new businesses and formulation of quality enhancements strategies. The company applies three identifiable steps while offering services to customers, which include a focus on giving a warm and sincere greeting to customers, ensuring that the customers’ needs are fulfilled and offering a fond farewell that entails a warm good-bye. Therefore, the organization has been well identified for offering their customers with consistent services throughout their businesses. In fact, they have managed to establish Gold standards for services offered to customers, which contribute to competitive advantage and increased customer loyalty. The organization uses their employees to achieve the objective of offering satisfying services to their customers. In fact, the employees are referred to as the passionate advocates of the organization, whereby they depict personal attributes that are identified by managers during the recruitment and interview of the candidates. In this case, the organization has focused on managing the quality of services to achieve the customer expectations from various dimensions such as use of experience, word of mouth and advertising. The organization has established a culture appeal to increased value to employees working in the organization in a way that facilitates intrinsic sense of distinctiveness and commitment. Therefore, this has been facilitating the sustainability and profitability of the services offered to customers. The organization has also developed a culture of concurring people to be substantial elements in an organization due to articulation to policies, whereby making a substantial contribution to the improvement and sustainability of experiences in the quality of their services. Nevertheless, the paper will focus on assessing the culture of Ritz-Carlton hotel culture. It will offer relevant recommendations on ways that an organization that can improve their practices. Literature review There are differentiated perceptions of the term organization culture by different scholars, though they agree on the fact that an organization has a way of developing their own operating systems, which is compatible with their internal capabilities and strategies for achieving set objective; in this case, culture of Ritz-Carlton is portrayed by two sections of Harrison-Handy model. Mullins (2007) contends that there is a reflection of the power of the culture through a central authority, which is considered bureaucratic delineate. On the other hand, the orders are applied in the definition of the target, which is based on the goals of the organization. Culture has a role of establishing a set of regulations that direct employees in the process of making their contribution to the organization. Moreover, role and power of culture offer an inflexible mode of operating, which can impede innovation and develop a barrier between the management and employees (Aitken and Higgs, 2010). The Culture of Ritz-Carlton Hotel builds on the relationship between the employer and an employee, whereby there are expectation for employees to adhere to a strict code of conduct for the hotels. For more emphasis on the Harrison-Handy model, Mullins (2007) contends that implementation of the model can establish a less authoritative condition that can facilitate the sustainability of the cultural impacts. The organization has a slogan of ‘ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen works, though it has no relationship principles of the employees. The organization has also established concise standards of customer treatment, which controls employees to comply with certain values and guidelines without deviation. Moreover, the organization has a culture of solidifying their strict demands for personal attributes that can facilitate achievement of set organizational goals in the industry. Furthermore, the organization has a written code of conduct, whereby relieving the managers off the duties of enforcing the rules. Discussion/Analysis The culture that has been developed in Ritz-Carlton Hotel’s discourages inventiveness and innovativeness, though it fosters employee commitment to the organization. The form of relationship, which has been developed by their organization culture, encourages a perception of inferiority to employees. It also discourages the chance for employees to offer voluntary input beyond the demands of their manager. Moreover, there are value that have been established with a culmination to the scripting of behaviors expected by the hotel management, whereby limiting the employees from establishing new concepts, ideologies or relative implication that can facilitate improvements in the organization. On the other hand, there is rewarding system established by the management, which is aimed at invoking innovation due to insufficiency of the autonomous space for the employees. According to Mullins (2007), the Harrison-Handy model asserts that employees who fail to comply with the regulations can be considered by the middle level management as a threat. In this case, the model proposes that they should be scattered before there is any effort made for the implementation process. Therefore, the managers are urges not to take any chance, and they are expected to concentrate on the using few minutes reminding the employees about the code of conduct that they should follow. Businesses are anticipated to acknowledge transformation, which facilitate implementation of new management outsets in order to acquire a competitive advantage in the hospitality industry, thereby deriving sustainability. In this case, Ritz-Carlton maintains key management and operational values, which were formulated ten years ago by the founders of the organization. Moreover, their hotels are doing well, and they are assimilating to change in a way that increases their profitability. However, Reiss (2009) suggests that their culture has failed in facilitating an extension of relevant reference for change agents. Consequently, the hotel management ends up becoming the only visionary focus, and this leads to reduction of the ability to alter strategies. Therefore, they are unable to establish an identity for new propositions, whereby from proposed considerations has caused a deviation from the normal non-responsive operation mechanism in organization. Hospitality is considered as one other most sensitive sector; thus, there is should be a substantial demand for a greater care and critical assessment that can facilitate achievement of a competitive advantage (Severt & Curtis, 2008). Therefore, the culture that has been developed by Ritz-Carlton aims at invoking reliable coordination, monitoring and maintenance of consistency in the process of offering services. Furthermore, the stringent rules and regulation established through their culture are considered the unit-line that facilitates customer satisfaction. A fundamental power has been established in hospitality, thereby forming a specific trend in the management, which avoids improbability created by changes in the application. However, projection towards improvement can be fostered by changes in articulation by organization (Upchurch, DiPietro, Curtis & Hahm, 2010). In fact, this articulation is culminated to the basic discontinues of services delivery, which are aimed at articulating the ideologies that require external agents that can facilitate changes, incremental costs and assimilation to new code of behaviors that are adopted before assimilation (Chenhall & Euske, 2007). Nevertheless, there is a need to facilitate articulation of new models of management at Ritz-Carlton Hotels, whereby the employees should be offered a chance for acquiring the relevant skills needed for implementing required changes in the organization. There has been a long time in which power and models have been applied, leading to lack of expected and expanded perception in relation to the new autonomy. Moreover, Reiss (2009) asserts that the contingency theory focuses on the interaction of internal and external environment, which results to deprivation of a need to focus on achieving high profitability. Nevertheless, there are employees in the organization are entangled in the old models since there no alternative given that they have been locked in the old model for a long period. Recommendations Reiss (2009) asserts that it is difficult to change the culture of an organization; in fact, the most difficult aspect of this process is trying to assimilate a new culture. This is highly crucial given that it is a way of determining the holistic sustainability of the organization. Ritz-Carlton Hotel focuses on maintaining the elements of the old system due to the customers attracted by services offered through their system. Nevertheless, the organization is recommended to adopt changes without negative effects on the services offered to consumers. The organization should also focus on increasing their autonomy of decision-making for employees in order to encourage innovativeness and good interaction with customers. In fact, Mullins (2007) explains that there is a need for an organization to change their leadership theories in a way that is integrated with autonomy in the management of their operating system. Theory of motivation by Robert Maslow suggests that a person is focused achieving superior level of their hierarchy of wants in order to achieve a stage of self-actualization (Gomez-Mejia, 2008). In this case, Ritz-Carlton Hotel is recommended to establish an upward shift through the process of employee motivation. This can contribute to the process of employee involvement result to enhanced management, and creation of stability and satisfaction (Gallo, 2007). Consequently, this can contribute to high productivity of the employees, which results to increased customer satisfaction and integration with a high level of sustainability and profitability. The organization should develop a culture of orienting employees to considering ways of fostering improvement. Ritz-Carlton Hotels are urged to increase the frequency of conducting training employees in order to enrich the skills for developing new insights that can be applied in maintenance of high quality services to the customers. Based on the ideas gathered from Curtis & Upchurch (2008), the organization is recommended to seek assistance of highly experienced coaches and trainers available in the hospitality industry to offer new skills to employees; thus, increase their ability to make rational decisions in daily operation. The vital role played by the organization culture is to define and guide the employees in a way that can sustain the profitability of the organization. Therefore, the organization is urged to develop a culture that identifies the employees as the key element for defining organization culture at all levels. In this case, the organization is able to adopt a culture that can facilitate high profitability and employee satisfaction, which will result high customer satisfaction. Ritz-Carlton Hotel should establish a need to facilitate continued improvement in significant cultural aspects that can facilitate gaining a competitive advantage. In addition, the organization should also seek cooperation of the employees and their management in a way that maintains their level of quality for the service offered to customers. Therefore, the employee will be able to acquire the sense of managing their employees and trust them in taking charge of the implementation process to achieve organizational objectives. The other recommendation to the organization focuses on emphasizing on the need to recognize the resistance and seek ways of dealing with these situations. Severt and Curtis (2008) suggest that there is a need to facilitate the change of the orientation process in a way that people can create an acceptable way of offering services and products. Moreover, the organization is urged to develop a roadmap, which is based on communication and facilitation of the ways to address the intrinsic concerns in the organization. This involves taking charge of the process of implementing the strategies and using reasonable time to acquire results. In conclusion, the paper has explored the element of culture through a case study of The Ritz-Carlton Hotel, whereby the first section covers an introduction of the organization in terms of a brief description of the business and organization structure. The other section covers a literature review where information is gathered from different sources regard the organization culture, and this is followed by discussion and analysis of arguments and ideas identified in the first and the second section. Finally, the paper offers recommendations on the way Ritz-Carlton Hotel can change their organizational culture to increase their profitability and employee satisfaction. References Aitken, P., & Higgs, M. (2010). Developing change leaders: The principles and practices of change leadership development. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann Basu, S. (2009). Case study: Ritz-Carlton Hotels. Gadjah Mada University. Retrieved on 20 Jan 2013 from < http://www.slideshare.net/irwanarfandi/ritzcarlton-case-report> Curtis, C. & Upchurch, R.S. (2008). A case study in establishing a positive service culture: Attachment and involvement in the workplace. Journal of Retail and Leisure Property, 7 (2), 131-138. Chenhall, R & Euske, K (2007). The role of management control systems in planned organizational change Accounting, Organizations and Society. 32(7):757-788. Gallo, C. (2007). Employee Motivation the Ritz‑Carlton Way. Bloomberg Businessweek.. Retrieved on 20 Jan 2013 from Gomez-Mejia, R. (2008). Management: people, performance and change. Boston: McGraw-Hill Mullins, L. (2007). Management and Organisational Behaviour. Upper Saddle, NJ: Financial Times Prentice Hall Reiss, R. (2009). How Ritz‑Carlton Stays at the Top. Retrieved on 20 Jan 2013 from Severt, D. & Curtis, C. (2008). Human resources management and a service culture. In Abraham Pizam and Dana Tesone (Eds.), Handbook of Hospitality Human Resources Management (pp. 115-134). New York: Butterworth Heinemann Publishers Upchurch, R.S., DiPietro, R.B., Curtis, C. & Hahm, J. (2010). Organizational commitment in the restaurant industry: A research note. Journal of Foodservice Business Research, 13 (2), 127-143. Read More