This article analyses the use made of computer based information systems in hospitality management. The findings indicate that, rather than replacing the middle management role, computer systems are used as support mechanisms which remove uncertainty associated with decisions based on hunch or inadequate information.The use of computerized systems in the hotel and catering industry has only developed during the 1980s. This paper considers how management functions and skills are evolving with the use of computer based information systems in this industry. Speculation in this area dates from the 1950s, but the kinds of systems now available are different from those in use thirty years ago. Predicting the future impact of computer aided decision making on management activity, Herbert Simon wrote in 1960:"The plain fact is that a great many middlemanagement decisions that have always been supposed to call for the experienced human judgement of management and professional engineers can now be made at least as well by a computer as by managers. . . The decisions are repetitive and require little of the kinds of flexibility that constitute man's principal comparative advantage over machines." [l] Leavitt and Whisler similarly argued in 1958ODavid Buchanan is Senior Lecturer in organisational behaviour at the University of Glasgow Business School and James McCalman is Lecturer in management studies also at Glasgow University Business School.that the work experience of many middle managers in the middle 1980s was going to become more programmed, routine and structured, requiring less experience, judgement and creativity, and receiving less status and reward in return [2]. They did on the other hand predict that rapid technical and market changes would require rapid organizational changes (and they claim in their article to coin the term 'information technoThose predictions demonstrate the risks of technical and organizational forecasting. Simon's analysis was based on the distinction between structured and unstructured decisions. The findings reported here suggest that he underestimated the predominance of ill-structured problems that would face management in the volatile markets of the late twentieth century. Leavitt and Whisler based their forecast on the assumption that better information means better decision making and control. They may have overestimated the extent to which senior managers either want or exercise detailed control over business operations.Managers have different decision making preferences [3]. These preferences are likely logy').38 New Technology, Work and Employment to influence the course of systems development, which in turn affect decision making styles. As more managers find themselves working with computer systems, the debate on this subject from the early 1980s has to be reopened. Management experience and preference is still a topic which systems suppliers cannot ignore, as some of our studies in other sectors have indicated [4].Reviewing the evidence on management information and decisio...

This paper examines the introduction of self managing teams into a high technology workplace. The paper looks at the managerial and organizational implications of developing teams in what was considered a high technology environment where the physical restrictions of manufacture were assumed to dictate working practices. The case study evidence suggests that even in an atmosphere of clean rooms and clear communication difficulties, SMTs can prosper and suggests that it is only the physical boundaries which impede the development of more flexible forms of work organization.

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As Western nations slowly emerge from the recent global recession, there is demand among citizens for authorities to practice, and be seen to practice, ethical leadership.Although these conditions have been favorable for research into ethical leadership, extant research privileges empirical-descriptive Anglo-American perspectives on ethical leadership and is largely silent on the meaning and practice of ethical leadership in the context of the 'big' ethical questions. In consequence, most research into ethical leadership, although well meaning, offers little guidance about how to imagine and implement sustainable, ethical solutions to systemic problems. In this research note, we outline a proposal to reimagine ethical leadership as leadership for the greater good and identity three avenues of research into leadership for the greater good that compliments existing critical perspectives on ethical leadership.

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