Whatever it Takes? Managing `Empowered' Employees and the Service Encounter in an International Hotel Chain

Jones, Carol; Taylor, George; Nickson, Dennis

doi:10.1177/0950017097113008

Cited by 22 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…The approach sits well with recent studies that suggest that frontline service workers have more discretion in their jobs than in the recent past at least. This evidence comes from a range of settings: hospitality (Lashley, 1997;Jones et al, 1997), retail (Rosenthal et al, 1997;du Gay, 1996), airlines (Wouters, 1989) and public welfare workers (Foster and Hoggett, 1999). Lashley's (1997: 47) discussion of task empowerment in the hospitality context brings out aspects common to many of these instances of increased discretion: Empowerment is largely related to attempts to generate improved service quality by improving responsiveness of frontline employees in the immediate service situation.…”

Section: Task Discretionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Skills in service work: an overview

Korczynski

2005

Human Res Manag J

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Section: Task Discretionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Skills in service work: an overview

Korczynski

2005

Human Res Manag J

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“…The emphasis on the handling of persons rather than things is particularly evident in the literature on hospitality, where emotional labour and the management of both client and employee feelings is identified as a key means of securing quality service (Hochschild, 1983;Jones et al, 1997). Leaving aside debates about the capitalist as distinct from purely gendered logic underpinning such labour (Adkins, 1995;Taylor and Tyler, 2000), the focus is generally on management demands for non-routinized, individualized and authentic customer interaction.…”

Section: The Labour Process Of Gambling: Regulating Work and Consumptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In contrast, research on the service sector and hospitality has recognized how the labour process is composed of both the mode of delivery of services and the mode of their consumption. The focus here has been on embodied, particularly gendered arrangements (Adkins, 1995;Filby, 1992), on the use of flexible workers (Purcell et al, 1999, Rowley andRichardson, 2000) and employee empowerment as a means of management control (Adkins and Lury, 2000;Jones et al, 1997;Leidner, 1993). Research on hospitality, however, has largely addressed conventional forms of hotel and restaurant work, and processes here cannot be simply mapped onto work in gambling.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Skills and surveillance in casino gaming

Austrin

West

2005

Work, Employment and Society

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With gambling now part of mainstream entertainment and popular leisure, casinos have become sites of legal work, combining the technical expertise and craft skills of the croupier (dealer) in table games with increasingly deskilled machineminding in simulated video games.There are parallels with other service work, but the significance of casino gaming lies in the manipulation of things, such as cards and money, rather than in interpersonal relations and self-embodiment. Moreover, surveillance is more specifically related to the particular conditions governing legalization of a formerly 'pariah' industry than to management-worker control. Drawing on fieldwork, we compare standardization in table and machine gaming and show how different forms of surveillance are crucial to the legalization of gambling as mass consumption. In highlighting the significance of materiality and regulation in service sector employment, the case of casino gaming thus takes us beyond conventional labour process paradigms. It also epitomizes a newly globalized form of work, currently promoted by industry interests but at the centre of intense public debate in the UK and elsewhere. KEY WORDShotel casinos / materiality / risk and control / service work Bond had always been a gambler. He loved the dry riffle of the cards and the constant unemphatic drama of the quiet figures around the green tables. He liked the solid, studied comfort of card-rooms and casinos, the well-padded arms of the chairs, the glass of champagne or whisky at the elbow, the quiet unhurried attention

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“…It is important to realize that the speci c imperative which informs the emphasis on 'soft' integration in the international hotel sector is the current focus on the service encounter as a key source of competitive advantage. Characterized by high levels of intangibility, this is labour-intensive, cannot be separated from the point of delivery and, as customers increasingly demand that it is 'authentic', cannot easily be standardized (Jones et al, 1997). Further, culturally informed expectations and perceptions brought to the service encounter (by both local and international customers) mean that the balance between delivering a high-quality service and being seen as intrusive is a delicate one (Teare, 1993).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Since these changes are often located within the broader parameters of total quality management (TQM) initiatives, the 'principles of systematised management ef ciency' (Barge, 1993), which facilitated early expansion by the American chains, have not been abandoned but rather have been overlaid by 'softer' devices. Guest satisfaction is rigorously monitored and employees are encouraged through various rewards and sanctions to be proactive in problem solving (Jones et al, 1997).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Not part of the family? The limits to managing the corporate way in international hotel chains

Thompson¹,

Nickson²,

Jones³

1998

The International Journal of Human Resource Management

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Companies increasingly seek solutions to the corporate/local dichotomies perceived to be a feature of more traditional approaches to managing across national boundaries. At the human resource level, the rhetoric of transnationalism emphasizes integration being achieved through 'soft' mechanisms, such as corporate culture devices, which encourage all managers to develop an international (for this read corporate) perspective on what they do. In theory, managerial staff are recruited and promoted on a 'best person for the job' basis and national identities are played down. Drawing upon evidence from three international hotel chains (one American, one French and one Swedish), this paper argues that there is a disjuncture between corporate culture devices which assume that they can transcend national origins and the issues of interest and identity which inform the activities and experiences of managers at unit level. The paper suggests that companies need to be aware of the danger of assuming that one can be trained to be 'one of the family'. Rather, we argue that local managers are potentially disadvantaged in terms of career progression as managers from the parent country utilize criteria of acceptability informed by processes of socialization which are more institutionally embedded and derived than has been assumed

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Whatever it Takes? Managing `Empowered' Employees and the Service Encounter in an International Hotel Chain

Cited by 22 publications

References 10 publications

Skills in service work: an overview

Skills in service work: an overview

Skills and surveillance in casino gaming

Not part of the family? The limits to managing the corporate way in international hotel chains

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