Florence Berger

Making meetings work

Meetings often consume time without covering distance. Heres how to transform them into a vital and productive component of your firms operations

Employment Tests A Facet of Hospitality Hiring

Abstract Hotel and resturant operators should take a fresh look at usig valid employment tests for selected hiring decisions. Properly used, tests are an Important aspect of choosig the best person for a job.

Entrepreneurs: in the Hospitality Industry: A Psychological Portrait

WHEN IN THE THROES of making decisions about their careers, many hospitality students ask themselves, &dquo;Should I join the management training program of a major hotel or restaurant corporation, should I accept a position with a small company, or do I have the resources to make it on my own to be an entrepreneur?&dquo; This crucial decision-making process is rendered especially difficult because there is little information available on the characteristics of suc-

Disparate learning styles of hospitality students, professors and managers

Abstract The communication gap between managers and management scientists persists. It has been suggested that a major factor contributing to this gap is the marked difference in the learning styles exhibited by these two constituencies. Management educators and managers should be keenly concerned about deriving means to bridge this communication gap in order to enhance synergy among managers, management scientists, management educators and students of management. Scores were obtained for a sample of hospitality students, professors and managers on the Kolb Learning Style Inventory. Differences among the three groups are analysed. Applications to the hospitality management classroom and to industry management training programmes are suggested.

Human resources management in the 21st century: predicting partnerships for profit.

The authors propose that human resources management will become a mainstay in the strategic business of hospitality organizations in the 21 st century. To remain viable, hospitality organizations will need to create partnerships with employees, guests, and universities. It is proposed that these essential partner ships will incorporate six critical human resources management (HRM) domains: technology; power paradigms; training and development; compensation; em ployee relations; and family, society, and work balance. A survey of hospitality employees and leaders indicated they felt that all six domains would be important or very important to their jobs.

Intrapreneuring in hospitality organizations

Abstract The desire to keep employees with entrepreneurial instincts within the corporation, has led companies to implement changes which will meet the needs of these employees. One of the needed changes might be an action-oriented rather than analytically perfect decision-making environment. The organizational structure and decision-making processes of Laventhol and Horwath and Harvey Hotels, two successful American companies which foster creativity and an ‘intrapreneurial’ spirit, were studied to determine the characteristics which engender this spirit. Parallels in the company profiles were manifestations of an action-rational decision-making environment.

No Time Left for You Time-management Strategies for Restaurateurs

A survey of 74 restaurant managers and operators in the United States highlights the importance of effective time management. Of 69 restaurateurs who use time-management techniques, 49 estimated that time management boosts their bottom line by at least 15 percent. Ironically, most of the managers rated the effectiveness of their time-management skills as only poor or fair. Effective time management begins with recording and analyzing the actual way that time is used. Recording activities in time intervals of 15 minutes and then sorting those activities according to the priority of the activities gives a manager a picture of where the day goes. From that analysis, a manager can determine the source of time wasters. Time-management techniques involve three key elements: breaking bad time-management habits; learning to delegate; and eliminating interrupters.

The coaching paradox

Abstract As managers have shifted from controlling to empowering their employees, coaching has become a vital managerial tool. The primary goal of this paper is to begin a dialog on coaching that will facilitate theoretical development and empirical testing. We surveyed hotel managers to determine what they think coaching is, how they approach it, and how often they attempt to use it. The results of this exploratory analysis uncovered two coaching paradoxes: (1) managers attest that coaching is imperative for developing high caliber employees, yet they do not understand how coaching fits into the psychodynamics of the workplace; and (2) managers believe that they spend a high proportion of their workday coaching employees, yet critical analysis of their coaching incidents reveals that much of what they believe to be coaching actually is not coaching. Studying both these paradoxes sheds light on three primary misconceptions about coaching: (1) coaching is reactive and either a form of discipline or reward; (2) coaching is training; and (3) coaching requires only part-time attention.

Sales skills in the hospitality industry.

Abstract Two surveys were conducted with the intention of increasing insight into the nature of sales in todays hospitality industry. One hundred U.S. hotel sales and marketing managers were surveyed about attitudes within the hotel sales community regarding training, salesmanship, qualities of effective salespeople, and related issues. Also, the training directors of fifteen hotel companies were interviewed concerning their training programs for entry-level salespeople. Presentation of the results of these surveys is preceded by commentary from the literature and from selected hotel sales executives regarding the unique nature of sales in the hospitality industry.

Management Games: For Hospitaly-Industry Training

AMONG THE TRAINING approaches used to develop the analytical, conceptual, and interpersonal skills of hospitality managers are lectures, case studies, programmed instruction, on-the-job training, and-one of the more recently developed methods-management games and simulations. The first edition of The Guide to Simulations and Garne.s, published in 1970, contains 400 entries;’ the third edition, published seven years later, contains over 1,200 entries? Why have management games and simulations proven so popular? What are their advantages as a training tool, and how have they been applied in the hospitality industry? The following definitions, proffered by Horn,3 provide a good starting point for this .discussion: