Yvonne Guerrier

The Interlocking of Gender with Nationality, Race, Ethnicity and Class: the Narratives of Women in Hotel Work

Whilst gender in the workplace is has been extensively researched, investigation into how gender interacts with other factors such as ethnicity and class has been less explicitly considered. This article explores the interlocking of gender with other categories such as class, ethnicity, race and nationality in the context of hotel work. It draws on the narratives of women describing their experiences of working in hotels. Findings from this empirically based examination suggest that gendered and other representations at work are not constructed as a process of adding difference on to difference, where categories are considered as separate and fixed. Instead, what emerges is a negotiation of the many categories shaping identities at work, which exist simultaneously and shift according to context.

Work at Leisure and Leisure at Work: A Study of the Emotional Labour of Tour Reps:

This article explores the work of one particular type of leisure worker: the overseas tour rep. Drawing on theoretical debates, it analyses qualitative observation and interview data collected from tour reps working in Mallorca, Spain for a British budget tour operator. We explore the paradoxes of delivering emotional labour in a job where the boundaries between work and leisure are blurred, and which is both explicitly about delivering fun and also about the ‘dirty work’ of managing holidaymakers’ complaints and excesses. We argue that reps actively seek spaces where they are able to buy into a lifestyle that they see as reflecting their authentic selves. This enables them to accept the negative part of their work and they become disciplined workers.

Core and Peripheral Employees in Hotel Operations

This article discusses approaches to work flexibility and the use of core and peripheral workers in the hotel industry. It argues that hotel companies have traditionally neglected building a core workforce and resorted to using “peripheral” workers in key operative jobs. It distinguishes between three groups of core workers that can be found in hotels: company core staff, who make their careers across a range of units in a hotel group; unit core staff, who are limited to the single hotel unit; and operative core staff, who may develop their careers within one hotel or across a number of hotels. The problems of developing such an operative core are discussed, as are the consequences of not developing it.

Hotel managers' careers and their impact on hotels in Britain

Abstract The career succession of senior and middle managers clearly affects the culture of the organizations in which they work. But m relatively ‘closed’ industries where industry and occupational norms are a major determinant of career paths, what influence do organizations have on their managers attitudes? The hotel industry is such a ‘closed’ industry, hotel managers tend to be trained and developed apart from managers in other industries. It is also an industry which has rarely been studied by social scientists, in particular hotel managers have been ignored. This paper examines the career paths of unit managers in British hotels. It reveals the extent to which traditional, occupationally orientated attitudes still affect managers careers in this industry and speculates on the impact these attitudes have on hotel culture and hotel companies.

Overeducation, underemployment and job satisfaction: a study of Finnish hotel receptionists.

The shortage of people with adequate skills to fill jobs in the hotel and catering industry has been a subject of debate recently. However, less attention has been paid to the reverse of this problem; the consequences of overeducation for the jobs available. This paper focuses on the hotel industry in Finland; a country where a relatively high proportion of young people stay on into further and higher education. The Finnish economy is currently in recession and over 30% of all 15 to 25 year olds are unemployed (Statistics Finland August 1993). As increasingly well qualified people chase the few jobs available, many settle for jobs that have been traditionally filled by less educated people. Do these people feel that their skills are underutilized? How does ‘overeducation’ affect attitudes to work? This paper reports the results of a research study of receptionists in first category hotels in the Helsinki region which examined the relationships between overeducation, underemployment and job satisfaction. However, although this study focuses on Finland, similar problems may be faced in other countries where there is increasing provision of high level educational courses without a similar expansion in the number of high skill jobs.

Flexible working in the hospitality industry: current strategies and future potential.

Interest in flexible working methods is increasing in the hospitality industry but to date there is little research evidence of current practice or potential. The range of methods available to the hospitality manager is reviewed and the major benefits and problems arising from the adoption of particular approaches identified. The findings are reported of a survey into current practice in the hotel industry and the extent of functional flexibility, numerical flexibility, pay flexibility and distancing approaches. Issues affecting the implementation of flexible working are discussed with special reference to the housekeeping area. It is concluded that companies must clarify their objectives in adopting flexible working if they are to make appropriate decisions about the methods they wish to pursue.

Human resource policy in social work management: a response to enforced market orientation

This article is a contribution to the study of public service organizations converting to a market orientation. The case examined here is that of a social services department which opted for the strategy of restructuring on the lines of budget autonomy but accompanied it by an unusual focus upon managerial skills. The effect was to personalize the change. The conflict between old ways and new thinking was congealed into personal debate by the focus on skills so that changes had to be resolved internally. The rationale for this strategy is located in the antipathy between professional social work values and the practice of management.

Management Assessment Centres as a Focus for Change

Discusses a case where an assessment centre programme played a key role in a process of management change in a county council social services department, responding to the Government’s “Care in the Community” initiatives. “New think” management required a paradigm shift – not just acquiring new “bits” of skill or knowledge – particularly with respect to decision making. Argues from this experience that developmental assessment centres provide an arena in which new roles can be rehearsed and allows for reflection on a person’s competence to manage that role.

Ethical Dilemmas in Organisation and Management Development

In the latest book about college lecturer Henry Wilt, Wilt has a part-time job teaching American servicemen at a nuclear missile base.