Diversity in Hotel Industry: Satisfaction, Teamwork

Diversity In Hotel Industry

In today’s competitive environment, an increasing number of organizations invest in promoting diversity in the workplace. Therefore, it is very important to understand “how diversity impacts individual and team processes and outcomes in the workplace” (Harrison & Sin, 2006, pp. 191). The role of diversity in workplaces has been widely discussed in the field of organizational studies. Diversity has been claimed to impact team effectiveness (Harrison & Sin, 2006), whilst diverse work teams were found to attain high value to organizations. Literature highlights that diversity provides benefits that increase success. Given the multicultural and globalised perspective of the hospitality industry (Korjala, 2012), diversity management practices can offer organizations advantages in facilitating transactions with customers (Hicks-Clarke & Iles, 2000), and by committing to diversity, businesses’ reputation and corporate image can be effectively enhanced (Roberson & Park, 2007).

Hospitality plays an important role in the economy of a country– often constitutes its backbone. According to Reisinger (2009), hospitality and tourism organizations operate in a very complex multicultural tourism environment and thus they cannot afford to neglect understanding and capturing individuals’ perception on culture nor underestimate the role of the national culture. While most managers recognize the value and importance of culture, they find it difficult, if not impossible, to successfully link culture to diversity so that it becomes viable and leads to the achievement of the strategic objectives. Literature highlights that traditional organisational cultures and systems include factors that create significant barriers and constraints to successful diversity management. In general however, the organizational competitiveness lies significantly on the ability to manage cultural diversity in a workplace and communicate effectively across cultures (Okoro & Washington, 2012, pp.58).