Two Styles of Hotel Manager, Two Styles of Worker

Evidence suggests that the hotel sector has high levels of labour turnover, especially in seaside resorts. To help explain this, at least in part, management styles and their effect on hotel workers′ perceptions of jobs was investigated. The study was undertaken in five seasonal seaside hotels from April to October 1992. All had between 30‐65 bedrooms. Interviews with managers revealed two supervisory styles; “co‐ordinative” whereby for most of the time managers did not work alongside their staff, and “hands‐on”, whereby for most of the time they did. Information about hotel jobs was elicited from managers and staff using Hackman and Oldham′s (1974) job diagnostic survey. This standard questionnaire views jobs as a composite of several “core job dimensions”, each having a possible score of 1 to 7 depending on its perceived degree of presence within a job. It was hypothesized that “hands‐on” managers would score jobs similarly to their workers and that “co‐ordinative” managers would not. Also, that workers experiencing “hands‐on” supervision would score “core job dimensions” higher than their “co‐ordinative” counterparts. The former notion was supported by the results, the latter found partial support. The results indicate that management styles may be important in motivating workers.