j. saee, ,managerial competence within the hospitality and tourism service industries (2006)...

Tourism Management 29 (2008) 1038–1050

Book review

Managerial Competence within the Hospitality and Tourism

Service Industries, J. Saee. Routledge, London (2006).

266pp., hbk, ISBN: 0-415-38596-2

Worldwide, the provision of tourism and hospitalityservices is often portrayed as the domain of small tomedium (SME) enterprises, with a resulting prevalence ofintuitive and highly personalised management techniquesthat owe little to conventional academic theory orestablished business practice. As such, an authoritativemanagement text on the nexus between academic theoryand industry practice would be especially welcome intourism and hospitality circles, and the title of this book isclearly suggestive of a possible response to that need.Unfortunately, title and content are less than perfectlyassociated in this instance, for this work concerns aresearch project to investigate the extent to whichmanagers in the Australian tourism and hospitalityindustries have mastered the challenges posed by aculturally diverse workforce.

This book is the 31st volume in Routledge’s ‘Advances inManagement and Business Studies’ series, and is structured asa research report of seven chapters. In Chapter 1, Saeeintroduces his research project through an outline descriptionof methodology, aims, objectives and questions—his researchdesign uses a range of intercultural communication theories togenerate eight specific questions, and seeks answers to thesequestions through a case study investigation of managementpractice in six Australian tourism and hospitality organisa-tions. At the conclusion of this process, two new models ofmanagement behaviour are promised, and these models areeventually highlighted in Chapter 7, which concludes the bookby summary and synthesis of material introduced earlier.

Chapter 2 discusses the relationship between manage-ment, communications, and culture within the Australiantourism industry, and an attempt is made to identify andcatalogue the essential elements of ‘Australian corporateculture’. The ensuing discussion identifies a wide-rangingportfolio of concepts that together define what is meant byintercultural communication in the context of Australiantourism, an approach that is clearly essential in an industrydedicated to deliberate interaction between people of widelydiffering cultural backgrounds. The treatment given to thesetopics is clear and concise, if somewhat superficial, thoughthe concluding perspective (of a fundamental conflictbetween a low context ‘Anglo’ host culture and a highcontext ‘Oriental’ visitor group) is somewhat debatable. Inparticular, the author’s comments on workplace multi-culturalism and employer attitudes appear to be temporally

located in the mid 1990s and supported by a battery ofreferences from the same era—this reviewer’s own industryexperiences suggest that the Australasian employmentrelations environment of 2006 is considerably more complexand sophisticated than what has been described here.Chapter 3 presents a case for the prioritisation of

communication at the centre of the universe in relation tomanaging a tourism business, and correctly identifies a sharedresponsibility, jointly held by both host and guest, for thesuccessful conduct of an inter-cultural communicationprocess. A number of theoretical approaches are introducedto evaluate the effectiveness of that process, includingpsychological, general systems, uncertainty reduction, con-vergence, and interpersonal theories, and the chaptersuccessfully establishes a range of concepts, which may berelatively unfamiliar to readers from other than a businesscommunications background. However, the translation oftheoretical framework into operational application suffersfrom considerable obsolescence in supporting referencematerial-in a circumstance where Gao and Gudykunst’s(1990) work is presented as ‘‘recent research’’ (p. 64), it isarguably valid to challenge the topicality and relevance of thetext that follows. Concerns of this nature are also a feature ofthe material presented in the following chapter.Chapter 4 further develops the Australian contextual

theme by reviewing the hospitality and tourism industriesin that country, highlighting the cultural diversity presentin the workforce, similarly divergent elements in tourismdemand, and consequent weaknesses in current commu-nications processes. Saee correctly notes that Australia isexperiencing rapidly growing diversity, in both workforceand visitor groups, and that tourism’s status as a ‘peoplebusiness’ implies a particular emphasis on the need tomanage this diversity-strong linkages are drawn betweeneffective managerial communication and organisationalsuccess, and an attempt is made to profile the scope andscale of education and training available to assist firms inthis regard. Again, however, the value of analysis isseriously diluted by the vintage of its statistical under-pinnings—reference is made to visitor arrival forecasts

for the year 2000, and accompanying citations are ofsimilar recency—of nearly 800 references supplied in thebibliography, there are just three (3) publications that datefrom 2000 onwards. This lack of topicality is a seriousweakness in the book’s structure that is difficult to ignore.In Chapter 5, the aims and objectives of research are

amplified by commentary on research methodology and datacollection. Though triangulated by ‘‘personal narratives,historical analysis, and analysis of organisational documents’’

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(p. 113), the primary data collection approach is representedby twelve depth interviews conducted in six Australianorganisations. The dates of interview are not given, but oneeach of three interviews was conducted with a tourism andhospitality lobby group, an industry promotional agency, andan industry training organisation; and the remaining nineinterviews were conducted with staff in three 5-star hotels. Assuch, given the dominance of SME business in the Australiantourism industry, it is difficult to accept these cases as arepresentative sample—indeed, they more accurately representa larger-scale and more systemically sophisticated approach toservice delivery than that provided by the majority of industryparticipants, and one might reasonably anticipate that theirresponses would therefore reflect a bias towards a moreformally established management culture.

Chapter 6 is an extremely substantial (84pp.) reportingof responses to the eight research questions identified in theprevious chapter, primarily drawn from the 20 hours ofdata collected as a result of the interview process. Nomention is made of any qualitative computer software usedto generate these results, and it is possible to infer thatmuch of the analysis was based on handwritten notes madeduring interview, with audio tapes used as backup only.Though quite possibly coincidental, much of the languageused in this chapter is formulaic and repetitive, and there iswide use of direct quotations from interview transcripts.Answers to each of the eight research questions aresummarised by this reviewer as follows:

(1) Intercultural communication competence is defined asthe ability to use the skills of adaptability and sensitivityin pursuit of effective interpersonal relationships.

(2) Most managers felt uncertain in communicating acrosscultures, especially in regard to their ability to predictemployee levels of understanding, reaction, and responses.

(3) Most managers agreed that the ability to developinterpersonal relationships is important in optimisingintercultural communication competency.

(4) Many managers were unaware of the psychologicaladaptation challenges faced, and responses adopted, byvisitors to Australia from other countries.

(5) Workforce diversity is believed to lead to widerexpertise amongst providers, broader perspectives,enriched quality of life and better customer service;but significant challenges arise from cultural differ-ences, cultural stereotypes, religion and gender issues,and an employee tendency to form ethnically basedcliques in the workplace.

(6) Five of the six case study organisations could identifyno meaningful impact of cultural diversity on theirrespective corporate cultures.

(7) Just one of the six case study organisations had madeany real effort to include cultural considerations intheir planning, communications, marketing and other

core business functions. The remaining five organisa-tions were adjudged remiss in not using workplacediversity to its full advantage.

(8) Little or no inter-cultural communication training wasavailable in any of the participating organisations.

The overall tone of Saee’s comments suggests thatrespondent organisations were united in their claim to bedeeply concerned with the quality of intercultural commu-nications in their workplaces, but that specific strategicresponses to their perceived shortcomings were extremelythin on the ground. In response, the author offers what hecalls ‘‘two new models’’—a checklist of best practice forexcellence in intercultural communication, and a similarlystructured toolbox of techniques for competent managerialpractice. These two elements offer a useful summary of thematerial discussed earlier in the chapter, though it is clearlypossible to challenge their specific application to inter-cultural communication. In this respect, much of theunderlying critique of managerial attitudes towards anethnically diverse workforce might well be applied to thebroader employer–employee relationship—and the sug-gested responses might be equally applicable to ALLorganisational employees.This book is not without value, for it offers an

easily read, digested and absorbed commentary on theattitudes and behaviours of a selection of Australiantourism and hospitality managers towards their multi-cultural workforces. In this context, Chapter 3 discourseon communication theory is an especially interestingand informative read. However, its utility is seriouslycompromised by a consistent reliance on out-dated data,both to establish an initial theoretical position and tosubsequently validate that position in an operationalcontext. For this reviewer, the book is essentially aboutthe management of communication with an ethnicallydiverse workforce in Australia (for there is little data hererelating to multi-cultural visitor groupings, and nothingabout the type of management competencies its title wouldsuggest). As such, it may disappoint the reader who isattracted by the promise of discussion around the extent towhich tourism and hospitality managers worldwide haveadopted and applied mainstream management principlesand concepts to their businesses; unfortunately, the largelymisleading title may simultaneously result in its beingoverlooked by the target audience for whom it wasoriginally designed.

Ken SimpsonUnitec Institute of Technology, Carrington Road, Mount

Albert, Auckland, New Zealand

E-mail address: ksimpson@gw.unitec.ac.nz

doi:10.1016/j.tourman.2007.09.006

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