Leadership And Management During Organizational Change At Ritz-Carlton Hotel

Concept of Leading and Managing Change

The report will analyze concepts of leading and managing organizational change. It will also evaluate the organizational systems and business resources during organizational change. The leadership styles and ethical perspective will be examined. The report is based on the case study of Ritz Carlton Hotel of Shanghai. The Ritz Carlton Hotel of Shanghai is situated in Nanjing Road beside the Huangpu River and The Bund. The hotel offers luxurious accommodations in important retail areas of China along with an indoor swimming pool and a spa. The hotel has a convenient business center, 24-hour facility of room service and a 24-hour service of front desk.

Corporate Culture of the Ritz Carlton Hotel Company

• Core values – They show their values of responsible business through policies on human rights, employment, supply chain, environment and in the conduct they support and expect of others. They believe that their success as a global hospitality company is grounded in their values demonstrated each day through their world-class service and culture.
• Beliefs – They believe thatto take care of a customer, one should first take care of those who take care of the customers. Employee’s satisfaction delivers high service value to the customers to satisfy them. And satisfied customers, in turn, create profits and sales for the organization.
• Ethical Standards –Its code of business ethics provides staffs and managers with full guidance on the right way to conduct business on laws relating to unfair competition, political and commercial bribery, and abuse of purchasing power, political contribution and more (Piehler, Hanisch & Burmann, 2015). Their business ethics program reinforces the importance of the ethical responsibilities of the company.
• People Management Approach – The senior management of the company undertook management of quality. They know that as a service company, the quality of its end product was only as good as the people providing it. So, it only recruits the right kind of staffs, but also give them the necessary inputs to allow them to provide excellent service.

As Ritz Carlton is an international company, hiring locals can be extremely difficult. An expert have a set of professional knowledge, which make them the best candidate for the position. International employees can help the company to achieve its business objectives and boost the performance of the company on an international level (Tavitiyaman, Weerakit & Ryan, 2014).

International staffs come at a higher price due to transport and higher allowances, relocation packages, and visa sponsorship. Higher foreigners might cost two to four times higher than local employees. The language barrier is also one of the main disadvantages to recruit foreign employee.

The attitude problem of the young Chinese workers in Ritz Carlton Hotel was solved by the Mr Mark de Cocinis’ approach, who is GM of the hotel. The use of internal strength is one of the examples which has analyzed the attitude issues of the workers and gained trust among the workers. Another example is that he was able to attract, improve and retain the highly trained Chinese workers and delivered best customer service, gain profits and increase the growth of the hotel (Leung, Bai & Erdem, 2017). The third example is that Mr. Mark de Cocinis has personally interviewed each staff and built a personal relation with them.

• Empowered the staffs- By empowering the staffs, they are more accountable, they accept the responsibilities. Empowered staffs can even be more proactive and recognize when there are small problems that need to be solved. This prevents small problems from turning into big issues. Staffs will more be trusted and valued, and they tend to be more engaged (Chen, 2015). Employees who are more engaged are more likely to use discretionary effort for the growth and the customers.
• Motivation- Great leaders know how to motivate their staffs in change management for the improvement of an organization. Leaders at Ritz Carlton continuously seek opportunities to improve and innovate the experience of the company. An organization promotes learning through personal development plan. Senior leaders support the change of any kind in the work environment and support their employees by providing a campaign to face the changes.
• Engaging the staffs- The more organizational staff accept and understand the want for business change, the more positively they will response to the change process. Leaders engage staffs in the change process to establish clear points for their discussion. Leaders help staffs to make a good transition using session of discussion to allow staffs to share their feelings about the changes.

Three Areas of Differences or Similarities in Business Leadership

Differences in business leadership can be classified with the help of various areas like the dynamics of gender, culture of the concerned workplace and diversity.   

Leadership by gender dynamics will help in evaluating the growth of the firm by promoting only one particular type of gender that is male or female. The weakness of this areas is that both the males and females do not find the right and equal opportunity to execute and show they’re taken with the workplace.

Organizational Systems and Resources to Business Transformation

Leadership by diversity will help in encouraging many initiative ideas from various employees, and this is one of the strengths of the firm (Huertas-Valdivia, Llorens-Montes & Ruiz-Moreno, 2018). Its weakness is that many of the conflicts are often taken place due to the diverse culture of the employees.

The third area of leadership that represents the culture showcase its strengths by increasing the effectiveness and efficiency throughout the workplace by having appropriate culture. One of the weakness is that if the culture remains inappropriate, then it can hamper the overall work process of the firm.  

Few of the advantages are:

Business leadership by culture helps in enhancing the cooperation and collaboration among the employees which enhances the overall culture of the firm. The use of the diverse culture of the organization will promote in generating new and innovative ideas from the concerned employees (Safavi & Karatepe, 2018). Gender dynamics will facilitate the empowerment of women and men in various workplaces as required.  

Few of the disadvantages are:

It has been seen that diversity many times gives rise of conflicts among the employees. The differences in gender lead to various biased decisions based on a particular gender. The prevalence of inappropriate culture may hamper the execution of the business procedures of the concerned firm.    

Gender, Diversity and Culture

The HR managers have taken more initiatives to appoint more and more female staffs in the company.  The hotel is strict on hiring the right people. Though the candidates with the correct qualifications are preferred, currently the HR managers are paying more attention to the candidates with high capability so that they fit with the reliable service culture of the company. The HR managers are giving significance to the organizational culture of strategic importance (Asif, 2015). The HR managers of the hotel are also currently selecting candidates with diverse skills and knowledge and training them the technical needs of specific jobs.

The hotel has implemented many new HR practices. As for example, all the 300 employees have to learn one new thing each day and time has allocated mainly at the beginning of each shift so that the staffs could do it (Hodari, Turner, Sturman & Nath, 2018). The HR managers have to submit the daily reports to the Head of the Department. The learning may be regarding the operations of another department, the whole tourist sector or new products in the company. The HR managers of the hotel have implemented more new strategic staffing initiatives to retain the productive staffs and reduce the turnover expenses.

Influence of Leadership in Change Management

Work Motivation

The hotel believes that the motivation of the employees begins with the correct selection method. The selection method of the hotel helps them to recognize the staffs those who are already encouraged (Cusumano, 2015). Each staff is motivated to go beyond their limitations and build unique, impressive and personal relations with their customers. The staffs of the hotel are reorganized and rewarded according to their skills. The rewards motivate the staffs of the hotel.

The employees are quite satisfied as they are regularly rewarded for their jobs. The hotel understands its staffs, and they are provided with better equipment so that the staffs could build a positive and useful corporate culture. A better knowledge of the tools will help the hotel to know their employee’s demands. It will lead to the satisfaction of the employees. The satisfied staffs provide high service value and lead to the satisfaction of the customers (Román & Martín, 2016).

The loyalty of the hotel works on some particular values like informing staffs about their duties, and allowing them to master the needs of their job (Lee, 2016). It also involves producing concepts to improve the quality of their productivity, and continuously train them through their managers on various tasks.

The culture of the hotel is influenced by various cultures which consist of cultures of various areas of China, cultures of many nations of Asia and cultures of western nations (Sun, Tong & Law, 2017).

Three Leadership Styles facilitating Organizational Change

• Transactional leadership- It leaders work according to the predefined modes of operation and concerned about ensuring continuity in the day to day function, makings sure of continuous operations by establishing process and systems in place and focused towards achievements of set goals (Sotiriadis & Varvaressos, 2016). It implies short-term rewards due to the positive relationships between peers can influence their perception on the company and implicitly the corporate takeover that is ongoing.
• Transformational leadership- Leaders of transformational are the real champions of change. They focus on the increasing motivation of the employees and connect staffs sense of self with industrial values. It also focuses on employee weaknesses and strengths and enhances their capabilities and their commitment to industrial goals, often by seeking their buy-in for decisions. Leaders give more importance to the development of teams and make sure about the fulfillment of day to day industrial work.
• Strategic leadership- It is a practice in which executives using styles of management develop a vision for their industry the enables it to adapt to or remain competitive in a changing technological and economic climate. Strategic leaders can use the vision to encourage staffs and departments, develop among them a sense of direction and unity to apply change within the company.

Transformational leadership style has been adopted by the new management of Ritz Carlton Hotel. This leadership style has helped to bring organizational change in the hotel. It has carried necessary and positive change in the hotel with the aim to transform the hotel (Xu, Ye & Chan, 2018). The transformational leadership and the organizational change support one another.

The transformational leaders of the hotel help in retention of the staffs more often than any leadership style. They also assist in retaining more customers of the hotel. The transformational leadership look for fulfilling the needs of the hotel and at the same time satisfy the personal needs of the leaders of the hotel.

The lack of open communication among the leaders and employees of the hotel is the disadvantage of the transformational leaders of the hotel. Open discussion makes the hotel realize their mission and vision of their hotel. If the employees of the hotel observe that communication is not taking place, then they will lose interest in their jobs.

Corporate Culture

As a manager of the Ritz Carlton Hotel ethical leadership could be applied in the hotel, as it might help the staffs of the hotel to create good relations with the leaders of the hotel on the basis of respect and belief. The staffs believe that leaders will maintain their commitments towards them as well as towards the objectives of the hotel. The ethical leaders of the hotel have to identify that by providing examples, create a workplace environment which promotes productivity, and not the distractions of the employees by scandals and corruption (Oh, Kim & Yang, 2016). When the employees and the leaders gain trust for one another, they could concentrate on their work and complete it in time. They could also ask for help when required by them and solve their business issues.

One example is the use of differentiation method where the hotel with the help of the leaders tried to be ethical in the industry on a large scale which is based on the values of the customers. This has become possible as a relation has formed between the employees and the leaders.

Another example is the use of long-term orientation of China by the leaders so the staffs could establish long-term relations with the employers of the hotel. The leaders are also interested in setting long-standing ties with the staffs and constantly try to motivate them in their

Honesty – The leaders have to be honest and open about their relationships in the hotel. They should not intentionally mislead or cheat others by misrepresentations, false statements, incomplete truths, selective errors, or any other methods (Wang & Chung, 2015).

Loyalty – The leaders have to be trustworthy, show fidelity and commitment to the employees and hotel by the alliance in hardship, support and dedicate towards their responsibility. They should not practice or reveal confidential information for personal benefit.

Respect – The leaders should show respect towards the employees and employers of the hotel in the context of dignity, rights and privacy of all those who will be involved in the decision-making process (Chathoth, 2016).  They should treat every person equally in the hotel with respect irrespective of gender or race.

• Communication- There are different forms of communication methods used like verbal and non-verbal methods of communication. Therefore, to strengthen the relationship with the internal and external stakeholders, the use of latest communicational techniques needs to be used which can communicate the exact message to them without any discrepancies.
• Managing risks- The management needs to be re-structured to manage the risks associated with the stakeholders so that their trust can be retained and the relationship can be made stronger. For this, various risk management approaches can be significantly adopted like Risk sharing, Risk retention, risk transfer, avoidance, combination, loss control, and separation (Weldon & Chang, 2004).

Conclusion

The report had considered the Portman Ritz-Carlton Shanghai: Asia’s Best Employer as the case study. It had evaluated the concepts of leadership and management during the organizational change of the hotel. It had also analyzed the organizational systems of the hotel and business resources at the time of organizational change. The leadership styles and ethical perspective had also been reflected in the context of transformation in the Ritz Carlton Hotel. The significance of the ethical leadership in the hotel has been considered, along with the three ethical behaviours of the leaders to be implemented in the hotel. Two strategies for managing the relations with internal and external stakeholders had also been analyzed.

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