International Hospitality Management For Internationalisation

Understanding cross-cultural management

Discuss about the International Hospitality Management for Internationalisation.

Now internationalisation has spread out in the global context and the importance of diversity in the workforce of hospitality industry become more relevant. A workforce is an asset in which the various nationalities coexist to blend the multiple cultures. It is evident that each of the cultures has its typical characteristics such as values, different mentalities and preferences. Therefore, this coexistence impacts hugely on the workforce to cooperate to reach the goal of the organisation. In case of the hospitality industry, international travellers can come from various regions of the world; the staffs of the hospitality industry need to meet the desires of the guests through effective communication. The staffs and the guests may have the difference in culture; however, the cultural discrepancies must not show the behaviour of the employees. Additionally, HR department within hospitality organisation aligns the variety of the culture within the workforce to have the effective management of different culture and working style.

As stated by Rajadhyaksha et al. (2015), cross-cultural management is the essence of cross-cultural communication as it is the process of negotiating, exchanging and mediating the cultural differences among the employees. Cross-cultural management is important as it helps to communicate with the employees and with the guests effectively within the hospitality sector. Ineffective communication can offend and is misunderstood by the employees who may lead to breaking the professional relationship with employees and investors. In this study, the importance of cross-cultural management within the hospitality sector is discussed showing the barriers of the cross-culture communication. In this study, the process of managing the cross-cultural management is explained from relevant secondary sources. In addition, company culture needs to be effective as the structure, policies and specific procedures within the organisation can create the unique culture.

 This topic is chosen for evaluation as cross-cultural management is very significant in the hospitality sector as the guests of hospitality industry come from different regions of the world. The management has to deal with multi-ethnic group of customers. Large hospitality organisations expand the international trade by operating across many countries; therefore, the importance of cross-cultural management is gaining significance across hospitality industry. In the hospitality industry; management needs to adapt and recognise the different working cultures and styles; the final result of the harmonious working should aim at building the strong relationship through the reputation and personal rapport.

Theoretical understanding of the cross-cultural dimensions

Cross-cultural management happens when managers need to manage the people from different culture and this type of management is increasing day-by-day as the businesses are expanding with the time (Lee 2016). Businesses expand to the global arena and the management hires the employees from the local areas. Therefore, the new hired people have to work with the managers’ from home country. Therefore, the clash of the different cultures happens and the people try to manage the increase diversity. Cross culture management requires skills from the managers and the management expects that they must succeed at management style to offer employees with training to survive within the organisation. As stated by Adekola and Sergi (2016), common manifestation of cross-cultural management is occurred when the manager has to deal with the unfamiliar management as each of the culture has its distinctive values along with attitudes. Sometimes, the managers do not move another country and the management hires new people from multi-ethnic groups with different religions, race and creed. The management sometimes recruits the staffs from the immigrant people and therefore, the managers have to deal with cross-cultural management.

In hospitality industry, cross-cultural management involves managing team in ways that must consider the different in cultures, preferences and practices of the consumers in international business contexts. Many of the hospitality organisations have modified their approaches to compete in the market. In hospitality sector, there is no boundary of the geography when the guests come from international arena (Moran et al. 2014). Nowadays, online transaction and interactions make cross-cultural communication more common in hospitality business. In hospitality industry, large hospitality organisations have their hotels and resorts in many parts of the world. The home country of the organisation sends the senior management to control the hotels and the senior management needs to deal with the employees of local countries to work peacefully. Therefore, cross-cultural management within the workforce is very important to form the multi-ethnic team within the organisation. According to Li (2014), functions of the hospitality industry in cross-cultural management are included the recruiting the candidates that can be effective in cross-cultural environments and handle differing regulatory environments for the business. As argued by Etsoy (2014), the hospitality organisations can provide training to the employees to handle the intercultural communication issues. The management within global hospitality organisations facilitate the cross-cultural teams to align HR policies and procedures across corporate entities in the different nations.

Dr Geert Hofstede came up with Cultural Dimension model in 1970s and this model has become the standard for understanding the cultural differences. This model is based on the cross-cultural psychology and this model illustrated the different cultural background. There are six cultural dimensions in this theoretical perspective of Hofstede model. Power distance is the dimension which explains about the extent to which the employees who are subordinates within the organisation accept or also expect that the giving away of the power can happen unequally (Rallapalli and Montgomery 2015). Power distance can talk about the society that addresses the inequalities among the societal members when it occurs. Power distance within the multi-cultural organisation talks about the economic and cultural relationship between the senior and newly hired employees. When the organisation follows the large power distance; it means the organisation follows autocratic leadership, authority that is centralised and numbers of hierarchy levels. Individualism vs. Collectivism is about the dimension regarding the people can have the preference for being left alone in the society or the people need to be closely knitted. This dimension measures the culture to value the individuals. Within an organisation, individual plays a role of an active agent of working goals. Individualistic culture fosters the contractual relationship and concentration falls in self. Collectivistic culture provides emphasis on behaviour as per the social norms and considers wider collective with regards to the actions (Mazanec et al. 2015). Uncertainty avoidance is the dimension which describes the extent to which the people in the organisation are not ease with uncertainty and ambiguity. In this situation, the employees try to avoid the uncertain situations as they feel threatened about uncertainty. In this situation, in cross-cultural organisations, the management tries to establish formal rules and reject the deviant ideas. The organisation can accept the possibilities of identifying the absolute truth to attain the unquestionable expertise. Strong uncertainty avoidance within an cross-cultural management means that the organisation has the tendency to avoid the risks and strong respect for the authority. Masculinity and Femininity is another dimension discusses on the society or the organisation’s preferences. Masculinity focuses on heroism, achievement, assertiveness and material reward for gaining success. On the other side, femininity represents the preferences for cooperation, quality of life and caring for the diversified and weak people. In masculinity society, the people are mainly competitive and ambitious (Bakir et al. 2015). Masculinity culture possesses the value that is associated with nature, people, job and intelligence of the people. On the other side, femininity culture is associated with putting stress on non-materialistic angles of success and it is preferred trait in overlapping of social gender roles. Long and short-term orientation described the inclination of the societal virtues. Long-term orientation explains the pragmatic future of the people rather than the conventional short-term view. This dimension measures the employees’ devotion towards the respect of the tradition and the work ethics. Indulgence vs. Restraint revolves around through which the societies can control over the desires and impulses.  

Cross-cultural management in the workplace can occur when the organisation hires the staffs from various backgrounds. In hospitality sector; the cross-cultural background within the workplace is quite familiar as management hires different background staffs to satisfy the needs of the guests. The guests of the hospitality industry also come from the various backgrounds; therefore, diverse workforce gets the benefits of efficiency and creating the competitive advantage. In hospitality sector, the employees belong to the various cultural backgrounds and it provides high-morale to the employees. As stated by Gatling et al. (2017), when diversity is managed by the senior management, the employees get the diversity training and the result is that the people feel considered and validated. Diversity and inclusion within the workplace provides equal opportunities to work with the people and the organisations get the different skills and views. The employees feel valued when the senior management recruits employees from various cultures and it establishes the fact that the management is not orthodox as it promotes positivity to the workplace along with morale. Moreover, cross-cultural management within the hospitality sector provides different perspective to solve the issues of the guests and customers. The employees will know the about the preferences of the customers who belong to the same ethnic background. As pointed out by Muhamad et al. (2016), when the employees work from various cultures; they are exposed to multiple ideas and viewpoints. The employees can share the different ideas and perspectives that allow the culturally diverse employees with acute brainstorming. More ideas and solutions help hospitality organisation to retain maximum guests and it will eventually give the chance to have greater revenue in future.

Large hospitality organisations; restaurant, resorts or hotels are increasingly facing the global economy and workforce. The hospitality organisations expand the business worldwide and they are able to communicate effectively in many parts of the world with key benefits of having the global impact. Cross-cultural management brings effective cross-cultural communication to understand the cultural nuances along with the differences (Mayo 2017). Cross-cultural management leads to make good community relations and increasing trend of mimicking the communities that they serve. Customers and communities both prefer to engage the organisations that employ people to be similar to them; therefore the hospitality organisations hire and manage the employees with diverse cultures and gaining the advantage to competitive market space. In global organisation, many people are associated with different appearance and the managers look for the differences in languages, food, religious practices and clothing. As commented by Forrest et al. (2016), the outward aspects can mislead the management; the actual differences of culture lie within the values and beliefs. Cross-cultural management provides advantages of sharing the common goal to ensure each of the team members needs to be focused. The management encourages the individuals to collaborate internationally and this process helps to share the knowledge. Wide-range of information helps the hospitality organisation to keep up-to-date about needs of the culturally diverse customers.  

Culture in general is associated with the values and belief and people can interpret the experiences based on the culture. Cross-cultural management brings issues based on four dimensions; first one is directness when the people do not get the point of implying the message. Hierarchy states about orders and it can engage the debate. Consensus is the acceptance versus unanimity and lastly; individualism is about the winners and the effectiveness of the team.

Culture shock is the experience of an individual when the person moves to another cultural environment which is different from one’s own. As opined by Thomas and Peterson (2017), cultural shock is the personal disorientation that a person faces when the person experiences the unfamiliar way of due to the visit of the new country or to experiencing something new to a new organisation. In a culturally diverse organisation, the employees may feel a move between social and environmental disorientation for their failure to recognise the cultural factors and issues. The employees feel isolated in culture shock in multinational hospitality organisation, the staffs may feel anxiety, worry, high nervous and reduction of job performance.

In the culturally diverse organisation, the employees come from different racial and religious background; it is very important to respect each employee within the organisation. When the people do not understand the interaction; people tend to interpret the conversation as wrong and weird (Mach and Baruch 2015). Therefore, it is very important to control the human tendency to convert the nature; however, the organisation can start the diversity and inclusion training. The employees have the right to say the ‘right thing’; however; the employees must aware of the cultural differences.

As stated by DesAutels et al. (2015), the cultural view is a positive thing within the organisation as the employees have the clear idea about the different cultural aspects. The management always tries to take the face-to-face interview and feedback process as it helps to customarily pin-point the existing problems regarding the cultural differences. The employees show the different cultural attitudes and it may contrast another employees’ culture; therefore, it may lead to the conflict within the organisation. The employees demean the rules and cultural differences sometimes pop out openly; this system also brings out the conflict.

In the hospitality workplace, then there are different ways the employees can move forward to complete the work. It may associate with the accessing the different resources, rewards and different judgement associated with task completion. The employees from the different culture can face different notions of time and the employees may have different ideas how the relationship can build up. When it comes to working on the cultural differences, the employees’ establishing of the relationship prior to the collaboration is the main reason.

In the hospitality sector, the guests come from different regions and the guests may interact with different languages. The workforce of the culturally diverse organisation may communicate in a different way and across the cultures; some phrases and words are used in a different way. On the other side, as argued by Bird and Mendenhall (2016), non-verbal communication; the employees’ facial expressions and gestures are very important. In case of non-verbal and gestures; the employees in different cultures must be aware of other employees’ sentiment. The employees’ seating arrangement and personal distance are also important in communication across the different culture.

In order to manage the multicultural workforce within the hospitality and tourism sector; the management must be aware of the minority and majority of the culture that does not always share the experiences. The management can create the programme that develops the awareness of the cultural diversity. According to Jiang et al. (2015), cross-cultural management within the global organisation can be possible through improving positive attitudes to the cultural differences. The management needs to realise their relations among the different ethnic people. In the cross-cultural organisation, the management should provide communication flexible and show personal concerns can help the employees to encounter obstacles.  

In the hospitality sector, the retention rate of the employees is the least due to the low employees’ satisfaction. The hospitality industry is the most culturally diverse organisation and it ensures that the organisation must define the organisational policies and values. The hospitality organisation eventually aims at promoting the cultural diversity within the workplace so that the employees must not leave the organisation. Managing diversity and the cross-cultural management can be possible through the cultural and diversity training. As the viewpoint of Kapur and Janakiram, (2015), cross-cultural training within the workplace encourages the confidence of the employees as it injects the message of empowerment over the previously difficult challenges. In addition, the scholars further stated that diversity and cross-cultural training build the trust and this must have an altruistic tendency. Some of the multinational hospitality groups take the aspect of diversity management training where the overseas managers can know about the different cultures. Managers must know about the employees and they can provide skill development programmes of the staffs. Improvement of training is needed to measure the accountability of the training; the assessment will help to reach towards the intentions of knowledge behaviour, increase ad attitude change (Storti 2017).

In the hospitality sector; the management takes the relationship management system within the workplace so that different cultural people can work harmoniously as some of the programmes can assist to develop the relationship; the employees can be given language teaching to communicate in right way, celebrating the traditional holidays and celebrating different religious festivals to enhance the communication and build up the relationship management.

According to Ahmad (2018), management in hospitality sector can create the family atmosphere as it can help to increase the employee retention. The management can try to know the personality and background of the employees through conducting the psychometric tests. In addition, managers can do the conversations with the employees in order to understand the needs of relationship management as the employees commonly like being respected and listened.

Cross-Cultural management within hospitality industry should be well-maintained as being a member of the team that totally unaware of the cultural aspects regarding the hospitality organisation makes the employees sometimes feel a little alienated. The employees take in different way through all the values and the staffs within the hospitality sector are judged by the current management of the organisation. According to Kreuz and Roberts (2017), the organisational management needs to understand the underlying concept of the cross-cultural management as the management will get to know about the behavioural differences of the employees from different backgrounds. In addition, as stated by Prasad (2015), cultural intelligence is the personal capacity of the individual through which the people can adapt and work efficiently in diverse culture. The employees must have the cultural intelligence in order to work in multicultural background; mainly in the hospitality sector. Unlikely other industries; in hospitality sector; knowledge is the light about the cultural differences where the people can fill the dark space of the cultural understanding. The employees have to interact the culture and individual is influenced by the culture as well. Therefore, it is evident that cross-cultural management must be well organised in order to run the business effectively. In Asia-Pacific region, rapid economic development comes from the hospitality industry. The places like Macao, Mainland China and Hong Kong are mainly famous for the tourism and hospitality development with diverse cultural people. Many international hospitality companies have made up their branch-like Hilton and Marriott. Therefore, many international travellers started visiting the places like Macao and Hong Kong; the hospitality organisations start focusing on the cross-cultural management with retaining the best talents inside the organisation.

The management must share the values of the culture and beliefs that set the people to commit to one another and share the overriding the sense of the mission. The cross-culture management shares the goal that must be achieved on time through the management’s responsibilities. In addition, the employees need to support and help each other through meet the objectives of the organisation along with work in harmony. As stated by Storti (2017), the management must provide the friendly atmosphere where the all the employees can work with healthy work culture. The impact of the cross-culture management is naturally the shared values along with the support of the employees across the globe in tourism and hospitality sector. Nevertheless, globalisation of the hospitality industry leads to more international employees and immigrant labours in the workforce in European and American regions. Therefore, the hospitality organisations are getting more sophisticated due to the cross-cultural communication and management to provide language training and the organisations are taking the strategies to overcome the cross-cultural issues.

In the article named Managing diversity in hospitality sector; Bolen and Kleiner (1996) stated that changing demographics of the global society; workplace diversity is reality where the hospitality organisations refuse to recognise the risks and failure. The authors further stated that managing diversity is no longer the business issue as it is now associated with moral, legal and social concerns. On the other side, as stated by Gajjar and Okumus, (2018), the main challenge does not deal with making the hospitality workforce diverse; however; it deals with empowering the employees towards diversity. All the employees within the organisation must be given equal opportunities without any discrimination. The managers must be enlightened to persuade the workforce that is diverse with cross-cultural employees. Cross-cultural management makes the workplace culturally diverse and diverse workplace can utilise the potential talents of the employees. The hospitality organisation can increase profitability through get the level of performance from the heterogeneous group and it makes the organisation more competitive. Multicultural workforce helps the organisation to be efficient and the management must make the organisation culturally diversified through recruiting the employees across the globe. As stated by Oskam and Boswijk (2016), geocentric approach of recruitment to the global firm leads the HR takes the staffing approach from global basis where the best employees are selected for the organisation across globe irrespective of the regions. Therefore, cultural diversity comes when the management assists the HR to manage the employees encompassing the different personality, race, cognitive style, tenure, education, background and organisational function. Therefore, opposed to the monoculture, cultural diversity is the quality of different culture exit with peace.

In the article named Cross-Cultural Management for foreign managers, Suvi. J. Jama stated cross-cultural management provides a huge competitive advantage to the organisation in an international context. The author further discussed in hotel industry where the authors showed the needs of managerial activities and skills regarding the cross-cultural management. As contradicted by Devine et al. (2017), cultural differences can be challenging when the managers lead the team remotely. The communication skills of the senior management should be well and the people must have the motivational skills. The role of the senior level employees is to maintain the culture of the workplace relationship along with the relationship between clients in doing the business. The cross-cultural skills are learning where the employees need to learn something effectively and the employees need to gather the experience. As pointed out by Yolal et al. (2016), people who work in the cross-cultural management must have shared goals as people always work in the group or society in the shared culture. In addition, the employees within the multicultural organisation need to have the trans-generational skill along with the culture. This cumulative culture needs to flow down from generation to generation. Therefore, culture is important for the employees who belong to the different background and this interaction of the employees can create vital issue in the international business of hospitality as success of international trade depends on the smooth interaction of the employees from various regions and culture.

Conclusions

It has been observed that cross-cultural management within the hospitality sector is obvious as workforce comes from the different race, background, age, gender and religion. Therefore, the employees can provide the benefits to the organisation in countless ways like contributing to the organisational efficiency and creating the competitive advantage. Advantages of cross-cultural management within a hospitality sector are associated with the increased innovation, and in the workplace, faster time to market. More ideas can spur a greater range of services as well in the hospitality sector. In other words, diversity in its many forms is a competitive advantage provided companies are inclusive of their diverse workforce. On the other side, hospitality organisation needs to manage communication issues if people have not been schooled in the primary differences among cultures, which by default also leads to increased educational costs. There is also the potential for disrespect if people have not fostered curiosity about differences among people. It is mainly important for the hospitality organisation where the employees with different background are needed so that the staffs can handle the guests across the globe. Therefore, trust is the glue that makes any team function at a high level, but it doesn’t happen magically, especially in the case of a team composed of culturally diverse members.

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