Leadership Style Of John Willard Marriott In Hospitality Management

Profile

Discuss about the Hospitality Management for Research and Theory.

Leadership is an important quality that highlights how well a person is able to lead and motivate others. This assignment highlights one of the most celebrated leaders of the hospitality sector, the founder to the Marriott International, John Willard Marriott. This assignment highlights his profile as a leader. Various leadership styles have been described, using peer-reviewed journals. The style and approach of John Willard Marriott, has been highlighted along with the ethical aspects and issues faced by him, as a leader.     

One of the most reputed leaders in the hospitality and tourism industry, who has created a revolution in the hospitality industry by his innovations and efforts, is John Willard Marriott. J.W Marriot was born in 1900, and was an American businessman and entrepreneur. He was the founder of the Marriott Corporation, which in 1993 became the Marriott International. The business career of J.W.Marriott, started in 1927 where he secured the franchise rights from A&W Root Beer. Gradually, the Marriott business chain started growing and the company had its first public offering in 1953 (Marriott.com, 2017). As he gradually became a leader, he expanded his business and opened the first Marriott hotel at Virginia. With the company’s growth, in became Marriott Inc, in the year 1967. John Willard Marriott was one of the most revolutionary leaders that the hospitality industry had ever witnessed. With his efficiency, he innovated the concepts of hotels and luxury stay, and established the Hotel chain as one of the most eminent Hotels around the world.         

Each and every leader around the world has a specific leadership style. The various leadership styles include the Laissez- Faire leadership style. This leadership style lacks a direct supervision of the leader. The leader following this leadership style fails to have a close supervision on the subordinates and fails to take regular feedback from the employees or the people subordinate to him (Ferguson, 2016). Thus, this leadership style is appropriate only if the employees are highly skilled and needs least supervision of the leaders. Thus, the Laissez- Faire leadership style was not followed by J.W.Marriott, since he was an entrepreneur and a leader who guided his employees well, such that they are motivated to work diligently, and establish the hotel chain to the height it has reached (Shekhar, 2016).

Another popularly used leadership style is the Autocratic leadership. In this style of leadership, the leader is the sole owner and the decision maker (Koeswono, 2014). All the decisions are taken by the leader alone and the other employees simply follows the decision taken by the leader. In case of the chosen leader John Willard Marriot, this style of leadership is not followed (McCleskey, 2014). The countries such as Cuba and North Korea follow the autocratic leadership style. J.W.Marriot does not follow this leadership style, as the involvement of the employees and stakeholders play an essential role in any decision making. One of the most important leadership styles that is followed by the leader John Willard Marriot is the people-oriented leadership style. This form of leadership focuses on sharpening the skills of the managers as well as the employees. Moreover, this leadership style treats the employees as an integral part of the hotel and feedback is collected from the employees, before the decisions are taken.

Literature Review

The leadership style that is followed by the leader John Willard Marriot is the authentic and people oriented leadership style. This style lays its priority on the well-being of the employees, along with the achievement of the organizational goals. J.W. Marriott was an energetic leader since he was dedicated towards improvement of his company and its growth. He inspected every establishment personally at least four times a year. He knew every details of hotel around the world, and made sure that he was always well informed. In this leadership style, he treated his employees with importance (Day et al., 2014). He stressed on employee loyalty, and employee retention. He made sure that the workplace environment is positive enough such that employee satisfaction is achieved. As a leader, he taught what he preached. Even in his busy schedule J.W.Marriott ensured that he spoke to each and every employee, addressing their issues separately. Along with giving priority to the employees, he ensured that the customers are given adequate priority. The diligent working of the employees, as well as their dedication fulfils the customer needs (Renko et al., 2015). Thus, with such as efficient leader and leadership styles, J.W.Marriott was established as a efficient leader in the tourism and hospitality industry.

The main motto of the leader was to make everyday count. Along with being an efficient leader and a great motivator, he was also a great human being as he extended his concerns and supports for charitable programs. He donated a huge amount of the earned revenue and a large amount of his time for charitable purposes (Zhang et al., 2015). Thus, he displayed the traits of a true leader who, along with being a high ambitious businessperson was a kind-hearted charitable person. The other leadership styles such as the autocratic style or the Laissez- Faire leadership style are not considered in case of J.W.Marriott. This is because, these leadership style would have not resulted in the success which the leader got. Moreover, with the use of autocratic leadership style, employee satisfaction and employee retention could not be achieved.              

A leader needs to abide by the values and ethics, in order to be followed and respected by all. As a leader the ethical considerations such as equality, diversity, refraining from gender discrimination has to be considered (Shapiro & Stefkovich, 2016). The company founded by J.W.Marriott is considered as one of the most ethical hotel chains in the world. The ethical aspects considered by the leader and his company include abiding to the ethical considerations where the employees are given the right wages along with giving importance to their fundamental human rights. However, one ethical issue that had been faced was when a sports travel agent complained that the suites in Marriott lacked the basic amenities and facilities as mentioned in the contract. However, in this case, Marriot was unable to locate any person who had filed the complaint. Cases of ethical dilemma regarding the gender discrimination or cultural differences were not reported (Marriott.com, 2017). Another dilemmas was faced by the leader, when a particular post of a chef was denied to a lady, since most of the chefs were men. When the lady approached J.W.Marriott, he clarified to her the issues, and the reasons why she was denied of the particular post, and was offered a different position, most suitable for her (Hrenyk et al., 2016).   However, in minor issues faced, J.W.Marriott was efficient enough to handle those issues with care. Any ethical dilemma faced by the employees or customers, the leader, spoke to them in person, and resolved the issues as and when it occurred. Minor resistances and protests faced against him, from the employees, were always handled with care, and the conflicts were resolved with effective discussions (Marriott.com, 2017).      

Conclusion

Thus, it might be concluded that John Willard Marriott Is indeed one of the most famous leaders that the world of hospitality has witnessed, and his success is measured by the success of his organisation which is at present the world’s largest hospitality industry and restaurant chain.

References

(2017). Marriott.com. Retrieved April 5, 2017, from https://www.marriott.com/news/detail.mi?marrArticle=171532

Day, D. V., Fleenor, J. W., Atwater, L. E., Sturm, R. E., & McKee, R. A. (2014). Advances in leader and leadership development: A review of 25years of research and theory. The Leadership Quarterly, 25(1), 63-82.

Ferguson, W. J. (2016). Wisdom of Titans: Secrets of Success from Entrepreneurs Who Rose to the Top. Routledge.

Hrenyk, J., Szymanski, M., Kar, A., & Fitzsimmons, S. R. (2016). Understanding Multicultural Individuals as Ethical Global Leaders. In Advances in Global Leadership (pp. 57-78). Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Koeswono, J. S. (2014). Implementasi Christian Leadership Di Cv Supratex. Agora, 2(1), 131-140.

McCleskey, J. A. (2014). Situational, transformational, and transactional leadership and leadership development. Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, 5(4), 117.

Renko, M., El Tarabishy, A., Carsrud, A. L., & Brännback, M. (2015). Understanding and measuring entrepreneurial leadership style. Journal of Small Business Management, 53(1), 54-74.

Shekhar, S. (2016). Managing the reality of virtual organizations. Springer.

Shapiro, J. P., & Stefkovich, J. A. (2016). Ethical leadership and decision making in education: Applying theoretical perspectives to complex dilemmas. Routledge.

Zhang, Y., Shu, S., Ji, Z., & Wang, Y. (2015). A Study of the Commercial Application of Big Data of the International Hotel Group in China: Based on the Case Study of Marriott International. In Big Data Computing Service and Applications (BigDataService), 2015 IEEE First International Conference on (pp. 412-417). IEEE.