In Search for Best Practices: exploring the relationship between the effective use of management practices and organizational performance in the UK´s hotel sector

Abstract

The main aim of this paper is to present the results of a single sector study conducted as a survey of 213 different workplaces and designed to investigate the relationship between the effective use of management practices and performance in the UK´s Hotel sector, a high labour intensive and low skilled service industry. The questionnaire targeted general managers that were invited to answer questions about thirty two organizational capabilities and to provide information about self reported and objective performance metrics. Recruitment, training and work flexibility proved to be capable of explaining superior levels of performance in the sample investigated. The result points toward a contingent relation between management practices and performance. Another important finding points toward the importance of HR practices to the hotel industry when compared to operational practices. It also strengths the importance of business performance studies targeting single sector studies as successful strategy in finding positive effects of management practices on performance.