Humanistic v's rationalistic management in international hotels – The 'Genius of the AND'

Abstract

This research is a grounded theory of the management of contingent labour by middle managers in international hotels in New Zealand. Internationally, hotels rely heavily on contingent labour, a situation also prevalent in New Zealand. The global growth in the use of contingent labour has no foreseeable abatement, with employment strategy/market becoming the dominant and fastest growing employment trend in the foreseeable future. In ‘managing contingent labour’ as part of the ‘flexible firm’ substantial structural employment changes have been made with the introduction of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), manuals and decision making algorithms - the ‘what’ and ‘content’ of management. While this is ‘an’ approach for managing contingent labour, this often sees people (managers managing and leading staff and staff in general) serving systems, rather than systems serving people.