Operational efficiency and management challenges at Junction Hotel

Junction Hotel is one of the more popular destinations for both the young as well as the mature consumers. It carries tradition and history, but has managed to combine them with modernity and style in a manner which attracts consumers of all ages and socio-cultural backgrounds. The product and service selection at the Junction Hotel is increased, to as such ensure high levels of satisfaction for the various clients.

The Junction Hotel -- despite its success -- also faced a series of issues. These are complex and pegged to numerous organisational features. Among these features three have been selected as more important to be addressed: efficiency, employee management and international expansion.

Efficiency drive

Junction Hotel, similar to any other economic agent functioning within the modern day society, is faced with mounting threats and challenges. They -- the economic agents -- must for instance face incremental competition at both national as well as international levels. Then, they have to ensure customer satisfaction and the ability to continually adapt to the newer and emergent demands of the customers. Also they have to motivate the staffs to increase their performances and they have to operate in a means in which they support environmental stability. And through all these, they have to attain their financial objectives. In other words, the managerial team at the Junction Hotel has to attain the traditional objective of profit registration, but it must do so through the satisfaction of the needs and wants of as many stakeholder categories as possible.

In an effort to respond to all these challenges and still attain the profitability goals, the managerial team at the Junction Hotel focuses on generating operational efficiency. The concept of operational efficiency is generically understood as the ability to maximize the outcomes within the imposed restriction of the inputs. Specifically, the processes of operational efficiency strive to maximize gains while minimizing costs (Cullinane, 2008).

The promoter of organisational efficiency is generically accepted as Henry Ford, the visionary who made the automobile accessible to the wider population and forever changed the face of humanity. This outcome was however possible not due to a vision, but more so due to a practical decision -- the creation of the Ford automobile on the production line. This specifically meant that the assembly line was formed in the materialization of a conveyor belt which transported all components to the employees. Efficiency was created as the employees were no longer forced to themselves get the pieces they needed, and they no longer wasted valuable time completing transitory operations.

Aside from reducing the need for transitory operations, the assembly line was also efficient as it ensured that each staff member working on the assembly line was only completing the tasks assigned to them. In other words, while redundant, all employees were specialized on a specific task and came to the ability to complete that task within restricted time frames and with high levels of efficiency.

Henry Ford as such created the practical context in which organisational efficiency was born, but he also created the circumstances and the environment in which efficiency was supported within the long-term. As the specialized literature of today tells us, whenever change is implemented within the organisational context, employees tend to reveal reticence and not embrace the change process. This result could be the reaction of numerous features, such as fear of the unknown, lack of desire to learn new things as the current position is comfortable or other reasons. But like a visionary, Henry Ford did not allow the staff members to be reticent to the assembly line, but increased their wages to stimulate them. Practically, in a context in which the weekly salary was of $11, Ford raised it to $5 per day, to a more than double weekly total of $25 (The Lincoln Library of Shapers of Society).

The decision made by Ford could be debated today through the lenses of the numerous approaches to the motivational theory. What Ford virtually did was to stimulate change implementation by financially rewarding the employees. He as such used money to motivate the employees and it would appear that the strategy paid off. Nevertheless, when assessing Ford's decision through the lenses of Herzberg's motivational theory, it is revealed that Ford did not generate employee satisfaction. To better explain, Herberg argues that the employees' satisfaction on the job -- and ergo their motivation, commitment and performance levels -- is pegged to two distinct sets of motivators: true motivators and hygiene factors.

The hygiene factors include the salary, the working conditions, the working policies and other such features. Herzberg argued that these hygiene factors created a safe working environment in which the employees were not dissatisfied, but in which they were neither motivated. He in fact believed that true motivation came from the true motivators, which include the sense of achievement, recognition, responsibility, personal development and advancement (Chapman, 2010). Henry Ford's financial incentives to the employees are integrated within the category of hygiene factors, which create mere content. It would as such be visible how the implementation of financial incentives to create efficiency and employee satisfaction at the Junction Hotel would be necessary, but insufficient to also create motivation and commitment.

Today, efficiency is created no longer through the assembly lines alone. The standardization of production remains a focal point of efficiency, but it is no longer sufficient. A relevant example of modern day efficiency creation is represented by the McDonald's Corporation. Blamed for its promotion of an unhealthy nutrition throughout the world, McDonald's in the epitome of business success and its triumphs are so great that they embody the entire process of globalization under the syntax of McDonaldisation -- the term is in fact a particularization of the wider concepts of Westernisation and Americanisation, which imply that the phenomenon of globalization is in fact unilateral, with the predominant influences and benefits being registered on the part of the Western Hemisphere, particularly the United States, and with the influence of McDonald's being tremendous on the populations outside the U.S.

At a more specific level, the term of McDonalisation was coined by George Ritzer, who defines it as:

"The process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as of the rest of the world" (Outside In, 2011).

According to Ritzer, and based on Max Weber theories, there are four particular principles sitting at the basis of McDonaldisation, as follows: efficiency, predictability, calculability and control. All of these are necessary to attain the level of corporate success which has been attained by McDonald's. In other words, in order for the Junction Hotel to attain the high levels of success it strives for, it is not sufficient for it to only seek efficiency, but it must also possess predictability, control and calculability.

4. Conclusions

The Junction Hotel is a more and more powerful and globally present enterprise, which has managed to combine traditionalism and modernity in a means in which the diverse needs of various customer categories are satisfied. Yet, in order to further support its development, it has to emphasize on the strategic approach of two specific issues -- efficiency and internal concerns.

At the level of efficiency, this concern is raised as a result of the standarisation implemented firm wide. The epitome of efficiency is considered Henry Ford, due to his assembly line, but also -- yet less recognized -- for its ability to motivate the employees to take active part in the change process. However, in order for the Junction Hotel to succeed in its endeavors, it is necessary for it to go beyond efficiency and also focus on predictability, control and calculability.

Finally, in respect to the internal issues, these refer primarily to the strategic approaches to creating employee efficiency, and this was addressed through the offering of several specific recommendations. Then, at the level of international expansion, emphasis is placed on the understanding and adapting to the features of the local culture. Overall, the Junction Hotel is a complex enterprise, but as it ventures into new territories, it must also respond to new challenges.

References:

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