Over the last decade, human resource management has come to be viewed as the dominant paradigm within which analyses of the world of work have been located. This volume examines the nature and assesses the impact of HRM within a highly under-researched division of the service sector, namely the UK hotel industry.

Common perceptions of management practices in the hotel industry typically include work intensification, high labour turnover, lack of training and poor career prospects, and casualised terms and conditions of employment. Using data from a survey of over 200 hotels, this book challenges such stereotypes by demonstrating that this part of the service sector is just as likely to have experimented with new approaches to HRM as the manufacturing industry. It suggests that primary influences on managerial decision-making in the hotel industry are no different from the primary influences affecting decision-making elsewhere, countering the argument that mainstream management theories are inapplicable within the hotel industry. Furthermore, where hotels emphasise the importance of service quality enhancement and where they introduce HRM as an integrated, mutually supporting package of practices, a strong relationship between HRM and organisational performance is proposed.