1.0 Introduction
The working title of this thesis is initially drafted as: AN INVESTIGATION ON THE APPLICATION OF HOSPITALITY ETHICS IN FIVE-STAR HOTELS
The paper discusses in detail the research proposal on the aforementioned subject. In particular, the research will focus on the practices of the five five-star hotels regarding ethical governance. In this research proposal, the context and theme of the study is presented as well as the aim and objectives. Preliminary literature review and research methodology is likewise demonstrated.
1.1 Rationale of the Research
Issues on ethical governance are a challenge to virtually all the industries and sectors, and the hospitality industry is not an exemption. Law and morality, to wit, do not always overlap or easily substitute for one another but ethics goes above and beyond laws and is not restricted to specific acts and defined moral codes as it encompass moral ideals and behaviours. Nonetheless, ethics and morals are akin to each other because of the fact that ethics denotes the theory of right action and greater good while morals are the indicators of practice (Sahakian and Sahakian 1993).
Since ethics guide the companies to make the right decisions and to act responsibly, hospitality ethics must be extensively applied. Hospitality ethics refer to two different, interconnecting areas of study. First, the philosophical study of the moral obligations between hospitality relationships and practices. And second, the branch of business ethics which focuses on the application of ethics in commercial hospitality and tourism industries (Jaszay 2006).
In hospitality, the ethical tenets consider that individuals have personal values; that organizations values that are linked to culture, traditions and customs and that people work together in organizations. Therefore, organizational values may conflict with personal values. As such, personal ethics and organizational ethics cannot be separated since organizational acts originate in the choices, behaviours and actions of individuals; thus being part of the organization means contributing to either ethical and unethical practices of the organization.
Notable is that ethical decisions may involve any and all organizational stakeholders. According to Blanchard and Peale (1988), there are five P’s of Ethical Management. These are purpose, pride, patience, persistence and perspective that shall govern the actions of companies. They also advocated the ‘Ethics Check’ whereby questions such as: Is It legal? Is it balanced? How will it make you feel about yourself? must be answered in a straightforward manner. The rationale behind the research is to conduct an in-depth analysis of the manners on how five-star hotels implement hospitality management.
The purpose of identifying ethical dilemmas and to avoid such through accurate documentation is but necessary for the hospitality industry now that people are increasingly becoming ethical shoppers and ethical end-users. In lieu with this, there is a drive to scrutinize how hotels implement hospitality ethics with personal and organizational ethics at its core. It is also necessary to investigate the how the 5 P’s and the Ethics Check are applied to hotels as well as other matters relating to sound, healthy ethical governance at five-star hotels.
1.2 Research Aim
The study will specifically focus on five-star hotels. In perspective, the shift from a product-oriented to a market-oriented view led to the criteria for categorizing hotels. The initiative shall reflect the needs and expectations of the customers. The main aim of this research is to explore how five-star hotels put into practice the hospitality ethics and purports on concluding the findings to facilitate recommendations or proposition of benchmark practices.
1.3 Research Objectives
This study will address three key objectives as the following:
1. To determine the overall performance of five-star hotels in aspects of complying to hospitality ethics
2. To determine the place of hospitality ethics in business strategies of the five-star hotels
3. To analyze and evaluate the ethical dilemmas faced by these five-star hotels and determine their course of action
4.
2.0 Literature Review
Hall (1992) maintains that social responsibility should always come with business ethics. He suggests that business is like a gamble yet we still have to arrive at our values. The very questions that the author posed are: Is honesty always the best policy? Must there be a Code of Ethics? While also, he noted that there should be a common moral ground for stakeholders to conform with particularly in the hospitality industry where environmental issues, discrimination, sexual harassment, AIDS in the workplace, advertising claims and truth-in-menu laws are all realities.
Jaszay (2002) retaliates Hall’s advocacy as the author believes that decisions and behaviours are influenced by values. Provided that people have differing values, it is but necessary for the organizations to build and foster common value systems. The initiative purports the consistency of organizations decisions of behaviours with the objectives of the organizations. She mentioned that “such consistency is only possible if the organizations’ values are identified, people are hired who are willing and able to embrace the organizations’ values, systems of operation support the value systems, and management and staff are trained to honor and follow the rules.”
Richard Coughlan suggests that the growing interest in the effectiveness of codes of ethics in guiding the individuals’ behaviour in the workplace though much of the recent attention has centered on improving the codes of ethics of individual corporations, including hotel firms and that there are few that focuses on the codes put forth by professional associations, which are often responsible for maintaining professionalism and integrity among their members. And since employee loyalty is declining for the organization but advancing for their respective professions, an analysis of professional codes is warranted as it can also raises important issues about the potential impact of including key ethical values in order to guide members’ actions (2001).
A separate study conducted by David Whitney contends that ethics was the central element of the most critical issues that the hospitality industry faced today. Whitney discusses difficulties that the hotel managers encounter when applying ethical principles to business realities. He presented a model which identifies ethical orientations as basic values which influence ethical decision-making (1990).
Complying with various hospitality codes, regulations, acts, laws and others of the same population has direct impact on the role of hospitality institutions. A study conducted by Betsy Stevens (2001) examines the responses of human resource directors and hospitality students to different ethical scenarios presented. Both groups are asked to rate the seven situations with respect on their ethicality by using a Likert-type scale. The study revealed that for the directors and the students, an act of theft was the most unethical followed by sexual harassment and attempted industrial espionage with expressing racial preferences as the fourth. From a different perspective, the study also found out that experience and sensitivity to probable litigious situations evidently played the role as the directors rated the scenarios ethically lower compared to the students.
Another study is conducted by Linda Enghagen and David Hott (1992) but primarily focused on students. From the 349 who responded, Enghagen and Hott were able to generalize that for hospitality students, solid waste disposal, conditions of employment, a variety of employment discrimination issue, employee theft, false advertising, vendor honesty, sanitation violations and AIDS in foodservice are among the most compelling issues in the early 1990s. When compared to hotel managers, there are four value-based differences between them. The ethical orientations of hospitality students have significant influence on decision-making, educational curricula and youthful careers (Whitney, 1989).
As already mentioned, the ethical inclination of AIDS in the workplace is a very serious stance especially for the hospitality industry since it eventually led to workplace discrimination. Suzanne Murrmann (1989) studied the employment issues of AIDS, employer rights, employee privacy rights and how these views could likely shape the discharge of and/or the refusal to hire AIDS victims. The study discovered a strong relationship between the hospitality management groups and the legal constraints affecting employment rights especially on areas of collective bargaining, sex, race and religious discrimination. Also, Murrmann found out that there is a strong correlation between such legal constraints and the acknowledgement of employee right to privacy in all areas with the exception of AIDS disclosure.
Glenn Ross (2004) in his article not only discusses ethics when applied to the hospitality context but also the article focuses on the treatment of disabled staff as another recipient of discrimination in the workplace. The condition is even exacerbated by ethical conceptualizations, trust responses and also problem-solving architecture. Ross examined discrimination shown to a disabled hospitality industry employee within an ethical framework, investigating personal ethical beliefs, individual ethical influences upon behaviour and also perceived management problem-solving response influences in the face of disability discrimination.
Ross identified at least three personal ethical belief types equity or procedural justice, competence and integrity, with both competence and integrity ethics being regarded as of higher value than equity. One’s own values and those of the ambient society are said to influence the management responses that are involved the protection of company image whereas the least expected involved a management perspective focusing on justice of all people involved in the ethical dilemma. Ross also found out that trust has a major role in the willingness of the management to respond on the ethical issues regarding hiring people with disability. Trust in management centers competence ethical belief, the career and the societal influences as well as the gender of these people.
Aside, the hospitality industry is haunted by ethical marketing issues. Beck, Lazer and Schmidgall assert that perceptions and decisions about lodging sales and marketing executives partake in these marketing issues. Their study made use of vignettes that represents ethical dilemmas in five categories of ethical behaviour as coercion and control, personal integrity, physical environment, paternalism, and conflict of interest. Though their findings did not reveal any consistent pattern of respondent perceptions or actions, all of the vignettes embodied ethical choices. The findings signify the need for lodging sales and marketing executives in order to develop and adhere to ethical guidelines for the unique situations they faced (2007).
3.0 Research Methodology
This thesis will be guided by the research process onion conceptualized by Saunders et al (2003). The research process onion presents the overall steps that the research should converge into. To illustrate:
3.1 Research Approach
As such, realism will be the research philosophy that will govern the research since “the way things run depends on each individual perspective though there are categories which are common and should be taken into account. Accordingly, inductive approach is chosen since it focuses more on building theories instead of testing them. Saunders et al (2003) demonstrate the characteristics of the inductive approach which are: emphasizes gaining an understanding of the meanings humans attach to events, focuses on a more flexible structure to permit corrective actions and emphasizes qualitative data use yet less concern with the need to generalize.
3.2 Data Sources
Because the research will operate in a cross-sectional manner, the researcher will collect data on more than one case using questionnaires and semi-structured interviews to facilitate an in-depth analysis of the data acquired. Since the research is also exploratory and inductive, majority of the data will be qualitative data. Qualitative research because it relies on the researcher as the primary research instrument for data collection and analysis; naturalistic, real-world settings and employs inductive strategies as its essential characteristics. In addition, the qualitative research is a holistic approach whereby it seeks to understand the whole picture of the social context under investigation.
3.3 Data Collection Method
Survey strategy is chosen because it can provide the researcher will the flexibility to incorporate not just questionnaires but also structured observation, structured interviews and document analysis and thus giving the researcher more control over the research process. Primary data will serve as the providers of insights, views and respondents’ conception of different phenomenon relating the subject matter. Questionnaires will include ranking, open-ended and hypothetical questions. To add breath and depth to the research, secondary data will also be utilized and will be presented in the literature review section of the actual document. The secondary sources of data will come from published articles, social science journals, theses and related studies on corporate management.
3.4 Data Analysis
Qualitative data analysis will be conducted to extract from the participants’ responses relevant themes and then categorize them accordingly. From these themes, theories will be built through content analysis and will be subjected to statistical testing. Weighted mean analysis will be devoted to Likert-scale items while the rest of the result to percentage analysis. The formulas to use are:
1. Percentage – to determine the magnitude of the responses to the questionnaire.
n
% = ——– x 100 ; n – number of responses
N N – total number of respondents
2. Weighted Mean
f1x1 + f2x2 + f3x3 + f4x4 + f5x5
x= ——————————————— ;
xt
where: f – weight given to each response
x – number of responses
xt – total number of responses
4.0 Research Time Plan
WEEKS
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
Problem
Identification
Literature
Review
Research
Design
Choice of
Methodology
Data
Sources
Data
Collection
Data
Analysis
Writing up
Draft
Editing
Final
Document
Binding of
Document
5.0 References
Beck, J A, Lazer, W & Schmidgall, R 2007, ‘Hotel Marketing Managers’ Responses to Ethical Dilemmas’, International Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Administration, vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 35-48.
Blanchard, K H & Peale, N V 1988, The Power of Ethical Management, William Morrow, New York.
Coughlan, R 2001, ‘An analysis of professional codes of ethics in the hospitality industry’, International Journal of Hospitality Management, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 147-162.
Enghagen, L K 1992, ‘Students’ Perceptions of Ethical Issues in the Hospitality and Tourism Industry’, Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 41-50.
Jaszay, C 2002, ‘Company Values and Ethical Leadership’, Journal of Human Resources in Hospitality and Tourism, vol. 1, no. 3.
Hall, S J 1992, Ethics in Hospitality Management: A Book of Readings. Educational Institute of the American Hotel and Motel Association.
Hospitality Ethics of Hospitality Management, retrieved on 5 May 2008 from http://www.csupomona.edu/~bdewald/HRT383/EthicalTenetsWeb383.ppt#293,1,Hospitality Ethics.
Jaszay, C 2006, Ethical Decision-Making in the Hospitality Industry.
Murrmann, S K 1989, ‘Employer Rights, Employee Privacy and AIDS: Legal Implications to Hospitality Industry Managers’, Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 147-157.
Ross, G 2004, ‘Ethics, trust and expectations regarding the treatment of disabled staff within a tourism/hospitality industry context’, International Journal of Hospitality Management, vol. 23, no. 5, pp. 523-544.
Sahakian, W & Sahakian, M L 1993, Ideas of the Great Philosophers, Barnes and Noble Books.
Stevens, B 2001, ‘Hospitality Ethics: Responses from Human Resource Directors and Students to Seven Ethical Scenarios’, Journal of Business Ethics, vol. 30, no. 3, pp. 233-242.
What is Qualitative Research? Retrieved on 5 May 2008 from http://road.uww.edu/road/poormanp/Qualitative%20Research%20Seminar/Whath%20is%20Qualitative%20Research.ppt#256,1,What is Qualitative Research?
Whitney, D L 1989, ‘The Ethical Orientations of Hotel Managers and Hospitality Students: Implications for Industry, Education, and Youthful Careers’, Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 187-192.
Whitney, D L 1990, ‘Ethics in the hospitality industry: with a focus on hotel managers’, International Journal of Hospitality Management, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 59-68.
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