This case study looks at some of the difficulties that managers face. Managers are always faced with dilemmas, such as those posed here by the need to standardize and customize, control and empower.

For example, managers in luxury international hotels are required to deliver a highly standardized service, controlled and maintained with the help of volumes of operating manuals. Coupled with this, they need to provide an ‘authentic’ (that is, non-routinized and individualized) service in a variety of cultural contexts to gain competitive advantage ( Jones et al., 1997). How do they ensure that rules are followed, standards are maintained, and staff act consistently, yet provide a non-routinized and individualized service? Managers are often reluctant to empower employees for fear, for example, that they will give too much to the customer. An example of how empowerment might be out of control, but a customer given the highest service delivery, can be found in Bowen and Lawler (1992: 35), who tell us the story of Willie, a doorman at the Four Seasons Hotel, who left work and took a flight to return a briefcase left behind by a guest.

How, then, do managers train empowered workers? Various methods are used, which include customer feedback, and the careful selection and training of employees who have internalized ‘appropriate’

corporately determined values. Well-trained, socialized, and informed employees can be empowered to make good decisions. Jones et al. (1997) give us the case of Americo, a multinational hospitality company. Here, empowered employees are asked to ‘do whatever it takes’ to ensure that every guest leaves satisfied. The company advertises this aim by showing a waiter on night duty driving round town to find a favourite night-time drink and a porter retracing a guest’s journey on a tram to retrieve a lost wallet. But creating these empowered employees is not a simple task for managers if employees have already been socialized to accept a more directive management style or if employees feel that they are being asked to take on duties for which managers are paid. Empowerment may also mean that there is little need for many layers of management—meaning that some will lose their jobs.

Question

How, then, should empowerment be managed? What are the boundaries for empowerment for the manager and for the worker? (See also Chapter 15 on empowerment.)