THE STRATEGIC CHOICE OF CULTURE FOR GAYLORD PALMS HOTEL
STUDENT’S NAME
INSTITUTIONAL AFFILIATION
Introduction;
Organizational culture dictates what should be done there, why it should be done, and how it should be done. It usually paints the full picture of an organization; hence mostly, it is referred to us the personality of an organization. The organization’s culture is built up based on a set of values, tangible signs, and some postulations from its employees. These values are the basis on which a motivating and meaningful organizational culture is usually founded by the organization’s employees (“Organizational culture and why it matter?”, 2010).
Since organizational culture is built on values, norms, and assumptions, these values must be taken not as mere catchphrases, but they need to be given the weight and attention they deserve. This paper seeks to sink deeper in analyzing the values and norms that created the Gaylord Palms Hotel’s culture. The analysis will move further to analyze how the culture has created meaning among the Gaylord Palms Hotel employees, how the hotel has established its informal organizational control, and how the strategic choice has contributed to the hotel’s success (Reed, 2009). It is important to start by determining the Gaylord Palms Hotel’s salient values to carry out all this.
Gaylord Palms Hotel Creation of Meaning to its Members
The main role of the organization’s culture is actually to creating meaning for its members. For the meaning to be created into members, it is significant to carry out the research and analyze those things that create meaning to the client. The scholar Victor Frankl, Holocaust survivor, and the other scholar who authored Man’s Search for meaning suggest three key concepts that create meaning in people. These three key concepts are suffering, love, and work. To analyze whether any of these three concepts creates meaning to Gaylord Palms Hotel’s culture, the answer is definitely yes. This concept can be evident from how the organizational culture in Gaylord Palms Hotel is being celebrated by its members in its life events (Reed, 2009).
The focus that Gaylord Palms Hotel had when celebrating life events like weddings and birthday celebrations with its members or employees plays a key role in the strategy that creates a culture around since it guides them on “this is what we do here, this is how we do it, and this is why we do it.” These strategies created a sense of inclusiveness, belonging, and created a sense of family ties. All these occurrences can be related to Frankl’s three key concepts, which is love. These activities bring a person the meaning of love and belong. In this concept of love, it is not a must that all the members love each other, as depicted from Frankl’s book of Man’s search for meaning how he loved his wife. Still, here, the love is being been manifested in ties and close friendship that gives them a sense of family belonging among themselves (“Organizational culture and why it matter?”, 2010).
The main objective of this concept is to create a sense of being affiliated with a certain family. Even if some may not be buying the idea, once such culture is created, the culture will change them. In most cases, the closeness and friendship among colleagues in an organization is already a kind of a family on its own. From the three main concepts of Frankl that create meaning, we can see work as another concept that created meaning to Gaylord Palms Hotel members through their organizational culture. When there is no work, people may lose focus and be in an aimless world of existence. But when there is work, people are usually guided by their short-term and long-term goals and objective hence remaining focused (Reed, 2009). This focus creates in them the urge to achieve their goals; the achievement creates a sense of satisfaction, which creates a sense of value in them, hence building meaning from the organizational culture.
Establishment of Informal Organizational Controls by Gaylord’s Culture.
Under informal organization, things are operated in networked connection of people. But on the other hand, the formal organization structure operates in a manner that people are placed in positions to be the decision-makers and decide how things should be done. The strategy and management concept from the Journal of Strategy and Management article is supposed to craft and create a customer-focused strategic culture (Reed, 2009). From this article, on the case study named an inductive case study, many examples can be derived that show a well-established form of informal organizational controls. In the operations of daily activity at Gaylord Palm Hotel, an informal organizational control culture is seen to be customer-oriented to a larger extent.
The article from the journal written by Ford and his two colleagues says that generally, general managers are not always readily available to be consulted and give guidance to the employees in the attempt of employees trying to give satisfactory services to meet the customers’ needs. Due to the manager’s unavailability, it is believed that if the employees can well utilize customer-oriented culture in serving customers, they need to look for guidance and rely on traditional management dependence controls like lid down protocols policies. Close and direct management oversight will decrease (Ford et al., 2008).
Also, informal organizational control at Gaylord Palms Hotel can be seen in their hiring process. Gaylord Palms Hotel has founded its culture of hiring its employees on the best quality. In their culture, Gaylord hotel is guided by the notion of hiring the best of the bests. That notion drives them because they believe that in hiring, in every ten hired members, there is one who is committed and has the passion of serving truly. In doing so, the ten that have the passion for serving will provide a lead to the other ten, and the multiples of ten continue. As a result, this hiring technique will eventually lead to those members who have been hired develop a sense of being special and appreciated as highly committed members.
Gaylord’s hiring process was crafted and founded based on hiring people who will positively impact its culture and value by remaining committed, hence building its culture. At the same time, hiring people committed to their roles will help build a culture in an organization that its members do not require direct supervision in executing their duties (Reed, 2009).
The Success Assurance Brought by Strategic Choice of Culture;
From the article, it is evident enough that the strategic choice of culture by Gaylord Palms Hotel was indeed tactical and strategic since, to a larger extent, it did not hinder its success but rather played a significant role in ensuring its success. The article of Journal Strategy and Management on strategic crafting of culture addresses some of this success that culture’s choice comes with to ensure its success. At Gaylord Palms Hotel, the success is also seen being ensured by their strategic choice of culture. For instance, Gaylord Palms Hotel’s culture has ensured its employees’ success through the support it gives to its members.
At Gaylord Palms Hotel, the management made sure that every employee feels appreciated and supported by laying down the culture of life event celebrations. At this hotel, every employee is celebrated on their birthday events and during their job promotion (Ford et al., 2008). One good example that shows this support by the organization culture is when carrying out celebrations about promotion. During this period, when one of the Gaylord employees gets a promotion, they are peddled around in a wheeled rickshaw by their new supervisor. During these colorful events, the wheeled rickshaw is usually followed slowly by a camera, and celebratory paparazzi signs and noises are made. Other employees usually observe the colorful event, and the organization celebrates one of its own. The idea behind this event is to make the person that has been promoted feel appreciated and special (Reed, 2009).
Supporting and celebrating employees’ life events plays a significant role beyond just mere boasting of employees’ morale. Research shows that the services delivered to customers significantly depend on the level of support the employees receive from the organization. Another example of success assurance brought by the Gaylord Palms Hotel’s culture is the intermingling status with the organizational leadership. During that intermingling, the organizational leadership educates its employees on how they need to collaborate to achieve similar goals. This intermingling brings about grouping that helps employees understand how their roles in the organization are interconnected. The grouping is designed to remove the dysfunctions of functional silos, a problem that often affects the hotel sectors (Ford et al., 2008).
The Salient Values at Gaylord Palms Hotel.
Gaylord Palms Hotel’s culture is driven by seven: excellence, respect, service, passion, creativity, integrity, and citizenship. Among the seven values, passion stands out to be the most salient value for the organization. Even if all values were important, passion is paramount to Gaylord Hotel’s operation. Passion is seen in the process of hiring the top ten people who were being driven by passion and commitment to serve (Ford et al., 2008). Since the organization was customer-oriented, the employees were expected to deliver beyond expectation to give positive feedback. Therefore, this kind of service delivery required the employees to possess a passionate motive towards their services. The value is related to the organization’s culture since organizational the employees could serve with the passion for meeting the high standard of expectation
s of the Organization’s Culture;
Yes, the organizational culture of Gaylord Palms Hotel is effective. For a culture to be termed as effective, it should be accepted by all members and those members to buy the idea of that culture. The hiring process alone made the organization’s culture effective because it allowed the hiring members to already subscribe to the organization’s culture, i.e., being passionate to serve. Besides, the Gaylord culture can be considered successful from its results; the works and customers have been consistent in winning the best place to work awards (Ford & Sturman, 2011).
Specific Characteristics for the Success of Gaylord Palms Hotel;
In my opinion, the most important element in the culture of Gaylord Palms Hotel that has led to the massive success is the support it accords its employees. Customer satisfaction requires satisfied employees; if employees feel supported by the organization, it will, in turn, lead to excellent services from the employees to the clients. Employees are the determining factor for an organization’s success; therefore, if the organization does not support employees, its success is very narrow. In the case involving Gaylord Palms Hotel, the organization’s heavy investment has been made into its employees, and that’s why the Hotel is experiencing success (Ford et al., 2008).
Conclusions;
From the assigned reading journal, it can be concluded that an organization’s success depends on the culture in that company. Therefore, the organization needs to decide how it would wish its culture to look like and help that culture be shaped into the desired shape. Gaylord Palms Hotel made an effective strategic choice for shaping its culture where culture-shaping started all the way from the hiring point, and it resulted out to work for them effectively. This implies that an effective culture is not shaped in the meetings, but it is a strategy that should be done early enough to shape the organization’s operations.
References;
Ford, R. C., Wilderom, C., & Caparella, J. (2008). Strategically crafting a customer-focused culture: An inductive case study. Journal of Strategy and Management, 1(2), 143-167. Retrieved from ProQuest.
Reed, G. E. (2009). Chapter 4: Systems thinking and senior leadership. In M. R. Grandstaff & G. Sorenson (Eds.), Strategic leadership: The general’s art. [Books24x7 version] Available from http://library.books24x7.com.ezproxy.trident.edu:2048/toc.aspx?bookid=29979
Ford, R., & Sturman, M. C. (2011). Harnessing the power of your culture for outstanding service.
Organizational culture and why does it matter? (2010, September 21). Organization Culture. Retrieved on April 29, 2014, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AFn0vFtLC0