Int. J. Hospitality Management Vol. 14 No. 1, pp.

67-78, 1995
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Total quality management in a luxury hotel: a critique of

practice

Godfrey Baldacchino
Workers' Participation Development Centre, University of Malta

Total quality management (TQM) has become popular in the hospitality industry. It
proposes to elicit the cooperation and loyalty of employees in the pursuit of corporate
goals via an educational, empowering and positively rewarding relationship entered
into by staff with their subordinates. But is the outcome of a TQM programme 'in
synch' with its appealing rhetoric? This hotel case study of TQM practice offers
insights into the problems which can arise when there is apparently only lip service paid
to the corporate programme, and a naive intepretation attached to 'employee resource-
fulness'.

Key words: Corporate philosophy employee involvement empowerment

human resources redundancy total quality management
trade union

Introduction: engineering employee commitment

There exist various cadres of employment where it is inevitable to have full-time
employees whose ultimate consent and commitment towards the running of operations is
crucial. 'Core' employees who form 'primary labour market' segments involve personnel
whose loyalty and commitment are as crucial to service as their labour power (Torrington
& Hall, 1987, p. 151).
The luxury hotel service industry is one such sphere of production. The tasks involved,
particularly those involving 'front of the house' operations which necessitate regular
interactions with clients, cannot by and large be mechanised. No coercive instrument is
likely to be devised to promote and ensure total customer care, total employee commit-
ment and a thorough 'problem-owning' disposition which spills over from management to
the rank and file. Indeed, clients expect and are after a service with a human face.
Given the nature of the task at hand, therefore, motivation is the ultimate form of
control, consent the ultimate form of coercion (Cooper, 1980, pp. 112-113). The concrete
response forthcoming from contemporary managers to this realisation comes in two main
forms.
67
68 GodfreyBaldacchino

The first is the informal negotiation of order. The invisible proposition is for both
managers and managed to go out of their way to provide what would otherwise prove too
costly or difficult to enshrine in formal, structured contracts. This constitutes the social and
often personalised bind beyond the cash nexus and is the basis behind a pattern of informal
countertrade. Workers are thus encouraged to have a personally customised stake in the
enterprise goals. This increases their readiness to venture beyond strict job descriptions
and union demarcated tasks in return for tailor made concessions. Such 'fringe benefits'
(Boella, 1988, pp. 139-140), however, typically remain managerial prerogatives: assign-
ment of vacancy leave, overtime, a convenient roster of duties, turning a blind eye to petty
theft, allocation to duties which render lucrative tips or which involve light work.
Managers are generally game to this practice, not only because this is, to some extent,
inevitable for efficient work to take place. The arrangement also fosters the building of
person specific loyalties which can strengthen managerial authority, allowing a freer hand
to indulge in divide-and-rule strategies, and/or undermine collective worker solidarity and
trade union consciousness (e.g. Gabriel, 1988; Mars, 1982; Mars & Nicod, 1984; Wood,
1992).
The second, and more formal, response to enlisting employee consent and commitment
at work is the fostering of participatory initiatives. Expressions of employee involvement
include employee share-ownership, quality circles and excellence teams, joint labour-
management consultative committees, autonomous work groups and other forms of
worker participation (Martin and Nicholls, 1987; Preston and Post, 1974; Robson, 1989;
Scott and Jaffe, 1992).

T h e case at h a n d

This case study critically explores the deployment of one such participatory initiative
which seeks to conscript the cooperation and loyalty of employees to enterprise goals via
the promotion of a Total Quality Management (TQM) philosophy. The subject of the case
is a subsidiary of a multinational company, a luxury/5-star, 250-plus bed hotel with over
300 full-time employees. The argument of this paper is that, in spite of the enthusiasms of
top management, the successful execution of a TQM philosophy may prove extremely
difficult and, in specific circumstances, could result simply in a 'new orthodoxy' (Guest,
1991), a case of old wine in new bottles which finds the labour-management relationship
locked stubbornly in a traditional, 'personnel', antagonistic orientation. Reasons for this
outcome are proposed in the discussion which concludes the paper, along with the
implications of such research findings on and for management generally.
Case material was obtained by a series of confidential, semi-structured interviews
conducted mainly with a representative sample of 38 managerial and worker respondents
drawn at random from all the hotel's operational departments. The interviews were
conducted by the author on site during August and September 1992. Interview material
related to TQM was somewhat incidental to the main research focus ~; all the information
from which the ensuing discussion is culled was collected by respondents who opted
voluntarily to refer to the TQM issue in the course of the interview. The hotel in question
will be referred to as Tropical Dream Resort (TDR) and its owners/operators Leisure
 Total QualityManagementin a luxuryhotel 69

Corporation, two pseudonyms intended to respect the anonymity of the going concern and
in accordance with the wishes of its top management. The location of the hotel as well as
the name of the trade union which organises its employees must remain anonymous for
similar reasons.

The corporate philosophy

'Concern for all employees, hands-on management and an unrelenting commitment to meeting
customer needs through excellencein quality, service and hospitality... Collectively,these values
and beliefs form Leisure's management philosophy'. (Chief Executive Officer, Leisure)

Leisure Corporation which owns TDR as part of a world-wide chain of hotels has opted to
adopt total quality management (TQM) as its corporate philosophy. The adoption follows
naturally from an organisational ethos which, ever since the company inception, seeks to
promote an extended family environment with a strong orientation towards positive
sanctions and amply publicised role-modelling initiatives for whosoever concretely dem-
onstrates allegiance to fundamental company principles.
TQM is perhaps the most popular management technique today in service-oriented,
quality-conscious activities. It directs the efforts of professional management towards a
corrective, educational and empowering relationship with their subordinates. Corrective
by rewarding and thus reinforcing positive performance by individual employees; edu-
cational by providing various opportunities for training and retraining in skills but also in
the managerial process to all employees; empowering by locating decision making and
problem solving at source, at the front line. Power tools available for deployment to this
end consist of: information (knowledge, expertise, data); resources (funds, materials,
space, time, choices of action) but also support (endorsement, backing, approval,
security, legitimacy): (Kanter, 1983, p. 159). This strategy reads as radically different from
the espoused tenets of traditional personnel management, where decision making is more
centralised, authority more solidly top-down and responsibility flows rapidly bottom-up
(Boella, 1998, Chapter 1).
The magic word is Quality: 'Fully satisfying agreed customer requirements at the lowest
internal cost' (Bank, 1992, p. 15). This rather elusive concept is understood as the focus of
attention of various service-oriented operations in that it synthesises the combination of
interactions of the three key (and at times conflicting) result areas in operations manage-
ment, these being organisational/shareholder, customer and workforce interests (Hales
and Nightingale, 1986; Jones and Lockwood, 1989, pp. 28-31). The Leisure corporate
ethos is described as a quality/excellence culture which strives to beat the competition by
standing out, providing that slight but crucial edge in being better, warmer, more customer
friendly. For the employees to accomplish this properly, they have to be trained,
converted to the quality process. In this way, they are expected by management to come to
appreciate that their own interests (including their own job security, material benefits,
satisfaction from work and personal development) stand to gain in the process of going
along the quality orientation--and the company would, as a result, get/keep its discerning
customers and maintain profitability.
70 Godfrey Baldacchino

A critique of application

While the rationale may appear fool-proof, it is the outcome which really matters. That
something is wrong is witnessed by the low customer satisfaction index being registered at
T D R 2. The transformation imputed by following the quality road is not, it seems, filtering
down to where it matters most. The critical analysis of the activation of the T Q M
p r o g r a m m e at T D R appears to suggest that there are various factors which are militating
against the effective putting into practice of the quality p r o g r a m m e . These will be
reviewed in turn below.

The agenda trap

The first quandary experienced by the T Q M approach at T D R is that, while being exposed
to seminars, employee-of-the-month awards and monthly articles continually lauding the
quality process in the T D R in-house newsletter, these activities and the like do not in
themselves represent the quality process. They are exhortations, not achievements; means
and not ends. Nor do they automatically generate a 'correct', desirable behaviour pattern.
Only the most naive advertising principle would insist that workers, like consumers, are
gullible and hollow enough as to accept blindly the corporate message.
Why indeed? Apparently, as some respondents have themselves indicated, T Q M may
have a strong rhetorical and ritualistic presence at T D R . T Q M gets stuck at the conceptual
realm: It becomes a p r o g r a m m e , not a process; and the staff, who are officially the
p r o g r a m m e associates, go through the motions:

'TQM was introduced at TDR some 2-3 years ago. We went about it in an almost ritualistic
approach. The process had to be at X point on Y date, we had to go to seminars, etc. Perhaps this is
one reason why it failed'. (manager)

Such an expression of 'the agenda trap' is recognisable in the excessive lip service paid by
respondents to Quality, as if under an obligation to do so, when invited to c o m m e n t on
various aspects of T D R labour relations during their interview with the author. The in-
house monthly newsletter has regular quality articles, but few are based on direct
experiences. Instead, they tend to pontificate, emphasising not what is but rather what
ought to be: We must do this and we should do that. Otherwise, an institutionalisation of
the quality process may be mistaken for quality enhancement, for example:
'In order to get the Quality process properly functioning throughout the hotel, a Quality
Committee was formed' (In-House Newsletter--July 1991).

Or:

'We have recently completed the empowerment sessions of Quality and are beginning to plan
TQM II which will be rolled out in November' (In-House Newsletter--June 1992).

O r again:

'Question: The Quality Process: What is the situation at the moment?

Answer: We have basically finished with our empowerment training. At the moment we are in the
measurement phase. At this phase each department is to track guest and associate satisfaction
issues. On November 11-13, 1992 we will embark on the next phase which is TQM II with a hotel
 Total Quality Management in a luxury hotel 71

wide training session which should last three days' (TDR General Manager, In-House
Newsletter-- July 1992).
At least, T D R m a n a g e m e n t may congratulate itself and report to H e a d Office that
something is being done to p r o m o t e Quality; but the more important results seem yet
elusive.

The supervisory factor

E m p o w e r m e n t is a delicate business, since m a n a g e m e n t would be deliberately delegating
some of its traditional responsibilities to line staff. The 'political' aspirations of such line
staff, once exposed and sensitised to these new found privileges, may threaten further
managerial prerogatives. M a n a g e m e n t driven e m p o w e r m e n t strategies cannot avoid, at
some point, to consider whether they are to p r o m o t e or control the self-empowerment
strategies in which employees invariable engage (Thynne, 1993, p. 49). O f course, T Q M
philosophy tries to calm down such managerial, especially supervisory, fears by the
assurance that their role will not disappear; rather, it needs to undergo transformation,
from the traditional disciplinary and inspectorial function to one which is supportive,
preventive and facilitative: It's a question of delegation, not abdication:
'Supervisors feel that they have no purpose--no job~because they see their workers increasingly
responsible. But the real issue is not a loss of identity but a changed one. Supervisors ought to
involve themselves more in presentation, quality, customer interaction'. (manager)
But supervisors at T D R are not so sure about their future. A n d they appear to have real
cause for concern:
'One has to help people accomplish what they do. But that may mean deciding whether to support
supervisors or associates'. (director)
Managers apparently choose to maintain ample status distance from their subordinates:
'Sometimes we can do with some management support. One needs to deal with the roots of
problems, not just their symptoms. Some of them [the managers] don't know what it's like. They
are never down on the shop floor. There is no fair appreciation of the environment in which we
operate'. (supervisor)
Even the General Manager, a strong believer in T Q M , appears to be solidly on the side of
associates:
'If the associates truly believe that they can run the operation without, or in spite of, their
managers, that could really be tremendous... We have a great challenge here'.
The supervisory factor is also identified as a problem by various associates. Apparently,
supervisors may be reacting defensively to the challenge posed by the introduction of
T Q M by holding on desperately to the one role they know best; and the one which does
not, from their perspective, engineer their own redundancy. They are more interested and
c o m p e t e n t in wielding the stick than in dangling the carrot:
'The thing I like least about my job are the supervisors. When they're not in a good mood, they
give me a hassle. They would try and push me'. (cook)

And:
72 Godfrey Baldacchino

'The supervisor is getting on my back. He's a tight supervisor... It's not what I expected here'.
(bus person)

While others interpret the T Q M brief to imply a revamped authority for themselves,
assuming more ample responsibility for determining employee behaviour and thus
robbing subordinates of the space for initiative:
'Some of the supervisors are very vindictive... The supervisor will assume that subordinates are
like children, stupid. You are expected to agree and obey all the time. Otherwise they keep
disagreements up their sleeve. Power gets over them ... I have been victimised by sornc
supervisors here'. (barman)

The labour relations atmosphere may remain riddled by the classical us-them divide:
'Management and associates need to get together. One is here, the other is there. Associates feel
that management is not treating them right, and vice-versa. Communication is vital to bridge the
gap'. (pool attendant)

The in-house newsletter identifies the same problem in reporting on the proceedings of an
empowerment workshop, to which practically all the staff had been exposed:
'One associate said "We already know how to take care of our guest; what we need is for our
supervisors and managers to take care of us, the front line associates". Supervisors and managers,
the ball is in your court now. Just take care of your associates 'whatever it takes' and they will do
the rest' (In-House Newsletter--April 1992).

It is a vicious circle which cannot easily be broken. The retreat to conventional behaviour
patterns and perceptions is indicative of a fear of change; and, underlying such fear, there
is usually a failure to recognise that change is (purportedly?) beneficial.

The car p a r k issue

There does appear to be a hardening of relationships between supervisors and front line
personnel. Already in this particular hotel operation, a very low level of employee
turnover has meant that managers and subordinates have been working together for many
years: such a condition is bound to make hierarchical relations more emotionally charged.
The classic ' u s - t h e m ' divide has found concrete manifestation in what may appear to be a
trivial issue: access to a car park.
Apparently, all T D R staff had been allowed to park on property until a decision was
taken by management of late. Subsequently, all employees except managerial and
supervisory personnel have been instructed to park their vehicles in a parking lot outside
the T D R main gate. This appears an innocuous change p e r se. Yet, employees have over-
reacted, perhaps symptomatically:
'The car park is a big issue. It's now a case of ostracism. The employees feel emarginated. It's a
psychological block and shows to workers a certain degree of hypocrisy by Management. Even
some managers have complained'. (director)
And:
'The car park issue has become an expression of class conflict. Supervisors still continue to park
inside. There is no declared justification for such a policy yet'. (manager)
The car park example is one which captures a feeling of being let down; a managerial
 Total Quality Management in a luxury hotel 73

decision which, from the employee's point of view, smacks of an effrontery to one's
'natural right', ingrained by long years of uninterrupted service, to 'belong' to the
property. A series of such petty and not so petty events could be easily understood by
employees as inconsistencies between the espoused corporate philosophy and its practice.

Structured impediments
Top officials at T D R are generally aware of the difficult relationship between supervisors
and line staff, but believe that it can be overcome, particularly with more effective training
and communication. Yet, there seems to exist a set of structural variables which will resist
any improvement in training or communication.
The first problem has already been hinted at. The low rate of labour turnover at T D R
generates more than complacency and laxity. Of these, management seems to be quite
well aware:
'The situation demands a lot of patience and tolerance. Personalities in my area are too rigid, not
willing to bend. They cannot understand that it's the guest, not Leisure, who is paying their salary'.
(director)

And:
'Low staff turnover is a problem, the old complacency. It becomes comfortable. And because of
the stringent union laws, it's very hard to get rid of people. But there's a positive side to it. A lot of
them know their jobs. There is no revolving of jobs---no retraining costs and hassle'. (director)

But it also means that individuals are 'stuck' in positions for years on end. Opportunities
for promotion are few and far between:
'Mobility? Most of the movements for supervisory ranks is by death'. (director)
And, in the meantime, individuals are obliged to enter into power relationships with
supervisors which persist for many years. The condition becomes overbearing, especially
for young, ambitious and competent line staff:
'One should be given the opportunity to prove one's worth. Our nature is to rebel in these
circumstances, but maturity will help you take them in your stride and you cope. Nobody gives you
a chance to prove your credibility. There is something which can develop in every person. There
are few promotion possibilities. That's why people go down the drain. That's why I want to move
on. When I look back into my twelve years [employed in the same capacity at TDR], I feel that
they were wasted. But I don't allow it to affect me now. I cannot afford to allow my body to
deteriorate under such stress and pressures. I must think positive. I go to the gym, to the church, I
involve myself in other activities to recover my sanity'. (waitress)
Such comments would be unexpected from an 'associate' in a work site committed to the
T Q M philosophy. But the room for personal development appears widely constrained,
both inside and outside T D R :
'The average employee has been working here for 15-20 years. They fall in a rut. They work the
same job, live in the same house, meet the same neighbour, always doing the same thing, have
little spending money to travel--I wonder what makes life exciting: Adultery? Alcohol? Drugs?'
(director)
The real threat of T Q M sabotage is also a function of job insecurity. There are rampant
74 Godfrey Baldacchino

feelings of uncertainty among T D R staff over the future of their hotel, irrespective of the
feelings of 'belonging' which the T Q M may be trying to instil:
'There was a TQM company in California. It employed 3000 workers. Recession set in, leading to
redundancies. What does this mean? It means we're talking quality but we're doing something
else'. (manager)
And:
'After 18 years here, I should feel I have job security. But things can change overnight... If the
tourist industry is unstable, so is tourist-related employment... These things frighten you because
they never happened before'. (secretary)

The shattering of one's core value framework because of socio-economic change is bound
to engender a defensive response which views other changes with generous suspicion:
'The way things are nowadays, you're not sure about anything'. (housekeeper)
And:
'I don't feel secure any longer. There are too many lay-offs. What is happening?' (housekeeper)
These feelings of uncertainty appear to stem basically from two sets of observations. The
first concerns the tirneshare business towards which the T D R Management appears to be
steadily heading. It appears that there are various conflicting rumours circulating in the
grapevine about the implications of timeshare on the hotel and its employees. So many are
smelling a rat, in the sense that timeshare allocations in lieu of hotel suites would mean less
employment per room:
'If timeshare comes in, they [TDR management] may convert existing rooms to timeshares, rather
than build a new timeshare complex. That could mean less work'. (secretary)

It is surprising that such suspicious perceptions are dominant, when management has
apparently already communicated to employees that the timeshare issue should generate
more, not less, work.
A more serious obstacle towards the generation of feelings of job security is the wave of
redundancies being p r o m o t e d by T D R management as part of its cost-cutting measures:
'We would like to be in a position never to have staff laid off or made redundant. However, as
everyone is well aware, we are in challenging economic times. If business gets worse, we will look
at lay-offs/redundancies...' (TDR General Manager, In-House Newsletter--July 1992).
The posts of Resident Manager and of Director of Loss Prevention have been abolished.
But the most serious threats of redundancy appear directed at the rank and file. During
1992, the whole gardening department, with a complement of 14 full-time employees, was
scrapped. Gardening, landscaping and exterior cleaning duties have now been subcon-
tracted to a private firm.
'No, I don't feel I have job security... I'm not sure TDR is going to be around for long. I've heard
that the hotel has been operating at a loss for the last 7 years... That makes me wonder. This year,
the gardeners went. There were 14 of them. With these things happening, nobody can be sure'.
(secretary)

With the sword of Damocles hanging on their heads, and with the concrete realisation of
 Total Quality Management in a luxury hotel 75

former colleagues having experienced redundancy, there do not seem to exist the
preconditions, the right a t m o s p h e r e of trust, to p r o m o t e what are ultimately higher-order
T Q M values. The very basic, existential, hygienic needs are threatened and therefore it is
these which are bound to b e c o m e p a r a m o u n t (Herzberg, 1968; Maslow, 1970).
The opinion of senior trade union officials is similar, and definitely m o r e cynical. T h e y
allege that, as long as front line staff are expendable, there cannot be sincere T Q M in
practice. A n d T Q M is imposed from above and from outside, from corporate head-
quarters through senior m a n a g e m e n t . It therefore becomes, as far as they are concerned,
either an impossible dream (if one believes in it) or a conscious, deliberate ploy (if one
does not).
Indeed, as if to confirm the hypothesis suggesting some kind of regression to basic,
lower-order needs, it appears that staff have been turning increasingly to pilferage and
petty crime in the interest.of sheer survival:
'Perhaps Leisure has not been totally aware of the expectations of associates. All of a sudden, self-
preservation becomes the only reason for being in the work environment. This explains the
pilferage'. (manager)

Trade unionism
An appreciation of the rote and function of the trade union at T D R is vital for a thorough
understanding of the T Q M predicament at T D R because employees at this hotel are very
heavily organised within a particular trade union. Intriguingly, such a circumstance
obtains within a c o m p a n y whose T Q M philosophy is pro-associate and individually-
targeted. It therefore follows that trade union consciousness, function and action have no
raison d'etre within this vision. Leisure has actually maintained 'union f r e e d o m ' in most of
its properties, but T D R is one of its exceptions:
'To me, it's a new experience dealing with trade unions. With a union at hand you spend more time
talking about the naughty and problem workers than about the model workers'. (director)

A f o r m e r T D R employee has his own, and a somewhat different, interpretation:

'A lot of disputes flare up at TDR because we find Leisure very anti-union. When they bought
TDR, its President told us that there would be no need for a union because they treat their staff
very well. But union research suggested differently. I believe most of the managers who come to
TDR had been trained in Industrial Relations. They were quite surprised to see how belligerent
the union organisers were as far as work relations were concerned. They wanted to break up the
union'. (former union organiser at TDR).

Indeed, the handling of the redundancy, in spring 1992, of a timekeeper, with 24 years of
experience at T D R and the main union organiser on property, may be seen as an attempt
by the T D R m a n a g e m e n t to b r e a k the power of the trade union once and for all:
'I feel that my redundancy was related to the strike. Management was trying to get its own back on
workers to punish the workers for striking; to show who's boss'. (pool attendant)

For the rank and file, and even m o r e so for the discharged employees, this event served
perhaps as irrefutable evidence of how their social support system was being threatened
none other than by what was allegedly inviting them towards ' e m p o w e r m e n t ' :
76 Godfrey Baldacchino

'Why does management call us 'associates', when they treat us like this? (discharged TDR
employee)
Perhaps the industrial action waged by T D R staff under the direction of their trade union
in relation to the discharged timekeeper issue was one expression of this uncertainty and
threat to one's livelihood. Furthermore, the trade union is one other collective organising
principle which is bound to clash and compete with T D R ' s corporate philosophy:
'This is a tightly-knit work environment, where family and community are paramount; and the
union appears to fall in line with these'. (director)
It therefore appears that there are rivals contending for the allegiance of the staff and
vying for the total commitment which is expected to follow from 'associate membership'.

Discussion

The situation prevailing at T D R is obviously specific and idiosyncratic to that particular

situation at the point in time when the fieldwork was carried out. The details will therefore
prove unique to the property; but one can still abstract features of the condition to the
levels of a general discussion which, while remaining faithful to the case, lend themselves
to valuable comparative policy analysis.
First of all, it must be clear that employee commitment cannot be engineered simply by
ramming the corporate philosophy down the throat. The circumstances must make it
possible for people to associate themselves wilfully with the corporate vision. For this to be
possible, employees must recognise that the leap into commitment is not simply a con, an
exercise in manipulation. It is, rather, an intelligent response which procures them
benefits, and not only or necessarily those pronounced by the company. The organisa-
tional definition of empowerment may prove merely rhetorical or, even if successful, far
from the employees' own understanding and expectations of the term.
It is probably too narrow to stereotype employee attitudes at the firm as merely those of
specialised customers (e.g. Hakes, 1991, p. 11). Workers may bring to bear procedural,
apart from substantive, interests to their work situation (Fox, 1971); and such is indeed
one of the fundamental tenets of the T Q M philosophy and other managerial approaches
which start off with the assumption that one can generate motivated employees. If they are
expected, and will be rewarded, for showing initiative and responsibility, then one cannot
expect that such a critical and creative disposition will not spill over into a diagnosis of the
T Q M process itself. As with other participatory schemes which somehow seek elusive
worker cooperation, these can only be properly understood as tactical components within
the wider weave of the 'politics of production' (Burawoy, 1985). Only then would one
ascertain whether they are essentially liberating or socialising forces (Vanek and Bayard,
1975). It would be naive to preclude that much discretion to employees; if they can, and are
expected, to own problems, they are bound to prove just as adept at owning motives or
outcomes. In the meantime, there is nothing to lose and all to gain in paying lip service to
the corporate ethic.
Such an attitude appears all the more rational when other events within and outside the
firm suggest that suspicions are well-founded. Episodes of redundancy, industrial conflict
and even petty affairs as in the case of the car park issue may fuel a particular appraisal by
 Total Quality Management in a luxury hotel 77

employees of the overall genuineness behind managerial pronouncements. This apart

from considerations of the labour process at the lowest levels of m a n a g e m e n t , where
relations with supervisors m a y be far m o r e supportive; a condition which stems from a
defensive stance which reads just as rational from the supervisors' point of view.
This is one important lesson which managers involved in personnel issues generally
accept in spite, not because, of their training. Irrespective of whether they adopt the
conventional or 'new' h u m a n resource approaches to their staff, the orientation is
invariably strategic and uni-directional rather than dialectic and interactive. Managerial
pronouncements, couched with authority and backed by expertise and professional
training, are often understood by their proponents as meant to plan and pilot the firm
scientifically through progress and profit. H u m a n resources within the firm are generally
conceived as such only in so far as they help bring this project, often dogmatically asserted,
to fruition. But e m p l o y e e resourcefulness can, and does, extend further than that.
M a n a g e m e n t may find out that it cannot have the cake and eat it: if managerial authority
continues in practice to be secured through direct control over the actions of employees, as
well as by a vulnerability to wider m a r k e t forces, this will act to limit the scope of worker
discretion when the T Q M creed is based on a conscious strategy whereby managers are
m e a n t to encourage the responsible exercise of worker discretion (Friedman, 1990).
Managers, all along the organisational hierarchy, at T D R as elsewhere, must somehow
decide whether they are willing and able to proceed towards the promotion of worker
e m p o w e r m e n t . This act goes far beyond the mere and symbolic introduction of a quality
programme.
Such a managerial sensitivity may be crucial if the human resource m a n a g e m e n t
approach, in its various ramifications and formats, is in practice anything but rhetorically
different from the more traditional personnel function. Without this awareness of the
political and critical dimension to l a b o u r - m a n a g e m e n t relations, T Q M may yet ttirn out to
be T Q D : total quality disillusionment (Oakland, 1993, p. 439).
Acknowledgements--I am grateful to Robin Cohen, Peter Fairbrother, Peter Gutkind and Richard
Hyman, all at the University of Warwick, U.K., for mentoring me in my doctoral studies during
which ideas elaborated in this paper emerged. My thanks to the Universities of Malta, Warwick and
the West Indies and to the Human Resources Director, staff and employees at TDR for research
support. I also acknowledge the critical remarks of anonymous referees. Responsibility for the
contents and shortcomings of this paper remains solely mine.

Notes

IThe main research design, part of doctoral studies, was concerned with labour relations and human
resource management issues in small-scale settings. See Baldacchino (1993, 1994). The thesis is now
earmarked for publication.
2This is part of the Leisure standardised operating procedure which allows comparability across
properties.

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