UNIVERSITI TEKNOLOGI MARA

SELANGOR

FACULTY OF HOTEL AND TOURISM MANAGEMENT

HOTEL QUALITY MANAGAMENT

HTH678

ARTICLE REVIEW
INCONGRUENT QUALITY MANAGEMENT PERCEPTIONS BETWEEN
MALAYSIAN HOTEL MANAGERS AND EMPLOYEES

PREPARED BY:

Nurul Nabila Zainal Abedin

2018424818

PREPARED FOR:
Madam Nina Farisha Isa

SEMESTER

Mac 2020
 Article Review Of Incongruent Quality Management Perceptions Between Malaysian
Hotel Managers And Employees

I. Statement of the Problem

a. Research topic

The topic of the article is to study about the perceptions of Malaysian hotel quality
managers (HQMs) and employees on leadership and workforce practices by using Malcolm
Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) criteria. The author want to compare on how top
management or employees perceptions on the two criteria which are leadership and workforce
practices, as it may differ from each other where managers might consider leadership is a very
important aspect for a succesfull organzations. On the other side, employees perceptions
might find that workforce practices is the most important because they are the one that
directly exposed in workplace and customers. According to the article, there are few author
who study on quality practices in the hotel indusrtry among the numerous studies at the times.
Moreover, there are no studies in Malaysian hotel regarding quality practices were found
using international criteria such as the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA).

Therefore, by using criteria of leadership and workforce from Malcolm Baldrige

National Quality Award (MBNQA), the author able to identify the reasons for similarity or
dissimilarity of Hotel Quality Managers and employees’ perceptions regarding top manager
practices when implementing quality, and analyze whether perceptions of Total Quality
Management implementation differ based upon demographic characteristics of Malaysian
hotel quality managers (HQMs) and employees. This sets the context for the more specific
research problem

b. Research prolem: Quality award – Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award

(MBNQA)

As been stated in the research topic, the author want to compare on how top
management or employees perceptions on the two criteria which are leadership and workforce
practices. This is because there are still very few studies regarding the topic in the industry.
There are 7 criteria of Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) which are
leadership; strategic planning; customer focus; measurement, analysis, and knowledge
management; workforce focus; process management; and business results. But, the criteria
that was higligted in the study are leadership and workforce focus because these two criteria
were frequently cited as critical success factors for quality management implementation in
hotel industry. Based on criteria explanation in Chapter 7, the meaning of :
i. Leadership
This criterion evaluates how top management guides the employees and utilizes the
resources of the organization to achieve quality improvement and organizational goals.
It also examines how the top management team of organizations shows its
responsibilities to the public and exercises good citizenship practices within the
business.

ii. Workforce focus

This criterion assesses how the organizations engage with their workforce or human
resource and allows their workforce to develop its full potential. It also evaluates how
the senior management team aligns its workforce with the overall objectives of the
organizations.
c. Research questions or hyphothesis

There are no specific research question or hypothesis is noted, but the authors do
address the overall context for their qualitative and quantitative study. They said “the
leadership criteria assess how senior management guide the employees, utilized the
organization resources to achieve quality management and goals and contribute to community
services.” Then, the author specifically said “the workforce criterion focusses on human
resource activities. It evaluates how top managers engage with their workforce and allow that
workforce to develop its full potential, as well as examines how top managers align their
workforces with overall hotel objectives.

II. Review on the literature

The authors begin with a brief review of literature that supports the ideas that in order
to integrate people, organizational processes and other organizational resources more
effectively, Total Quality Management will manage and putting forth concerted effort for the
future. Total Quality Management not only able to generate highest quality products or
services to enhance customer satisfaction, but seeks to obtain a competitive advantage as it is
a broad applications in every single aspects. Hotel industry were impacted with the
widespread of Total Quality Management despite later implementation compared to
manufacturing companies.

Next, the author review on how through leadership, people will gain leader
commitment, using an open communication system, training, and developing employees were
quality practices used by organizations to direct employees in achieving organizational goals.
A senior management will be the one who study and create vision, mission and goals for a
specific organization. . A senior management also always been considered as leader in any
occasion in hotel business as they are the one who have higher authority and experience that
able to made critical decision in short times. This is the reasons of why a good leader is very
important. The influencing nature of the leaders helps in changing the behavior of employees.
(Trivikram, 2016). According to the author, leadership as well as quality and information
analyses were essential and should be integrated with other quality practices.

Furthermore, leaders are mainly responsible for the success of the organizations. The
way in which leaders carry out their tasks helps in determining the success or failure of the
organisation. it is important for the organisations to motivate and guide the employees so that
their confidence level increases and  they can perform better which in turn leads to fulfilling
the goals of the company According to the article, leadership as well as quality and
information analyses were essential and should be integrated with other quality practices The
author also stated that studies have been conducted to identify quality practices that are
suitable for the service industry. This is because compared to manufacturing industries,
service industries operate differently and offer intangible products and services.

Role of top managment

Senior executives are the one who responsible for quality management and identified
construct of quality practices suitable for service organizations which are compensation,
benchmarking, training management, empowerement, technology management, process
management, teamwork, training, and outcome measurement. This is related with topic in
Chapter 3 which is role of top management that required them to define and communicating
business directions, ensuring that goals and expectations are met, reviewing business
performance and taking appropriate action, ensuring that employees are effective contributors
and many others. Top management play an essential role in order to achieve organizations
goals with synergy will all the employees.

Internal customer – Employee

Besides that, the author review on how employee who are committed in their work is
one of the success factor in the company business. This is because employees who were
committed to quality would try to achieve the highest quality in whatever they did. Therefore,
by identifying what quality practices motivate employees to participate fully in quality
programs is beneficial. As employee are considered as an internal customers by the company
(Burrin, 2017). Company are supposed to treat the employees as their customers so that wil
inspire and motivate them to deliver good customer services to the company client. If the
employee have a great employee experience. They will naturally be motivated to create a
great customer experience to the company customers. Simply said, a happy employees will
make a happy customers (Burrin, 2017).

“Employees are number one, customers come number two. If you have a happy workforce,
they’ll look after your customers anyway“ Tony Fernandes.
This shows on how important for a company to have a happy workforce for the
employee able to work in a pleasant attitude and environment. If the workforce are not good
for the employee, they will felt unmotivated and unwilling to serve customers with positive
attitude and it will reduce their productivity.
Lastly, the author conclude their study will the gap of the perspectives of both HQMs
and nonmanagement employees from the same, particularly in the Malaysia scenario.
Additionally,quality practices implementation in the Malaysian hotel industry has never been
empirically researched; thus it is questionable whether previously identified practices are
applicable to Malaysian hotels.

III. Method

The author used quantitative and qualitative approaches to collect data, analyze data,
and more deeply understand the topic where they distributes questionnaires to Hotel Quality
Managers (HQMs) and hotel employees. Then, interviews also were conducted with a smaller
subset of the Hotel Quality Managers (HQMs). According to the author, the target population
are all Hotel Quality Managers (HQMs) and non-supervisory employees in three star hotel,
four star hotel and and five-star hotels in Peninsular Malaysia as listed in Malaysian
Association of Hotels. Then the sample for questionnaire are hotels in operation for at least
one year with an average occupancy rate of 60 percent and located in states that had at least
one million tourists and were contacted to solicit participation. For the interview, it was held
at the central region. The reason it was selected is because it has the most three star hotel,
four star hotel, and five star hotels as compared to other regions.
IV. Result and Finding

Through the result of the data collections, the authors begin to relate their findings
back to the overall purpose of the study, compare on how top management or employees
perceptions on the two criteria which are leadership and workforce practices. The result
received by the author for questionnaire are total of 35 Hotel Quality Managers (HQMs) and
454 hotels’ employee questionnaires from the respondent. Five star hotel give the greatest
participation for the survey distributed by the a among other hotels which are four star hotel
and three star hotel. There are equal numbers of male and female respondent from the survey.
The majority of participants were between the ages of 36 and 45 years; almost 86 percent of
them had more than two years of quality management experience.

Based on the author’s finding, Hotel Quality Managers (HQMs) are the one with
highest score for the two criteria which are leadership and workplace forces. This could be
related to the role of top management that involves a very wide aspect of the business. They
must be very cautious and particular on how they lead the organizations and they also need to
ensure the workplace are also in a good conditions for the employees such as promoting a safe
work environment, training employees to improve quality skills, and understanding quality. It
is likely the reasons of why Hotel Quality Managers (HQMs) achieved highest score for both
Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) criteria.

While employee perceptions on the two Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award
(MBNQA critirias on leadership and workforce practices are slightly higher than neutral. The
author also find that employees’ perceptions on ethical practices is the most important at the
workplace meanwhile the commitment of leadership is the least important according the
employees’ survey. Furthermore, the author also make comparison between Hotel Quality
Managers (HQMs) and employees on leadership and workforce practices using hotel star
ratings which are five-star hotels, four-star hotels and three star hotels. The author want to
investigate either the rate of a hotel could affect the perceptions on those criteria of leadership
and workforces practices. Five-star hotel are more emphasize on developing good quality
policies compare to leadership criteria. Meanwhile, for a four-star hotel and three-hotel, they
find that emphasizing ethical practices is the lowest and leadership criteria is higher than the
five-star hotel scored.

Then, the author also find that promoting a safe work environment is high for five-star
hotel and three-star hotel’s employee while training to improve quality skills was the item
with the highest score for four-star hotel employees. At all participating hotels, empowering
employees to solve job-related problems was the item with the lowest. As for the interview
result, the author find there are lack of communication and unclear quality policies and
objectives in the organiztions. Other reasons includes like top managers were less involved in
quality programs, top management teams did not believe in quality systems, employees were
not empowered or involved, and the quality content was complicated. The comments are
illustrated as below:

- According to four-star hotel executives, “Management can set anything that we want;
we can just have policy, everything in one place, but if they were not communicated
well to employees, they employees can’t see what we (the management) want.
Everyone must know and speak one language.”
 - According to a five-star hotel, assistant manager, “Operation times (working shifts)
are many, so sometimes problems exist in terms of information not reaching the
people.”

- Accoring to a manager in three-star hotel, “Before we implement (quality programs),

we need to make sure that everyone knows about our idea, what we want. Because if
the staff does not get the right picture or information, they will have grudges or
dissatisfaction.”

V. Discussion

The author has made a discussion based on the finding of the study about evaluation
on Hotel Quality Management (HQMs) and hotels’ employee perceptions using Malcolm
Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) leadership and workforce criteria, when
implementing quality programs. The author find that the managers of quality (HQMs) have a
high score on leadership crteria while for the employees are have a neutral perceptions of the
criteria. This probably due to different role and responsibilities between Hotel Quality
Manager (HQMs) and employee need to accomplish at work. For example, the managers are
supposed to gave a good leadership such as planning, decision making, develop quality
policies, ensure organization archieve the goals and have effecient communcation within the
teams.

This could be related with the role of top management in chapter 3 that explained on a
managers will be the one who determined the direction settings and goals of the organization,
reviewing employees’ performances, provide enjoyable working places for the employees and
many others. According to Miller and Cangemi (1998); Stark (1998); Taylor and Wright
(2003), an organizations who failed to commit and be personally involved in a Total Quality
Management effort by the top management was the prominent cited reason for failure in Total
Quality Management attempts for most organizations. Most organizations have declared
unsuccessful to follow practices of Total Quality Management because of the negligence form
top management in delegation some authorities and empower employees (Minjoon et al.
2006).

In contrast, the author find that employee are tend to concerned about practices which
they are familiar and how these relate to their job. Therefore, top managers need to determine
how to effectively communicate and train both groups so that the perception gap can be
minimized. Having similar perceptions and having alignment on organization direction are
vital to enhance teamwork and ensure long-term success. Many research have supported the
need for sufficient training when establishing effective quality management systems. Training
will help to improve the quality of employee productivity during business. This could be
related with the 5 key dimension of service quality in chapter 3 which are :

i. Reliability - The ability to provide what was promised, dependably and accurately
ii. Assurance - The knowledge and courtesy of employees and their ability to convey
trust and confidence
iii. Tangibility - The physical facilities and equipment, and the appearance of
personnel
 iv. Empathy - The degree of caring and individual attention provided to customers
v. Responsiveness - The willingness to help customers and provide prompt service

When employees apply these 5 qualities in their services, it will increase customers
satisfaction and then improve the image of the top management itself because they train and
educate their employee well about quality of services
.
Furthermore, based on the interview session with Hotel Quality Managers (HQMs)
and hotels’ employee held by the author for data collection finds that a good communications
system is important to ensure that information regarding quality matters was delivered to
employees. Next, the Hotel Quality Managers (HQMs) required effective communications to
impart and exchange informations or news. Effective communication is communicating in a
way that makes people understand and make the points successfully delivered. In Total
Quality Management, effective communication is very important because managers need to
be able to communicate effectively to get what they want out of employees. If they do not
effectively communicate they may be misunderstood or not effective with processes. This has
to do with giving information and receiving information.

If the manager wants something done, they cannot expect the things to be done if they
do not communicating effectively, so improving how the managers and employees
communicate can have many benefit for any organizations in any hotels or company in the
industry. Regular communication with the employees will help in developing a close
relationship between the hotel managers and staff and the managers will then be in a good
position to listen and understand the staff’s problems and provide timely solutions. All these
practices will eventually pay back in the form of a positive work environment and an
increased loyal consumer base. (“Best practices for”, 2019)
Then, the author find that developing explicit quality policies and measurable
objectives are essential to lead employees toward achieving organizational goals. The author
clearly states that there are significant different between five-star hotel and three –start hotel.
This is probably because a five-star hotel usually have more comlicated and have more
departments compare to three-star hotel. This lead to Hotel Quality Manager (HQMs) in five-
star hotel tend to not give empowerment to their employees as they put high benchmarking in
terms of quality and standard comparing with their competitors. this could lead to chapter 7
on benchmarking that brings mean continuous method of measuring and comparing a firm’s
business processes against those of another firm. Besides that, five star hotel have more
employees compare to three-star hotel, which cause the hotel have difficulties for top
management to allowed empowered towards the employees.

Moreover, the author states on the discussion with empowering employees did have a
positive effect on their work attitudes, satisfaction, and their intentions to remain with their
current organizations. Therefore, if the top management tend to ignore employee
empowerement and do not allowed them to make their own decision at crticial moments will
increase the failure rate of quality programs. Lastly, the author conclude with complicated
quality content is one of the reasons of incongruent perceptions between managers and
employees admitted by some Hotel Quality Managers (HQMs). The company need to ensure
to have a simple and easy to understand of quality content. This is for employees who might
have less educations or difficutlies to understand about the content. Additionally, some Hotel
Quality Management (HQMs) also indicated negative individual attitudes and lack of
awareness about quality programs as reasons for employees’ differing perceptions.

VI. Conclusion

In conclusion, the author conclude the study with insights into Hotel Quality Managers
(HQMs) and employee perceptions on leadership and workforce criteria used by hotels’ top
management when implementing quality programs. Moreover, the top management will find
the the cmparisons between these groups are useful in business and they can understand their
employee more. This also could lead to a better working environment for the employee.
Additionally, the dissatisfaction among employees could be hinted due to neutral perceptions
about leadership and workforce practices. The author also find that authority do not usually
questioned or chellenged Malaysian employees as they are described as loyal and obedient.
Then, the author assert their study could provide an area for future investigation by hoteliers,
the Malaysian Association of Hotels, as well as the Ministry of Tourism. If this situation is
ignored, it might possibly affect future customer service and impact on the tourism industry,
which is one of the nation’s main income sources. This also will make our country tourism
image enter the international market.

Next, the author also suggest that hotel managers to improve practices that has
achieved lower score in the result with better ways for the organizations business culture and
then overall excellent performance can be achieved. Smart hotel managers do not just do what
is needed to be done. They predict customer behavior, anticipate problem-areas, and go the
extra mile to manage a hotel. Successful hotel managers do the right thing at the right time
with the help of prioritizing and strategizing. This is when they turn out to be effective leaders
and attract success for the hotel’s business. Then, the author states hospitality students should
be academically comes with better equipment and more knowledge a of quality practices. The
suggestions would provide better opportunities and circumtances for the younger generations
able to enter hospitatality industry with adequeate knowledge and experience. It also may
reduce employee high turn over rate because the employee already prepared physically and
mentaly before entering real workplace.

The author has limitations on the study limitations where the sample are overall
representation of the population such as five-star hotels as compared to three- and four-star
hotels participated. All three- and four-star Hotel Quality Management (HQMs) contacted
stated operation busyness, having no Total Quality Management programs or no personnel
responsible for TQM as reasons for not participating in the study. The author also suggest for
future study to explore other criteria in Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA)
to obtain a holistic understanding about quality practices in the Malaysian hotel industry.
There are also other suggestions in order to achieved more richer results, future researcher
could used detail analysis such as mutilevel modeling. Finally, the author stated that they
acquired only small amount of Hotel Quality Management (HQMs) even they multiple
attempts has been made.

(3562 words)
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