Organizational Behavior

“Marriott Hotels & Resorts”

Section 106

Group ( 6 )
Hla Mohamed Ahmed Badr

Shorouk Ahmed Ali

Menna Elawamry

1. Cross-cultural organization, Critically elaborate how “Marriott Hotels & Resorts”

develop its employees’ motivational strategies
Marriott has become a successful company by understanding the importance of motivated
employees. The employees of an organization are its ambassadors to its external stakeholders,
including customers; therefore, it is not possible for the employees of an organization to serve its
customers well when its staff is demotivated.
Marriott International operates in the hospitality industry where employee motivation is of
utmost importance since, they are the first point of contact with customers. A significant
proportion of a company's success can be attributed to how it treats its employees. The company
realizes that its success and competitiveness is a direct result of the employees’ efforts. In
today’s competitive hospitality industry, motivating employees is a challenging task due to the
wide number of factors that affect employee motivation. The management must first understand
what motivates employees and develop a suitable employee motivation policy.
According to Marriott’s policies on staff motivation, they are used five different levels:
Physiological: it is essential to provide an environment where employees are listened to and
cared for. This involves finding out about their dreams and aspirations, ensuring that they have a
work-life balance and giving them work that is both stimulating and challenging.
Safety: Employees that play a role in making decisions on behalf of the company display a
higher level of enthusiasm in playing their role in facilitating the achievement of the
organization’s goals and as a result, become more innovative and effective.
Social: The managers of Marriott supervise employees directly and interact with customers to
find out what they want and their satisfaction with the quality of service that they are receiving.
This enables them to understand how they can guide and motivate employees to enable them to
deliver the quality of service required.
Self Esteem: Motivating employees also involves letting them know that they are understood
and appreciated. Marriott achieves this by involving employees in its decision-making process.
Management plays a significant role in motivating the employees of the organization. The more
actively involved the managers are in the operations of a business, the more attentive that the
employees will be in performing their duties (Stewart, Greg, and Kenneth 396
Self-Actualization: The managers of Marriott focus upon encouraging a work environment
where a worker can easily meet his personal needs of self-actualization.
conclusion
The culture of an organization affects what the organization stands for, how it interacts with its
employees, and how its employees treat customers. For businesses that operate in the service
industry such as Marriott International, employees are the crux of the entire business. Motivated
employees and good management are therefore crucial to the success of the company. Marriott
places people first in its business which has helped it develop a culture of excellence in how it
treats its employees, and subsequently, how its treats its customers.
2. The impact of workforce diversification on the “Marriott Hotels & Resorts” leadership
style.
Marriott is started as family small business founded by j. Willard Marriott in 1927 and it
expanded to reach to chain of hotels and resorts. Mr. J.W Marriott has charismatic leadership and
has ability to leading toward renewal. Marriott is one from International the diversify company
all over the world. There are more than 350,000 employees working at Marriott around the
world. Marriott is difficult to classified its culture because of its diversity. It consists of
complicated hierarchy of leaders. So, they should use effective styles of leaderships. There are 6
leadership styles according to Goleman have effective impact. The styles divided into Coercive,

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Authoritative, Affiliative, Democratic, Pacesetting and Coaching.

Marriott changed their structure into three levels after acquired Starwood. In the past, structure
CEO looks after all major activities of the hotels as it follows autocratic style which individual
control over all decisions and autocratic leaders can manage several responsibilities. The first
level is contemporary CEO, the second level included different managers such as financial
officer the next level consist of different subdivisions such as brand marketing. The managers of
middle-level at usually relations-oriented leaders who have developed skills in managing the
diverse workforce. Marriott Hotels & Resort use two from these styles which is Coaching style
and Affiliative style. Coaching style can describe as leaders who use this style help employees to
determine their unique strengths and weaknesses and connect them with their personal and career
goals. Leaders accepted to short-term failure to add the long-term learning for employees. The
leaders give to employees challenging tasks even if that means the task won’t be finished
quickly. Marriott is committed to provide same care to teams and provide training and
development opportunities. The other style of leadership that Marriott used is affiliative style. the
affiliative leaders put their concentration on values of individuals and their emotions more than
the risk and the goals that deliver to the employees at Marriott. The managers give to employees
the freedom to do their jobs in their ways that they think this more effective. Although, affiliative
style may be not efficient in few situations because it allows to poor performance to go with no
correction. So, the main aim of affiliative style is build harmony relationship between the
management and the staff as well as inside the staff. The affiliative style build to employees’
sense of belonging to Marriott hotels & resorts that lead to more effective results.

The workforce diversification is a challenge that face the leaders in any organization. Marriott
use effective styles of leadership to achieve best results with diversification of workforce.When
Marriott use coaching and affiliative as leadership styles the members in the team become more
engaged and motivated and it deliver better results and decrease the gap between teams. In
addition , they want to stay with the business for more long time and feel belonging to the
Marriott hotels & resorts that can lead them do be more efficient in their jobs .

3. The communication barriers that “Marriott Hotels & Resorts” could face.

It is obvious that organizations cannot exist without communication, The importance of effective
communication is well recognized today. Even before the members are communicating with
potential customers and clients, they must communicate with each other especially in
organizations as hotels, where improved communication has been identified as the key to quality,
productivity, and competitiveness.

Employees in the hotel industry face many barriers to overcome for effective communication.

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These barriers can be segmented into three categories (Cultural barriers, Language barriers
& Environmental barriers). Working with more than 200 staff, Marriott found it challenging
to maintain efficient communication with the entire workforce. With a variety of teams working
on various shifts, they found it hard to communicate and collaborate efficiently, which resulted
in several instances of outdated information, as well as a slow resolution on customer complaints
and requests.

Review 

The main barriers in effective communication can be created by cultural and language

differences that exist in the hotel industry.

Language barriers: The Language word and Communication have a great meaning.

Functioning in a global and competitive managers require “the language of leadership” which
instills confidence, motivates-and inspires especially when dealing with multicultural staff, they
need to be efficient by making their ideas clear and mobilizing all around to achieve common
goals and objectives.

Both internal staff an customers may suffer as a result of miscommunication. Being able to
convey key requirements to staff and suppliers is critical for setting expectations and ensuring all
parties on the same page. Failure to do so can result in mixed messaging, missed deadlines and
overall frustrations.

Cultural barriers: Many problems may relate to communication between managers and

employees and between employees and hotel guests from different cultural backgrounds., which
results not only from language barriers but is also due to cultural differences. Thus, it is
important not only to speak the foreign language but also be aware of cultural differences which
exist in different countries, without proper training and clear communication employees who
face cultural diversity may feel confused and uncertain, which may influence internal operations,
customer service and finally guests’ satisfaction. Therefore, Marriott must generate and reinforce
awareness of cultural diversity among Marriott employees through many training and inclusion
programs and additional initiatives. These activities should help employees to recognize and
understand the specific views of others and support trust and respect towards representatives

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of different cultures. If cooperation between departments fails due to cultural differences and
communication misunderstandings – contact employees may not be able to function effectively,  

Information load: (Pacesetting management style) The main objective of this style

of Marriott management is to accomplish tasks at high standards to deliver excellent
performance, This style is effective when experts are to be managed, little coordination or
direction is required and the people are competent and highly motivated; whereas it is ineffective
when there is much workload that requires help from others and coordination, coaching and
developing is required.

Filtering: Managers at Marriott should also be aware that interactions between customers

from different cultures may potentially influence customer service experience and satisfaction;
therefore, empirical research in this issue is required, especially that customer-to-customer
interaction has rarely been studied in a cross-cultural context and the lack of such research in the
case of the hospitality industry seems to be particularly surprising.

Conclusion

Lack of understanding of cultural differences may lead to many communication misunderstandings and
ineffective practices in managing, motivating and rewarding culturally diverse employees, which in turn
may result in employees’ job dissatisfaction and frustration. When employees’ frustration grows, turnover
may increase, and product and service quality suffer.Therefore, Marriott mangers must make a great
attempt to integrate the various cultures and proactively synchronize their operational
environments with their subordinates’ specific needs, values and lifestyles to achieve high
organizational performance and set goals. 

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