52
HRM IN TOURISM AND HOSPITALITY: INTER-
NATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON SMALL TO
MEDIUM-SIZED ENTERPRISES by Darren Lee-
Ross (ed.). Cassell, London, 1999. No. of pages: 208.
Price: £45.00. ISBN: 0-304-70410-5 (hardback). Price:
£17.99. ISBN 304-70411-3 (paperback).
This is an international research-based book, which
focuses on small and medium enterprises (SMEs)
and is aimed at students and lecturers, rather than
practitioners. In particular, the chapter on ‘employ-
ing graduates in the hospitality industry, will be of
particular interest in undergraduates. As a research-
based text, this is a useful supplement for teaching
human resources (HR), supporting more proce-
dural textbooks such as Go et al. (1996) and van der
Wagen and Davis (1998).
As stated in the title, the focus of this text is
on SMEs, the largest group of employers within
tourism, but is often ignored by more generic HR
books, because they are less likely to have formed
HR policies. This is the case with family-owned and
run businesses, such as the case study of Black’s
Boatyard, offered as one of three case studies, which
would be useful for teaching. However, the book
argues that as smaller organisations, SMEs actually
have developed more innovative HR policies than
larger organisations, which give them a competitive
advantage.
The international stance makes this text particu-
larly useful for teaching, as student groups tend to
include international students and HR texts are
THE TOURIST AS A METAPHOR OF THE SOCIAL
WORLD by Graham S. Dann (editor). CABI Pub-
lishing, Wallingford, Ofordshire. No. of pages: 347.
Price: £55 (hardback). ISBN 0-85199-606-X.
There is an established literature that attempts to
get to grips with what tourism as a human activity
tells us about people and the society they live in.
This book is a welcome addition, principally
because the authors attempt to develop and in some
cases move on from previous writing in this area.
Indeed, it is the attempts to innovate theoretically
that make the book compelling — there is plenty to
agree or disagree with here, and a number of papers
explicitly take up previous ‘giants’ in the field, such
as Dean MacCannell and John Urry.
Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Book Reviews
usually specific to one culture, owing to the varia-
tions in employment law. On the other hand this
means that certain important and contentious
aspects of HR cannot be covered within this
approach. This includes some very contemporary
issues such as managing diversity, performance
appraisal and grievance and disciplinary proce-
dures. These are also the topics that students (and
employers) typically find the most difficult to get to
grips with and is thus a limitation of this book.
In summary, this book would be of use to tourism
and hospitality undergraduates, as well as lecturers
for teaching purposes. It provides a good introduc-
tion to some of the pertinent issues within the sector
and is a useful supplement to more practical sector-
specific texts or more generic HR literature.
REFERENCES
Go FM, Monachello ML, Baum T. 1996. Human
Resource Management in the Hospitality Industry.
Wiley: Toronto.
Van der Wagen L, Davies C. 1998. Supervision and
Leadership in Tourism and Hospitality. Cassell:
London.
Kirsten Holmes
University of Sheffield
Published online in Wiley InterScience
(www.interscience.wiley.com)
DOI: 10.1002/jtr.460
The central theme of the collection is of course
‘tourism as a metaphor of the social world’. The
social world could be taken to mean different things
and can be conceptualised in different ways. The
volume reflects a range of ideas from the realm of
fantasy (Chapter 9) through to the impact of volun-
teer tourism on ethical behaviour (Chapter 12).
The contributions draw on varied theories and
ideas. For example, Moore’s paper ‘The Discursive
Tourist’ (Chapter 3) draws on psychology, whereas
Kuhn looks at the sociology of trust, relating this to
tourist encounters, in ‘Tourism, Trust and the Social
Order’ (Chapter 6).
A central assumption running through the book
is that we live in a post-modern world in which
metaphor has a greater purchase on contemporary
Int. J. Tourism Res. 6, 51–56 (2004)