Organizational effectiveness in hospitality: Managers perspectives

While the received wisdom is that every organization strives for effectiveness towards its stated goals, there is no consensus in either the meaning or measurement of organizational effectiveness. Further, although the antecedents of organizational effectiveness are often explored in academic models, the value of these models is neither relevant to practice, nor specific to service industries like the hospitality industry, thus leading to a gap in our understanding of what constitutes an effective organization. In this paper, we undertake a qualitative study to assess the meaning and antecedents of organizational effectiveness by conducting semi-structured interviews with general managers of hotels. Through thematic analysis, four major criteria emerged that were considered important components of organizational effectiveness, namely financial outcomes, guest outcomes, employee outcomes and societal outcomes. Our findings offer direction to scholars on what organization outcomes matter most to hotel managers and thus help narrow the gap between research and practice.