Entrepreneurship Managing Innovation Example

Entrepreneurship Managing Innovation Example Entrepreneurship Managing Innovation â€" Essay Example > The Madinah Hilton in Saudi Arabia is located near the Holy Prophet's Mosque and in the heart of the shopping district. The hotel offers comfort, peace and relaxation in a private and luxurious ambience. Amenities include dining, business conference centre and handicapped access. The hotel industry utilises resources between three critical focuses: employees, clientele and education by incorporating: technology; power paradigms; training and development; compensation; employee relations; and family, society, and work balance (Berger, Fulford and Krazmien 1993). This causes a variation in managerial strategies and hotel service objectives in the hopes to balance service and relative cost (Caristo 1988). In the hotel industry, the balance must be between the customer’s expectations and cost of service. Therefore, it becomes important to examine the management strategy of Hilton hotels as being a traditionally ‘old economy’ industry that should examine the impact of entrepreneu r-ship as a managerial strategy with the ultimate goal to improve management, employees, and above all, customer service. Traditional Management StrategyThe top-down management strategy of Hilton hotels allows employees to start at the bottom of the management career ladder and work towards upper management goals, however, base service employees such as housekeeping do not often have those opportunities due to educational constraints (Ruddy 1990). L. J. Mullins (1995) shows that hotel performance can be improved by better use of human resources, such as increasing employee opportunities through education. The assertion is that the performance of the organisation is strongly relative to the managerial impact and structure of the organisation (Mullins 1995). Another component of the career advancement ladder is the criterion in which the hotel industry generally evaluates management contracts and performance. Many owners are monitoring management through third party managerial compa nies while basing the management contracts on performance based criteria (Rainsford 1994), which has an effect of increasing owner leverage and holding managers accountable for profitability (Rainsford 1994). Shay and Tracey (1997) explain that the rate and reason of failure in the lodging industry are consistent with other top-down management industries, such as manufacturing. The cause of failures do exhibit different attributes, namely those considered emotional stress, maturity and communicative capability (Shay and Tracey 1997). This shows that programs in management strategy can enhance the emotional well-being and general happiness of employees which in turn affects customers, by understanding ways in which excitement, challenges and opportunistic energy can be enhanced within the hotel industry. As the world has globalise and competition has increased, corporations have a need to develop the entrepreneurial spirit into the managerial and customer service strategy (Timmons 2 004). This means that there must be an adjustment away from the traditional school of top-down management that seeks out new talent and innovation to maintain a strong level of competition (Timmons 2004). The importance of entrepreneurial management strategy also relates to the need to incorporate unique skill sets and knowledge management into the corporate environment (Rigsby and Greco 2003). Very often, companies require employees to work long hours, and yet remain flexible in the evolution and growth of the company (Rigsby and Greco 2003, Timmons 2004). This often has an effect on the balance between work and life for the employee, and difficulties often arise when employees do not embrace excitement, innovation and opportunity, the essence of the entrepreneurial spirit (Rigsby and Greco 2003, Timmons 2004). Another issue with traditional top-down management is that it very often imposes restrictions on creativity. An overabundance of policies, especially those that consider w hat can NOT be done, will not enhance the entrepreneurial spirit, but instead can stifle it and, possibly, be counteractive to the empowerment and encouragement of employees (Rigsby and Greco 2003).