Date of Award

2010

Document Type

Master Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Business (Research)

Department

Management & Marketing

First Advisor

Dr. Margaret Linehan

Abstract

Recent years have seen a sharp increase in the numbers of people immigrating to Ireland, making Irish society much more culturally diverse than in previous decades. At present, there are approximately 420,000 migrants living in Ireland, of whom approximately 350,000 individuals are of an age to work (Central Statistics Office 2006). Consequently, Irish workforces are now more culturally diverse.

This thesis focuses on the implications of cultural diversity on performance management practices in a number of Irish hotels. Due to the large number of culturally diverse employees in the hospitality industry, the hotel sector was chosen as the focus of primary research. In-depth interviews were conducted with ten Irish managers and twenty-three non-Irish employees in nine hotels. The interviews focus specifically on whether Irish hotel managers consider it necessary to adapt performance management systems due to cultural diversity in their workforces, and whether non-Irish employees are capable of adapting to Irish perfonnance management practices.

Both sets of interviews reached similar conclusions suggesting that adapting performance management practices for different cultures may be unnecessary. The experiences of the majority of managerial respondents in the participant hotels illustrated that employees from a variety of cultures are satisfied with current Irish perfonnance management practices. A number of the interviewed non-Irish employees also believed that the performance management systems in place in Ireland are preferable to those in their home countries.

A second salient finding illustrated that the perceptions, opinions, and behaviours of individuals may be due to their individuality, rather than constrained by national culture. Employees from similar cultures expressed a variety of opinions on a number of matters, while employees from different cultures also expressed similar opinions on a number of issues. Both the similarity and variety in views serves to indicate that individuals are capable of deviating from their cultural categorisation to express individual opinions.

Access Level

info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

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