The socio-cultural diversity of hotel employees and their perception of the management styles in hotels of Gauteng province, South Africa

Abstract

This research explores the management style of hotel managers in Johannesburg and Pretoria, South Africa. Data was collected from 250 respondents purposefully selected from 60 randomly selected hotels. Up to 61.7% of all the white employees were managers compared to 28.7% of all the black employees and 9.6% others. South African hotel employees were found to prefer the democratic management style (32.8%), over paternalistic (25.2%), walk-around management (23.2%), autocratic management (10.8%) and others. In addition, employees had various attitudes towards their job leadership style and satisfaction, as most often power and decision making relating to work is in the hands of a few managers. The management style practiced most by hotel managers was the democratic style, followed by the paternalistic and walking around styles. The way employees perceive the effect of managers’ styles of management is not significantly influence by sociodemographic factors however, management styles of their line managers either often or always led to a lack of trust among employees. Furthermore, the race factor significantly affects employees’ perception of the suitability of managers’ styles of management with regard to the cultural diversity of South Africa. There was some association between the management styles of managers and job satisfaction of employees. It is recommended that hotel managers adopt a combination of appropriate management styles to enhance the level of job satisfaction of hotel employees.

Keywords

• Management styles
• hotels
• managers
• employees