The Portman Hotel Case Study

The Portman Hotel Company was a relatively small hotel with only 348 room and 21 floors located in San Franciscos booming hotel district. It was influenced with Asian philosophy of services, to provide high quality hospitality to its guest at low-priced rates. On paper, the hotel sounded like a great success, one that would definitely display amongst the competition. However, even with this philosophy, there were numerous riddles that plagued the Portman Hotel. A a few(prenominal) frameworks of these problems argon the unwashed mis grow of fundamental attribution error (fuel-air explosive), expectancy theory, as tumefy as operant conditional theory.This essay give explain how these trio things can potentially bring down an entire come with very quickly. First we ordain look at FAE and how it relates to the Portman Hotel. To find an example of FAE located in The Portman Hotel case, we mustiness first define what FAE exactly is. Fundamental Attribution Error is the li stency to over-value dispositional or soulfulnessality-based explanations for the observe ports of others spell under-valuing situational explanations for those ports. It is typically most visible when people explain the behavior to others.Essentially, what FAE suggests, is that we, as human beings, tend to be too faultfinding(prenominal) of others without actually seeing that there might be external factors causing that individuals behavior. Now that we have delimit exactly what FAE is, we can convey to identify an example of this contained within the case. One great example of this common error in march involves the personal valets (PVs) of the company and Spencer Scott. Scott criticizes the PVs for always taking on additional tasks and pursuing new take and even states that they motive to do everything, which causes them to suffer short attention spans.He is so focused on the PVs being a group of freethinkers that he has failed to cogitate his companies purpose, whi ch is to cater to every desire the hotel guests might have. He has failed to realize that the guests be to blame for ordering the PVs around getting them to tend to their every need. In this peculiar(prenominal) case, the guests are the external environmental forces that are causing the behavior. If Scott had recognise that his employees were just doing their job, then his opinion of them would be a lot contrasting and would begin to realize that he might need to change something nearly the companies day-to-day processes.Next we will discuss the Expectancy Theory (ET) and how it relates to this case. Again, first we must define what exactly ET is before we can know how it relates to this case. ET proposes that a person will decide to behave or act in a certain way because they are motivated to select a specific behavior over other behaviors due to what they expect the result of that selected behavior will be. Now that we have defined what ET is we can relate it to the case. o verdue to the social and environmental forces pushing down on certain PVs, they tend to engage in shirking.An example of this act is when a few PVs began to be lazy and not do their fair share of the work, other PVs had to begin picking up the slack of their colleagues. After a while of doing this, they began to wonder why they were working twice as hard and getting paid the exact resembling. The PVs that were picking up the slack for the others then became slight motivated to perform which lead to all of the valets lost their sense of responsibility. So to go back to the original definition, the PVs that were originally working harder than the others began to work little hard because they knew that they werent going to be fired.Lastly, we will look at the Operant Conditional Theory to see why supervisors would choose to overturn using the Portmans amendive procedures. Operant conditional theory is defined as, getting people to do things because they want to by applying positiv e and contradict reinforcements to move them in a particular way. The supervisors of the Portman Hotel were adamant about avoiding egg disciplinary actions towards their employees. The supervisors believed that discipline was actually going against what the hotels philosophy was.Therefore, preferably they used positive reinforcement under the operant conditioning theory as a means to motivate the poor performers. Spencer Scott tried to crook the poor performers to believe that goodly performance had many rewards, much(prenominal) as good tips. He felt that with showing the valets the benefits of working hard for the guests, that those same guests would in return graciously reward them. Now that we have analyze and pointed out the flaws of the Portman Hotel, we can begin to describe some simple dissolving agents to these problems.First, with the FAE, the problem is with management. If Spencer Scott attempted to figure out why his PVs were running around over he might figure o ut the source of the problem, instead of startle to conclusions as he did. He might explore other options such as hiring additional PVs so that the current ones arent always so busy, or attempt to figure out a different system in assisting the guests with their high demands. Secondly, we must analyze the problem with the PVs and their constant garment of shirking and how we could fix it. Shirking is a bad habit that happens in a lot of work places no matter what industry a person is in. The difficulty is finding a way to overcome these types of action and being effective at it. One way to overcome this predicament is to begin to figure out which few are the individuals initially beginning it and begin to discipline them accordingly. If discipline is not the answer, the managers could sit the entire PV supply down at once and explain that they are beginning to attain a downward trend in performance and that there will be a new set standard for what the expectations are.With th is new standard, if anyone fails to bump into the standards of work, then they will be disciplined and eventually let go if it continues. Finally, we have the obstacle of the supervisors choosing to avoid using the Portmans elaborate disciplinary procedures. Unfortunately, implementing a formal system of disciplinary actions would be violating the ideals that Portman wanted to establish. The solution for this would be for the management team to be stricter on their expectations of the employees.I feel that the good employees are not being praised enough for their actions while the bad employees continually get worse. It is a common behavioral understanding that people want to reach and operate at the normal level of standards and not do anything more or less. In order for them to strive to be give away employees, there must be a rewards system in place. act reviews should be put in place to analyze, which employees are the good employees and which are the bad employees.Once manag ement establishes this, they will begin to understand where the problems are and how to correct them/discipline them by giving them written warnings. All in all, there are numerous obstacles that each and every company has to overcome end-to-end the companys lifetime. Some are easily remedied while others take much more time and thought to correct. Using the theories FAE, ET, and Operant Conditioning, intimately any company can begin to understand where the real problems consist, which will allow that company to begin taking action and fixing them.