Racial Discrimination in Hospitality Industry

Human resources are a vital factor of production to every nation’s economy. The resources are key for a country to achieve a reasonable economic development in all sectors. The results reaped from the human resources used in a sector’s productivity depend on how these human are treated as their productivity will depend on the relationship with their leaders at work (Gerstle, 2017). However, there have been many upcoming challenges in the field of human resource management that have been witnessed in many nations in the current world.

This report aims at discussing the challenge of racial discrimination that has been evident in the human resource with a focus of the California Hotel as the case study of the hospitality industry in the United States. The report will explore this challenge in details and evaluate theoretical ways through which this challenge can be dealt with appropriately.

In the United States hotels, cafes and resorts, there have been claims that the black Americans are being treated in ways that are not equal to the whites in workplaces. This has been evident even through a campaign agenda laid down by the incumbent US president Donald Trump that was to kick out the people who are not Americans out of the country (Hartocollis & Bidgood, 2015). This agenda brought a lot of unrest in the country as many people felt discriminated for not being Americans since they earned their living in the nation legally. This problem of racial discrimination has become common across the hospitality and other industries of the United States. This, therefore, facilitated the need to investigate the challenge and propose theoretical ways those that different hospitality enterprises have adopted to curb the issue.

This report aims at evaluating the current racial discrimination challenge in the United States hospitality industry human resource based on California Hotel and proposes theoretical management approaches that the hospitality industry HR can implement to end the issues being raised on a daily basis in the sector.

Racial Discrimination in Hospitality Industry

Racial discrimination can be said to be the situation where a person is treated less favorably than another person in the same situation simply because of their race, national or ethnic origin, color, descent, or immigrant status (Henderson, 2017). Racial discrimination has become a common issue the human resource management of many hotels and restaurants in the US. Many black-Americans waiters in the US hotels through a study conducted in 2006 agreed to have been subjected to race discrimination.

There have cases of racial discrimination in the US for a long time, but this was seen to intensify since the year 2015 and much more last year when the current US President Donald Trump launched a campaign to kick out the non-Americans out of the country (Hartocollis & Bidgood, 2015). The most targeted people were the Africans, Islam, Mexicans and many others even the black Americans who Trump claimed they were not ideal citizens of the nation. This has made the hospitality industry remain a major target as it accommodates many Africa-Americans.

Link between Racial Discrimination and Human Resource

Other cases of racial discrimination in the US have been widely witnessed by the case raised by Tobin an African American from Fess Parker DoubleTree Hilton Resort in California (Reich, 2017). The HR domains of many countries have been seen to practice racial discrimination through their administration.

How racial discrimination is linked to Human Resource  

The human resources of California Hotel have the obligation of ensuring that people within the organization operate within a conducive and friendly environment. This has posed a challenge to the United States hotels and resorts. The African-Americans have taken it to the streets to demonstrate for being discriminated by their management and the whites (fellow workers). The human resource management of the US hospitality industry should come into play and ensure that there is fair treatment across all parties in the organizations and or companies. The HR have the role of providing a friendly environment to the waiter who have raised the issue of being discriminated so that the hotels/resorts and other hospitality domains can achieve maximum productivity through offering fair treatment that will see their workers identify themselves with them in different places thus gaining them popularity (Berger & Sarnyai, 2015).

The California’s Hotel Human Resources should enforce strict rules and regulations disregarding racial discrimination and condemning the act with the strongest terms possible. Providing a solution that will make the workers (waiters) valued and provided with equal chances and treated in the same way as the whites in this hotels will make them feel appreciated and recognized. This will facilitate a good working setting, and the workers will freely associate with those from other races. Through this association, the hotel employees will exchange ideas and improve their general performance hence sell the employer’s name in the market. In the modern world, organizations are moving in the entire world and making more diversified teams. Therefore, it is the role of the human resource management to ensure that the teams operate well and employees communicate well across all the different sections of the organization (Riccucci, 2015).  

To resolve the present racial discrimination issues and prevent others in the future, the US hospitality industry has opted to implement strategic human resource management. Strategic human resource management is a provocative management of the human resources of an organization. The HRM of the California Hotel and other domains in the hospitality have the responsibility of ensuring that there is a fair and equal treatment of all employees within the organizations. SHRM includes obvious human components such as hiring qualified and disciplined human resource leaders that will ensure that there will be collaboration from all parties in the organization so as to boost quality, maximize retention and maximize mutual productivity across all parties of the organization (Stone & Deadrick, 2015).

Theoretical ways of dealing with racial discrimination

There are many different theories that have been put across to counter the challenge of racial discrimination in hotel industry formulated through SHRM. The United States hospitality industry formulate ways through which it can deal with the issue of racial discrimination in the countries hospitality industry (Mahadevan & Mayer, 2017). Many theories have been put forward by SHRM to address the race discrimination challenge in the US. Some of these theories are discussed below.

Theoretical Ways of Dealing with Racial Discrimination

Universalistic, Contingency and configurationally theories- Agency/ transaction cost theory

The human resource management and its performance can be divided into three types of theories which are universalistic, contingency and configurationally. SHRM uses the behavioral perspective theoretical model in addressing issues that arise within an organization’s management (Shields, et al., 2015). This theory is based on playing a mediation role between parties’ relationship. This is to ensure that there is a mutual understanding among people within an organization towards the firm’s strategy and general performance.

In the same context strategic human resource management uses another popular theoretical model referred to as the cybernetic system model (Shields, et al., 2015). The agency cost theory is mainly employed in the fields of economics and finance. The perspective from which an organization view SHRM is critical as it determines the organization’s general performance. The universalistic principle is best practice for HRM in managing people in an organization as it assumes fair and equal treatment upon all people within the organization (Hope, Skoog & Jagers, 2015).

Critical race theory

Critical race theory is a theoretical structure in the area regarding social areas and focuses on the critical examination of the culture and society and intersects with the face of law and power (Armstrong & Taylor, 2017). The theory started within law schools in the United States in the mid-1980s as a reaction to critical legal studies and mostly merged two popular themes.  The first critical theory suggested that white people were much favored and excluded from racial discrimination a trend which been witnessed in many organizations for a long time. The second critical theory is that work has brought about the possible difference in the relationship between law and racial power and at large aims at ending racial discrimination (Mahadevan & Mayer, 2017).

More than 20 American law schools had adopted and started offering courses on critical race classes which broadly covered the issue of racial discrimination. The theory is currently taught and applied in the fields of education, ethnic studies, and American studies. The theory acknowledges that racial discrimination has deep roots in the entire American society and system. People don’t have to be racist themselves for institutional racism to dominate (Armstrong & Taylor, 2017). The CRT considers evaluating current power structures. This theory points out that these power are focused on power and supremacy of the whites that has encouraged racial discrimination. The critical race theory focuses on ways that racial discrimination influences people’s race as a group. Therefore, CRT tries to evaluate and analyze legal traditions and law through a long way back and racial effects in the US and other countries.

Strategic Human Resource Management and Resource Based View

This is a major theoretical framework in SHRM linked with the resource-based view of an organization. This theory is currently getting a lot of attention from many firms, organizations, and hotels as it has proved been of great use to the HRM (Marchington, 2015). The resource view based SHRM has proven to be potential in developing the conceptual and theoretical development of the SHRM (Edelman, Luca & Svirsky, 2017). The resource-based theory provides an explanation of comparative advantage and HR practice.

This theory explains how an organization’s human resources can be effectively for quality productivity. The firm’s resources of a firm should be strategically allocated for the firm to reap maximum output. Organizations SHRM is a mixture of resource-based view and strategic management theory (Hollenbeck & Jamieson, 2015). This theory suggests how the organization can combine the different requirements in its operation to give rise to best performance.

The resource-based view of SHRM identifies that organizational processes and the human capital can be of value to the organization if well established (Cania, 2016). However, there could be much better productivity if there was mutual reinforcement between the two parties (Stone & Deadrick, 2015). The duty of human resources in ensuring that high value is attained and helping organizations to achieve a competitive advantage is determined by their ability to adopt and implement an integrated HR system that encourages mutual reinforcement to ensure talent is developed upon recruitment and rewarded so as to fully exploit the human resources potential (Gatewood, Field & Barrick, 2015).   Guest comparative model

This theory was formulated by Guest, (1997). He suggested that good human resources management practices will result in high personal and organizational performance. The concept outlines human resource management strategies such as innovation, differentiation, the high focus quality and lowering cost, involvement, commitment, security, performance appraisal and flexibility by training (Renz, 2016). Through observing this model, an organization’s performance would turn out to be positive, innovative, lower the number of employees, reduce customer complaints and reduce conflicts within an organization.

This model is connected to HRM in that it emphasizes on quantitative and strategic business approach for the organization HRM in a broad way (Cania, 2016). It reminds the HR of a firm about the laid policies and firm’s objectives. It is thus related to the workforce of an organization and plays a key role in ensuring good relationships among employees (Boulware, et al., 2016). Its strategic plan is to increase the organization’s success through its human resources.

Actual implementation of SHRM with the theories

The research was contacted to establish the extent to which HR in the hospitality industry has implemented an SHRM through the discussed theories. The first theory practice the hospitality industry had implemented was the Universalist or the best practice SHRM strategy. The US hotel/resorts that had cases of discrimination were advice to adopt this theory (Boxall & Purcell, 2011). This theory encourages firms to attain a competitive advantage by embracing high-performance HRM practices for their human resources.  

 The second theory that SHRM in the hotel industry has implemented is the best-fit approach of SHRM. This theory suggests that hotels’ strategies and positions determine their human resource management policies and practices (Aguirre, 2011). Many other theories on this approach have been created to connect certain strategic decisions and choices to HRM policies and practices to many higher models in the hotels/ resorts operations.

The RBV approach has been used by many hospitality industries in the US to suggest alternatives to the best fit and best practice. It proposes that a firm creates competitive advantage through leveraging of rare, valuable, non-replaceable and rent attaining human resources (Salih, 2013). The hospitality sector has fulfilled this criterion to attain competitive advantage through their human resource by establishing a capital advantage.  

The critical race theory has been implemented in the hospitality industry SHRM and helped them to know the value of failure to consider all parties in their operations as a result of discrimination. The hotels have changed their ways of operating and started practicing equal and fair treatment across all employees.

Hilton International Resort (example of good practice)

An example of good practice in the hospitality industry is the Hilton International resort in the US that has remained outstanding in the industry for embracing SHRM that observes the above HRM strategies in its operation (Gehrels, 2016). The industry has adopted theories such as the comparative guest model in that it employs its workers on the ability of their skills regardless of their race.

The resort is comprised of both the whites and African-Americans who help it through its operation. The human resource of the resort was found to have a mutual relationship with both the waiters, security, and managers (Aguirre, 2011). The HRM practiced strategies mentioned above that helped them recruit their employees by performance and not race. Both the whites and blacks were provided with equal chances and treated equally.

Conclusion 

Racial discrimination is quite common in many organizations, hospitality industries and other many sectors in the US and other places in the world. California Hotel and the Fess Parker Doubletree Resort are examples of places experiencing the current issue of discrimination as seen from the research conducted and cases presented to courts. Racial discrimination brings discomfort to workers in the hospitality industry and other sectors at large. This raises conflicts among the HRM of the industries and also amongst workers.

The presence of racial discrimination in hotels/resorts and other hospitality industry domains makes workers feel mistreated and unwanted thus underperforming their duties. Also, other employees discriminate customers on the basis they are African which makes them loose potential customers and make lower sales. Hilton International resort uses an SHRM that observes equal treatment across all employees and customers. As a result, they have remained outstanding in the market and free from the racial discrimination challenges

The HR of any hotel/resort should lay down a strategic plan through which it recruits and ensures the mutual relationship between its human resources. It should also fight against racial discrimination as it courses friction within its employees and other partakers and this will lower its productivity. SHRM should create awareness to companies on the importance of fighting against racial discrimination.     

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