The Portman Hotel Case Study

The Portman Hotel Company was a relatively small hotel with merely 348 rooms and 21 floors located in San Franciscos booming hotel district. It was influenced with Asian ism of services, to provide high quality hospitality to its guest at affordable rates. On paper, the hotel sounded like a great success, one that would emphatically flourish amongst the competition. However, even with this philosophy, on that point were numerous problems that plagued the Portman Hotel. A few ensamples of these problems argon the common mistake of fundamental attribution error (FAE), expectancy system, as well as operant conditional theory.This essay will apologize how these three things puke potentially bring down an perfect union very quickly. First we will face up at FAE and how it tints to the Portman Hotel. To key out an example of FAE located in The Portman Hotel case, we must starting signal draw what FAE exactly is. Fundamental Attribution Error is the tendency to over-value di spositional or personality-based explanations for the observed behaviors of former(a)s succession under-valuing situational explanations for those behaviors. It is typically most visible when mountain excuse the behavior to others.Essentially, what FAE suggests, is that we, as human beings, tend to be to a fault judgmental of others without actually seeing that there might be out-of-door factors causing that individuals behavior. Now that we strike defined exactly what FAE is, we can begin to identify an example of this contained within the case. One great example of this common error in action involves the personal va allows (PVs) of the company and Spencer Scott. Scott criticizes the PVs for evermore taking on additional tasks and pursuing cutting needs and even states that they want to do anything, which causes them to suffer short fear spans.He is so focused on the PVs being a group of freethinkers that he has failed to remember his companies purpose, which is to cater to every desire the hotel guests might have. He has failed to piss that the guests are to blame for ordering the PVs around getting them to tend to their every need. In this specific case, the guests are the external environmental forces that are causing the behavior. If Scott had certainized that his employees were just doing their job, wherefore his opinion of them would be a freshet several(predicate) and would begin to realize that he might need to permute something astir(predicate) 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 accepted way because they are motivated to select a specific behavior over other behaviors due to what they expect the yield of that selected behavior will be. Now that we have defined what ET is we can relate it to the case . Due 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 conduct of the arrive at, 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 steadfastly and getting paid the exact same. The PVs that were picking up the slack for the others then became less motivated to perform which lead to all of the valets lost their star of responsibility. So to go back to the original definition, the PVs that were originally working inviolableer than the others began to work less hard because they k rising that they werent going to be fired.Lastly, we will look at the operant Conditional Theory to see why supervisors would aim to avoid using the Portmans disciplinary procedures. Operant conditional theory is defined as, getting people to do things because they want to by apply ing positivistic and negative reinforcements to move them in a particular way. The supervisors of the Portman Hotel were adamant about avoiding formal 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 learn theory as a means to motivate the poor performers. Spencer Scott seek to persuade the poor performers to believe that smashing performance had many rewards, such(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 analyzed and pointed out the flaws of the Portman Hotel, we can begin to describe some frank solutions 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 everywhere he might figure out the source of the problem, instead of jumping 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 strategy in assisting the guests with their high demands. Secondly, we must analyze the problem with the PVs and their invariant economic consumption of shirking and how we could fix it. Shirking is a sad habit that happens in a lot of work places no matter what industriousness a person is in. The difficulty is finding a way to outdo these types of action and being effective at it. One way to outstrip this dilemma is to begin to figure out which few are the individuals initially starting it and begin to discipline them accordingly. If discipline is not the answer, the managers could sit the entire PV staff down at once and explain that they are inception to notice a downward trend in performance and that there will be a new set standard for what the ex pectations are.With this new standard, if anyone fails to meet 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 spread out disciplinary procedures. Unfortunately, implementing a formal system of disciplinary actions would be violating the ideals that Portman valued to establish. The solution for this would be for the management team to be stricter on their expectations of the employees.I facial expression 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 better employees, there must be a rewards system in place. Performance reviews should be put in place to analyze, which employees are the good employees and wh ich are the bad employees.Once management 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 worst throughout 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, almost any company can begin to understand where the real problems consist, which will allow that company to begin taking action and doctor them.