Managing an Internationally Diversified Workforce and its Impact on Cost, Quality, and Customer Satisfaction; the case of SMEs in the Cyprus Hotel Industry

AUTHOR(S):

George Papageorgiou, Andreas Efstathiades

TITLE

Managing an Internationally Diversified Workforce and its Impact on Cost, Quality, and Customer Satisfaction; the case of SMEs in the Cyprus Hotel Industry

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ABSTRACT

Over the last two decades and with the integration of more countries into the European Union, the workforce of many SMEs (Small to Medium Sized Enterprises) in Europe is now very international. This workforce diversity is a great opportunity but also a great challenge for entrepreneurs and managers. Especially, Cyprus, being an attractive tourist destination and a generator of new jobs, became also attractive for international workers. The hotel industry is one of the main business sectors that has greatly been affected by the international workforce reality. Despite the benefits, managing an international workforce is a great challenge for entrepreneurs and managers and there are many human resource management issues that need to be resolved in order to run successfully a hotel business enterprise. The hotel industry is very demanding, requiring frontline staff to work long, irregular, and unsociable hours while paying low wages. On the other hand, hotel employees need to be kept happy as it is actually them who truly provide the competitive advantage to the hotel SME since they are directly providing the main service to the customer. In fact, many studies show that the hotel industry being predominantly a labour intensive industry should invest in human resources and the quality of its staff. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact on competitiveness with the internationalization of the workforce of SMEs in the hotel industry. The competitive priorities for the purpose of this study are isolated in the degree of cost reduction, the service quality dimension and the response to customer requirements. As a result, recommendations are given to SMEs in the hotel industry on how to properly utilize the social and technical skills of its international workforce to provide high quality service in a cost effective way but also innovate and thus become truly competitive.

KEYWORDS

Small to Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs), International Business, Workforce Diversity, Human Resource Management, Hotel Management

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Cite this paper

George Papageorgiou, Andreas Efstathiades. (2017) Managing an Internationally Diversified Workforce and its Impact on Cost, Quality, and Customer Satisfaction; the case of SMEs in the Cyprus Hotel Industry. International Journal of Economics and Management Systems, 2, 224-228