Strategically Crafting a Customer-focused Culture

Strategically craftinga customer-focused culture:

an inductive case studyRobert C. Ford

College of Business, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida, USA

Celeste P.M. WilderomSchool of Management and Governance, University of Twente, Enschede,

The Netherlands, and

John CaparellaGaylord Hotels, Orlando, Florida, USA

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to show how the content of a firm’s culture, carefullydeveloped by top managers, can create effective employee experiences and how this exemplary case ofstrategic culture shaping relate to various academic insights on intangible social or collaborativecapital.

Design/methodology/approach – Inductive case study (of a large American convention hotel),highlighting the strategic crafting of a service-firm culture, both descriptively (in terms of what tookplace) and analytically (in terms of various OB-literatures).

Findings – Describes how organizational culture can be part of strategizing in terms of aligningcultural expressions regarding various employees’ practices, including continuous organizationalimprovement. Analyzes and integrates various extant culture insights on service cultures and culturestrength.

Research limitations/implications – Insights are applicable to a wide variety of work settingsbeyond the hospitality and service sectors; it expands the view of organizational culture to the broaderand more complex, strategic issue of how organizations can craft or amend cultures that fit theirmissions.

Practical implications – One may learn from this case (including the authors’ reflections), how toput a well-articulated service mission into operational practice: through taking a particular, desiredculture quite seriously when creating employee experiences, so that they are effectively focused on thatmission.

Originality/value – The paper illustrates specific tactics for implementing culture plus the value ofdeveloping a strategic approach to creating a particular culture. It offers a template of crafting aculture, based on the strategic pairing of managerial mission with action (or employee and clientexperiences). Strategizing with culture, also referred to as firm-cultural content shaping, is meant forresearchers and practitioners seeking to help develop a mission-focused organizational culture.

Keywords Customer orientation, Organizational culture, Hotels, Service levels

Paper type Case study

1. IntroductionThis paper depicts a strategic approach to developing an emerging firm’s culturalcontent. In order to focus in-depth on the various cultural elements that may need to beconsidered in a firm’s formation effort, we first describe a remarkable case using a

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at

www.emeraldinsight.com/1755-425X.htm

Customer-focused culture

143

Journal of Strategy and ManagementVol. 1 No. 2, 2008

pp. 143-167q Emerald Group Publishing Limited

1755-425XDOI 10.1108/17554250810926348

hotel as a lens to focus our inductively derived arguments about how to strategize withorganizational culture. While this hotel receives top rating scores with both itscustomers and employees, it is also profitable. It repeatedly wins the “Best Place toWork” awards in its community. The case is important as it suggests a link between thehotel’s financial success and a strategically created culture[1]. Our inductive pairing ofthis case with recent academic insights on service cultures is framed in the literaturesof both strategy and organizational (service) culture. Through this (inductivelyanalyzed) case we attempt to move both fields forward (Locke, 2007, p. 887).

The hotel in this case is the 1406 room four diamond Gaylord Palms conventionhotel, opened in February 2002, in Orlando, Florida. The owners gave the openingmanager full reign to implement his previously developed approach to use a serviceculture to deliver profitable top quality service. The opening manager believed that itwas critical to strategically shape a coherent and inspiring culture. Based on his priorexperience and belief in the essential ideas of total quality management, he wasconvinced of its business value.

Our ensuing case depiction of the Gaylord Palms’ culture is based on numerousinterviews with the founding manager and his associates: spanning a period of sevenyears. Even though our case is not a systematically pre-designed longitudinal casestudy, the content of the open-ended interviews held throughout the years is based onthe first author’s close relationship with the manager and the manager’s activeparticipation in this paper; the belief and insight that the opening manager is able andwell-situated to create an unusual firm culture; and our own in-depth knowledge ofservice cultures, especially in the hospitality industry, witnessed by earlier workpublished by the two main authors of this paper (Ashkanasy et al., 2000; van den Bergand Wilderom, 2004; Crotts et al., 2005; Bowen and Ford, 2002; Ford and Heaton, 2000;Klidas et al., 2007).

The opening manager had studied culture in his formal education and learned of itsvalue as a practicing manager. His previous experience at the Sheraton Manhattantaught him that culture could elicit the best efforts of a staff to deliver a serviceexperience. There he had relied on changing the culture as part of his strategy forturning around an underperforming hotel property. The dramatic results he hadachieved convinced him that a hotel’s culture can be crafted to make a difference inorganizational performance. Thinking of culture as the “software” of an organizationproducing an intangible service, he felt that it needed to be strategically designed toalign the organizational need (i.e. mission) with the software’s capability (i.e. culture’sspecific content). He was also impressed with the total quality management conceptsand its associated literature (Crosby’s Quality is Free, 1979) and a believer of the ideathat what gets measured gets managed. These beliefs are reflected in his strategicapproach to creating the Gaylord Palms’ culture.

In this paper, we first describe the strategic elements of the Gaylord Palms’ cultureand the larger environmental context in which it was crafted. Next, with the help ofinsights from academic literature relevant to service-culture cueing, we analyze thisstrategy. In this paper, we not only report the emergence of a remarkable service-firmculture, we also offer a compelling example of the value of strategically shaping afirm’s cultural content. We believe that a strategic approach to culture creation,illustrated by the Gaylord Palms, has applicability to a wide variety of organizationalsettings beyond the hospitality and service sectors. Hence, we conclude the paper with

JSMA1,2

144

new insights on culture creation: to expand the current literature’s preoccupation withculture strength to the broader and more complex, strategic issue of how organizationscan craft cultures that fit their missions.

2. Context of the Gaylord PalmsThe Gaylord Palms is one of four somewhat similar convention hotels in the USAowned by Gaylord Entertainment. Gaylord Entertainment is a publically heldcompany listed on the NYSE (symbol GET) with a market capitalization of over$1.2 billion. The four hotels, in their order of opening, are:

(1) Opryland in Nashville;

(2) the Gaylord Palms in Orlando;

(3) the Texan in Dallas; and

(4) the National in Washington, DC.

They are all built to serve the convention and meetings market for clients needingmeeting space and sleeping rooms in the approximate range they offer. Their strategicniche is larger sized convention hotels in the four diamond price and customer amenityrange. They hope to capture repeat business concentrating on meetings that prefer torotate geographically across the USA: to balance out travel expenses forgeographically dispersed attendees. Gaylord Palms’ strategy was to produce thekind of guest and customer experience that would be noticeable and memorable so thatthe attendees would be attracted to one of their hotels for their next meeting because oftheir high quality experiences. Due to space constraints, our largely internal, culturalanalysis leaves out external market conditions.

By commonly used industry measures the culture strategy used at Gaylord Palms issuccessful. Expressed in total REVPAR (revenue per available room), Gaylord Palms isranked by Smith Travel (a widely used company) as first in its competitive group.Using a measure of customer satisfaction that counts only the percentage of GaylordPalms’ customers giving “top box” scores, it currently scores at 60 percent and has agoal of 70 percent for 2010. This means they are evaluated as “excellent” which is thetop box on their evaluation scale by over half of their customers. They are not contentto rest on their laurals and have a goal of getting even better. In terms of awards, theyhave every major award that can be earned in the hotel and convention industrybusiness including; Gold Key Award, Pinnacle Award, Florida Monthly’s Best FloridaResort, Wine Spectator magazine’s Award of Excellence and many more. Furthermore,they win them consistently on an annual basis.

In terms of its employee satisfaction metrics, the Gaylord Palms is also the mostsuccessful in its market. Current employee turnover for the Palms is below 28 percentwhile that of all Gaylord Hotels is currently 33 percent. These turnover numbers are farbetter than its peer competitors in the hotel industry, notorious for its high laborturnover. The Gaylord Palms scores three times the overall industry averages on threekey measures it uses to assess its employee satisfaction. These are job satisfaction(37 percent very satisfied vs 14 percent for other US hotels); likelihood of remaining(40 percent vs 13 percent); and likelihood of buying stock from their employer(43 percent vs 12 percent). The three other Gaylord Entertainment hotels,whose cultural strategy was eventually copied from the Gaylord Palms, are doing


145

similarly well. In the next section we describe the cultural components of GaylordPalms’ firm-formation efforts.

3. Creating Gaylord Palms’ service cultureA strategic approach to creating a culture is to begin by identifying the key elements inthat strategy and then aligning these elements with the operational practices of thefirm. Thus, the first step is to articulate a mission towards which all other actions andactivities can be directed. Next is to identify the tactical elements of the strategy,human resource policies and procedures, and operational systems that need to becreated and aligned with the mission selected (Crotts et al., 2005; Ford and Heaton,2000). Gaylord followed this process. It began with the articulation of a customerfocused mission and then it systematically translated that mission into the specifictactics, human resources policies, and operational systems that fit or aligned with thatmission.

3.1 Mission, goals, and firm values of Gaylord PalmsThe general manager believed that the mission of the Gaylord Palms should be tocreate, sustain and model a high level of customer service orientation every day, by allof its employees. He started with this mission to craft the culture. He believed culturewould have two important outcomes for his new hotel:

(1) A customer-driven culture can be a competitive advantage over other hotels asit competes for both customers and employees (echoed in the literature, e.g. byOgbonna and Harris, 2002; Simpson and Cacioppe, 2001; Derry and Shaw,1999).

(2) He felt that organizations with a positive culture are more attractive places towork and are more desirable places to visit than places that are unpleasant,unfocused, and uncaring.

He also believed culture could substitute for direct supervision. This is important inservice organizations particularly as employees serving guests must rely on theirinterpretation of how their values fit the service mission to drive behavior and guidedecision making. A manager may not be available for guidance when an employee istrying to meet a customer’s expectations while co-producing an intangible serviceexperience (Hallowell et al., 2002; Klidas et al., 2007). He believed that the more acustomer-culture can guide employees, the less need there is to rely on traditionalmanagement controls such as policies, procedures, and direct managerial oversight.It was his experience that employees who know the right thing to do and are motivatedto do it consistently, achieve better performance. The culture of Palms was crafted toguide employee behavior especially when encountering situations that are unique.No matter how much an organization trains its employees, customers seekingexperiences that exist only in their memories are as varied as their expectations(Schein, 1992). Exceeding expectations is not only important to satisfying customersbut it is also the key driver of repeat business and positive word of mouth. In sum,before the Gaylord Palms opened, the opening manager’s “industry experience”(Song et al., 2008) gave him a belief in the value of a firm’s service culture. He designedthe Palms’ culture software systematically, starting with its mission and values.

JSMA1,2

146

After considerable discussion by Gaylord Palms’ founding team (Schein, 1991), theformal mission was defined as: “At Gaylord Palms, it is our goal to become a legend inguest service.” They felt that the way to become known for legendary service would bethrough consistently providing “flawless service” to each and every guest. Theyfurther believed that the only way to achieve this is to make a strong commitment tothose who had to deliver it: the employees. This commitment was felt so important thatit was formally stated as an organizational goal; “Our goal is to develop a rewardingFUN culture that makes our STARS excited to come to work with a passion to serveevery single day.” It was decided that everything Palms’ management did, said, andwrote must be supportive of mission accomplishment and its aligned corporate values(Crotts et al., 2005). Mission, goals and the articulated work values that the mission andgoals represent were created to drive everything in the Gaylord Palms. For example,seven corporate values were created (see Figure 1: note their operationalizations) tofocus the employees on the mission, defined as:

(1) service;

(2) citizenship;

(3) integrity;

(4) respect;

(5) excellence;

(6) creativity; and

(7) passion.

The acronym STARS stands for smiles, teamwork, attitude, reliability and service witha passion. It created to do two things:

(1) It defines what employees are supposed to be focused on while doing their jobs.

(2) It is a term that became part of the language of the hotel’s culture used by all torefer to any member of the organization: leader, non-supervisory staff or hourly.

In other words, the term STARS created not only a unified sense among employeesabout their organizational role. It also reminded the employees that each individual isvalued by the company.

3.2 Staffing to build Gaylord Palms’ cultureOnce the mission, goals, positions and values had been established (messaging why theorganization exists and how it would help employees to excel in customer service), thenext step was to hire, train, and motivate the people that would be the STARS.This was part of the founding strategy. This process was carefully thought through.The basic notion was to hire only “10’s” or the 1 out of 10 that truly possessed a“passion to serve.” The hiring process was begun by identifying the “right” managerswho in turn would hire the “right” employees. Each job finalist was given a formaltalent assessment and results were carefully reviewed by the hiring team managers.The talent assessment tool would ensure that all those hired were aligned with thePalms’ mission and comprehensively included the necessary talents. No leader washired without everyone on the hiring team agreeing that the candidate was the right fitfor the Palms. This included the Vice President and general manager who interviewed


147

all candidates for all leadership positions. The Palms founding team believed thatmaking this commitment to the process of identifying leaders sent a signal that itplaced great importance on getting the right people hired.

When the opening leadership team was in place, a structured interview process wascreated for identifying the other STARS. A video was made for all potential STARS toview prior to a screening interview that emphasized the Palms’ culture. This was to

Figure 1.Gaylord’s values

JSMA1,2

148

provide applicants with the information they would need to decide for themselves if thePalms’ culture would be a good fit for them. If applicants felt that this culture was a fitafter viewing the video, they would be individually interviewed by a hiring teammember who asked a set of structured screening questions designed to identify the jobspecific talents necessary and to inform the candidate of the non-negotiable culturalvalues for success in the Gaylord Palms’ culture.

In that hiring process the Palms’ management invented several ways to signal theintended culture and its potential fit to those it sought to hire. The Palms’ new staffmembers were, for example, offered their positions in an “offer experience:” This wasan individually tailored, fun way of showing each of the selected STARS howenthusiastic the Palms was about them joining the hotel. It offered, for example, theHorticulture Manager her job by burying the official letter in the dirt of the unfinishedatrium and invited her to dig it up. The Front Desk Manager was given a Wizard of Ozthemed offer experience (since she loved that movie), complete with ruby red shoes andan offer letter with the words, “There’s no place like home. Come home to GaylordPalms and become our new Front Desk Manager.” The point was to discover what wasimportant to prospective team members and create an individualized experience thatwould delight them. This not only showed the value that the organization placed on theperson being hired by making the effort to personalize the offer but also provided amodel of the behavior expected of the new employee in that culture. The processcontinues today at the Gaylord Palms and has been adopted by all other GaylordHotels.

The Palms’ commitment to hiring only “10’s” led to four important outcomes:

(1) It made everyone involved in hiring understand that they should only hire thosethat were truly committed to giving flawless or legendary service. They knewthat the company wanted them to “hold out for talent.”

(2) It allowed all those that got hired to feel like they were part of a special group ofhighly committed employees – the top 10 percent.

(3) It showed all that were interviewed, whether they were hired or not, the Palms’commitment to employees and company values.

(4) It provided a standard for the human resource people to use in guiding theiremployment efforts.

This plan helped create a company brand image in the labor market that it then used inadvertising and word of mouth to build a strong labor pool. Even those who were nothired were impressed with the values of the hotel and its commitment to employees.Thus, the entire initial hiring process was organized around the goal of finding andhiring people who would become STARS and be willing to commit to the hotel’s workvalues. Not only did the job advertisements stress this, the interview process did aswell. All employees entered the organization knowing they had been chosen because oftheir commitment to the organization’s values and their capability of delivering theflawless service mission.

Orientation was also considered an essential component of the Gaylord Palms’staffing strategy for creating a culture. It was designed to begin with two days oftraining that everybody joining the company attends; 60 percent of this time isdedicated to teaching culture. This much time allocated to culture was felt critical to


149

ensure employees has a clear understanding of the company and its values. Orientationis followed by 1-4 weeks in the individual departments where new employees not onlyget training in specific job skills but additional training in the Gaylord culture. STARSlearn that there is no difference between serving a guest and serving each other. Thisinitial orientation is followed by a 90 day “orientation reunion” to ensure the STARSknow their benefits, are comfortable in their job roles, and can see how to apply theflawless service philosophy in their specific departments. A dishwasher, for example,might be grouped with some banquet servers to talk about the ways in which the workof the dishwasher is linked to the servers. These groupings are designed to eliminatethe dysfunctions of functional silos often found in hotels (and other organizations) andto show everyone how their work is connected with each other. The general managerhad learned that one of the key impediments to achieving flawless service is thetendency of employees to get locked into their functional loyalties and forget theoverarching service mission. Both in their orientation reunions and in their regularpre-shift meetings all STARS are reminded of the interdependencies of all functions.

Not only is entry training and orientation designed to teach the culture; thecompany also demonstrates its commitment to its STARS by offering extensive furtherlearning opportunities. Since the Palms sets as a goal to get 60 percent of its leadershipfrom internal promotions, these programs are important in communicating the value ofhelping all employees achieve their aspirations.

The Palms attempts to empower its employees to respond to the variation inguest/customer expectations by avoiding the creation of rules as much as possible.Instead, it created “guidelines” to assist STARS in their decision making. Its leadershipbelieves that guidelines would provide a framework for managers and other STARSto perform their jobs well while still allowing for the individual flexibility needed torespond to customer variation. Employees could base their work performance torespond to the specific circumstances of a service experience rather than followingspecific rules that do not allow such variability.

3.3 Systems to communicate the Palms’ cultureBeyond systematic efforts in strategy and staffing, the Palms’ opening managerrealized that everything leaders said, did and wrote would cue culture for all otheremployees. Even though he and his opening team had exerted considerable effort onthe front end of the hotel’s opening to define a mission, core work values, and a hiringprocess to bring the right people into the organization, he appreciated the criticalnature of communicating the culture in a clear and consistent way: both at the point ofentry and on an ongoing basis. He established multiple communication channels foremployees with special emphasis on two-way communication. The Palms also madeextensive use of cultural communication tools such as telling stories about serviceheroes, having celebrations and creating rituals (Trice and Beyer, 1993).

Communicating values. During orientation a considerable amount of time is spenton explaining the multiple ways to communicate with “leaders.” New STARS areinformed of the open door policy, given the phone numbers of the general manager,given access to an intranet web site, and taught the metrics of the business. STARS aretold they do not have to follow the chain of command if they see an issue that needsmanagement attention and their own leader does not share their concern. If a STARbrings an issue to his or her boss’ attention, it is that manager’s issue to resolve.

JSMA1,2

150

Each issue gets documented so that everyone can get to know what issues requireaction or resolution. Although this seems to be an invitation to chaos as everysubordinate knows that he or she can access any manager freely, the reality is that it isnot used much as this approach makes the employee’s immediate supervisor lessinclined to ignore employee issues, suggestions, and concerns. This anti-hierarchicalnorm serves to keep leaders engaged in soliciting employee feedback and input.

As part of its strategy to communicate its cultural values, an internal guarantee wasmade and communicated to employees; the Gaylord Palms explicitly recognized eachemployee as an internal customer (Hart, 1995). This unique guarantee states; “STARSfirst, always” and goes on to spell out what this means at this hotel and company.“At Gaylord Entertainment we are committed to providing our STARS with thesupport and resources necessary to offer flawless service in an environment thatfosters fun, encourages open communication and development and upholds ourvalues.” This guarantee is published and painted on a common area wall that eachemployee sees every day as a reminder of both what the STARS’ values are and thecommitment the company has made to its employees.

The employee guarantee was created to emulate the value and power of guaranteesoffered to customers. The reasoning was simple. If it could offer a guarantee of serviceexcellence for our guests, why not do the same for its employees? By exercising theguarantee, employees could have a direct path to voice their concerns, reducinginternal “service failure.” This guarantee concept also signals that top managementtakes its commitment to employees seriously and any manager without thatcommitment is unlikely to be successful. Since managers know that the guarantee wasavailable to all employees, the guarantee also serves as a reminder of the importance oftaking into account STARS’ needs, wants, and expectations in all their decisions.It forces managers to test what they do as supervisors against the guarantee by asking,“Will this decision support what we guarantee our STARS?”

The general manager decided to add three unique positions to the hotel staff. Thefirst resulted in a person responsible for new employee orientation. Although mostorganizations have people responsible for new employee training, Gaylord would havea person whose only role was to communicate its work values upon entry and again 90days later. This job was created to teach the culture. The second position was themanager of STARS Communications and Events: responsible for creating andexecuting employee communications and celebrations. The third position created wasthe manager of STARS relations who would be responsible for ensuring that allemployees had a voice in managing the organization. While each of these roles can befound dispersed in other organizations, Gaylord’s assignment of those roles to aspecific person – whose only function was to perform these roles well – was designedto ensure that the culture of Gaylord, the “software” of its operations, was focused,consistent and thoroughly communicated.

The message that is sent to employees at orientation (and reinforced continuously)is that Gaylord wants to have issues put openly on the table and get every employeeinvolved in solving them. It establishes a norm of self disclosure of mistakes as avalued behavior while hiding them is not. The general manager developed an intranetbased tool called “hits and misses” to create and disseminate a record of their good andbad performances in delivering the customer experience. This intranet site allows allemployees to see customer comments generated by Gaylord’s convention services staff


151

asking customers about the good and bad aspects of the Gaylord experience.This system allows the collection of service failure data and also examples of servicesuccesses so that the appropriate people can be informed of things that are going welland things that need correction. Gaylord repeatedly reminds all STARS that they havea responsibility to identify and solve (potential) problems. Since in the service industrythe customer contact person is frequently the one that created this service problem fora customer, it is important to ensure that the very people who create these problemsfeel committed to fixing them without fear of punishment. The cultural norm ofeveryone being responsible for continuous improvement promotes employeediscussion of what needs to be improved to continually get better. It fosters anenvironment where no one fears telling about problems (even those they created).

In teaching its culture Gaylord encourages the use of stories. One of the ways inwhich it communicates its mission to flawless guest service to (new) employees is bysharing a letter (Appendix). This fictitious letter was written by management. It tellsthe story of a guest that came and was so satisfied that she wrote a letter telling howgreat the experience was. This letter is given to everyone in the new employeeorientation to show what the intangible mission of flawless service means. Thechallenge is for every employee or department to deliver such great service that theywill get letters like this. At the same time, the letter gives guidance as to what kinds ofthings impress customers. Since one of the goals is to obtain only “top box” scores onits customer evaluations, it felt the need to define and teach what customers/guestswould find inspiring enough to give such high evaluations.

Gaylord’s management built on the fictitious letter in two ways:

(1) It asks each new department head to develop a department-specific letter toreinforce what flawless service means in the context of their department.

(2) It asks them to discuss flawless service, like that complimented in the letter, inat least three of the daily departmental meetings per week.

Thus, each department will have regular discussions about how to serve well at leastthree times each week. The discussions on what prompts people to send such letterspromotes the telling of stories in which team members will relate a real life exampleabout creating a successful service experience. Leaders are asked to record these in anintranet file. This file serves as a resource for other leaders to use when they needstories or illustrations of service exemplars.

Another way the company communicates what it values is by printing up pocket orwallet cards for employees to carry with them detailing the Gaylord values for easyreference. The tangible existence of these cards and the expectation that everyone willcarry them reinforces to each employee the importance that management places onthose values. The seven values, including their operationalizations (Figure 1), reinforcethe particular Gaylord culture, the employee guarantee, and the ways that theorganization and its employees interact with each other and with the guests.

Every team member is, expected to participate at least once a month in a discussionof the core service values. Gaylord believes that the way to make the mission real is totell stories about what it means to deliver flawless service. Its emphasis on thisstory telling not only allows each employee to see the mission in terms that arespecifically relevant to his or her own department but also makes the leaders take this

JSMA1,2

152

seriously. Indeed, even those that are quieter or seem reluctant to talk, are encouragedto participate.

3.3.1 Rituals and celebrations. Early in its culture creation, Gaylord Palms’managers developed a set of rituals and celebrations designed to reinforce the missionand its values (Deal and Key, 1998). One ritual, for example, is designed for celebratingpromotions. When a Gaylord Palms’ STARS gets promoted, the person is peddledaround the hotel in a wheeled rickshaw by his or her new supervisor. The bike isfollowed by a camera toting paparazzi waving a celebratory sign and making noise.The unusual nature of this event can be observed by other employees and even drawsthe participation of guests. If the idea was to make the newly promoted person feelspecial and recognized, this simple act certainly does that. As the person is peddledaround the hotel’s 10 acres both front of the house and back, everyone can see andcelebrate the event.

Another Gaylord Palm’s ritual is the All STARS rallies, held quarterly. In theserallies successes of individual STARS are celebrated. These STARS are selected by acommittee comprised of former winners to best represent each of the seven keycorporate values. A three minute video is prepared on each person and shown at therally along with the awarding of a plaque. These are emotionally charged events thatmake the STARS feel valued, recognized, and appreciated while teaching all whoattend what the company values, recognizes and appreciates. Value award winners areincluded in a value wall of fame which details the history of their recipients over theyears. Ever since the Gaylord Palms’ culture had been built into other new hotels, acorporate wide process selects each year the best representative of each value. All localhotel winners of the year are flown to Nashville with his/her family for a corporate levelcelebration, complete with a dinner on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry. They all get$1,500 to give to the charity of their choice. Winning is seen as an important event intheir lives, and the celebration reinforces the culture, including its work values.

Traveling to “Nashville” is an extra special event for a Gaylord Palms’ employee asGaylord’s corporate foundation is built on its entertainment roots. Tracing its historyto the famous country music institution of the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville[2], GaylordEntertainment takes seriously its reputation for knowing how to entertain people.It attracts and recognizes employees with entertainment talent and seeks to displaytheir skills as part of its employee recognition celebrations. As a result, there is strongcompetition amongst STARS to be selected to perform in Gaylord’s All STARS Rallyprograms; each rally uses the talents of at least three STARS performers. Gaylordclearly believes in the value of creating a fun work environment (Ford et al., 2004) andit is confident in its ability to provide fun for guests through its entertainment mindset.

The Gaylord Palms also hosts family nights that are designed to be entertaining.Regularly, it will invite all STARS to bring their families when there is somethingspecial to see at the hotel (e.g. Ice Sculpture) or just for a movie. The entertainmentbackground of the company helps engage and hold the interest of its employees asthese events are done with considerable planning and detail. At the movies night, forexample, clowns are employed to entertain the children as well as face painters andballoon artists. At all events food is served. The goal is to provide a fun workenvironment that will spill over onto guests.

The Palms created a fun way for its managers to celebrate as well. There arequarterly leader’s outings for the hotel’s leaders. These begin with a stand up meeting


153

where the senior leaders report on the state of the hotel. This is followed by a fewmotivational points and a quick review of the key performance metrics. Then thesenior leaders say “Let’s go” and everyone gets on a bus to go somewhere to have fun.The goal is to have fun communicating what the hotel is accomplishing and reinforcingthe idea of a fun work environment.

Other things that are done as part of their staffing strategy are celebrating lifeevents like birthdays and supporting philanthropic activities. One of Gaylord’s valuesis Citizenship and it has created philanthropic committees in support of that value.Gaylord Palms, for example, commits over $250,000 annually for philanthropicactivities and countless employee hours volunteering to support its local community.STARS participate together in determining the GET Involved activities annually.

3.3.2 Performance metrics. While it is obvious that Gaylord Palms spendsconsiderable money and time on ensuring that its lodging product is well designed andsupported with quality resources, they have given equal attention to the systems thatsupport the culture. One guiding assumption is that people pay attention to what ismeasured. This idea comes from the quality management movement where the idea oftraining people to recognize and fix their own errors is central. The Gaylord Palms hastaken the time to measure everything that it values and it makes sure it tells peoplehow they are doing against standards and then awards bonuses when the goals areachieved. STARS at all levels can earn bonus money that reflects their production ofoutstanding customer service scores and financial results. These bonuses range from$50 to $150 per quarter. The goal is to show and share the direct linkage betweenproviding flawless service and financial outcomes to every staff member. Thisprogram differentiates Gaylord from most other hotel or service companies, as fewfirms extend bonus programs to every employee.

In evaluating managers, Gaylord uses a balanced scorecard to signal its managersthat it gives equal importance to customers, employees and financial success. Theirmanagers are bonused on performance metrics for all these three major areas.Furthermore, they evaluate leadership competencies. Merit increases are based uponan equal weighting of both goal achievement and leadership competency performance.This evaluation reflects an intentional decision to create a system that keeps leadersfrom thinking that financial returns alone are sufficient for success or that leadershipperformance is only a matter of achieving set goals.

Measurement metrics are published whenever possible. Gaylord report guestsatisfaction scores of both their competition and each of their own hotels quarterly.These internal scores generate great competition between units and across differenthotels. Scores are also used in departmental meetings to prompt continuous-improvement discussions. As Gaylord Entertainment has added new hotels into itsportfolio (Dallas-Fort Worth area and Washington, DC), it has found that the samebasic culture crafted in the Gaylord Palms, Orlando, works there as well; It evensuccessfully “imported” the Gaylord Palms’ cultural content to its previously existingNashville Opryland Hotel as well.

4. Analyzing the Gaylord Palms: assure cultural content over culturestrengthIn the foregoing account of creating a new hotel culture, we saw that already theemerging organizational culture directed employees in relating to each other. The

JSMA1,2

154

founder’s beliefs, organizational mission and goals, core work values (Figure 1) andmost of its translations into practices or typical employee experiences (Table I) areintangible. Yet they appear not ephemeral and proved enactable in other, similar hotelsin Gaylord’s emerging chain of convention hotels. In what follows, we analyze thisconstitutive episode in Gaylord’s life through various academic lenses relevant toservice-culture cueing. In doing so, we will integrate insights and derive the genericproposition that infusing and assuring appropriate and consistent cultural content intoan emerging organization is more advantageous for any firm than efforts to reachmerely culture strength.

The culture of the Gaylord Palms was envisioned and defined by the generalmanager or founder (Aitken, 2007, Ormrod et al., 2007). He used culture as asensemaking device (Gioia, 1986) where the “device” part is both practical (“practices”)and intangible: in its effects on employees. Hence, the Palms’ culture became a practicalyet intangible projection of his ideas about the style with which he wanted hisemployees to behave at work. The founder, while having worked in different positionswithin the same industry, had not only developed those ideas, he had also acquired aculture-orchestrating type competence. We learned from the case that deliberatelyshaping a consistent organizational culture benefits staff, customers and the firm itself.Many different cultural-based work values were spelled out and they are regularlydiscussed by employees. Matching or well-aligned employee practices or experienceswere staged by Gaylord Palms’ founder and his close associates. These staffexperiences sought to reinforce employees’ value driven decisions and behaviors inpursuit of the firm’s goal of ensuring very positive customer experiences. The successof this organization in using a culture-creation strategy offers a promising new thesisto explore: if founding managers are unable to shape an intended organization-culturalfabric, they risk having their culture become incoherent, unproductive andunsatisfying to its members.

The Gaylord Palms’ case shows how a culture can be strategically crafted toimplement a personal commitment to and tacit knowledge of high levels of customerservice. Furthermore, the Palms’ case illustrates Aitken’s (2007, p. 30) insight that“unless leaders are fully aware of their own leadership culture they are unlikely to beable to control the impact of their role as the modeling archetypes of organizationalculture.” Gaylord’s careful avoidance of “cultural ambiguities” (McLoughlin et al., 2005,p. 86) is indeed “manifested in the conditions and lived experiences of those attemptingto introduce new forms of normative control.” The Palms’ many and carefully thoughtout cultural elements were carefully aligned. In particular, the Gaylord Palms’ caseillustrates “walking the talk” alignment: The more aligned the personal values ofleaders are with their actual behavior, the more likely the staff will regard the culture ina more positive manner (Aitken, 2007; Ford et al., 2006; Dickson et al., 2006).

Seen from the area of service management, the many avenues of communicationGaylord Palms’ used to communicate to its employees’ showed them its commitmentto “perceived organizational support.” Gaylord’s “messages” sent to employees“enable workers to accomplish work objectives” (Vandenberghe et al., 2007, p. 1178).Gaylord’s enabling type managerial control efforts (Adler and Borys, 1996) is endorsedin the academic literature where it has been shown that the more employees feelsupported by the employing organization, the higher is the customer perception ofservice quality (Eisenberger et al., 1997; Susskind et al., 2003). Significant links between


155

Strategy1 Mission focused on excellence and translated into a goal of flawless service2 STARS acronym created to focus everyone on employees’ value to the mission3 STARS term used to remind everyone of cultural values represented by words

Staffing4 Only hire 1 out of 10 applicants: the one with the highest passion to serve5 Talent assessment tool to ensure new employees will fit the culture6 Consensus required to hire new employees7 Video produced to systematically teach Gaylord’s firm values to potential

employees8 Job offers given in the form of an “offer experience” to reinforce the culture9 Recruitment ads stress the importance of the culture and company’s commitment

to it10 Initial orientation: 60 per cent of the time devoted to culture11 Within-department orientation: 1-4 weeks job-skills training plus culture training12 Ninety days past hire: “orientation reunion” that also teaches interdependencies

of all STARS’ positions13 Extensive, structured learning opportunities to improve employee skills and

prepare future leaders14 Guidelines instead of strict rules

SystemsCommunicating Values

15 Open door policy so employees can contact anyone in a higher position16 Leaders actively solicit employee feedback and input17 Created and published employee guarantee: “STARS first, always”18 Specific jobs created to promote Gaylord’s fun culture19 Endorsing the norm of employee self-disclosure of mistakes as a valued behavior:

hiding mistakes is not encouraged; mistakes are made to learn from20 “Hits and misses” intranet tool to publish customer comments on service

successes and failures21 Fictitious letter produced to show what impresses customers and similar

departmental letters requested22 Distributing pocket cards to all employees with the values of the company23 Regular employee discussion of Gaylord’s core work values (at least once per

month at departmental meetings)Rites and Celebrations

24 Celebrating promotions in a way to make the one getting promoted feel specialand recognized

25 Quarterly employee rallies where those that best represent each work value arerecognized

26 Value Wall of Fame27 Annual “value winners” are flown with their families to Nashville to be honored28 Family nights29 Leaders’ outings30 Supporting philanthropic activities

Performance Metrics31 STARS at all levels can receive a bonus based on customer service scores and

financial results32 Using balanced scorecards as a continuous-improvement tool33 Evaluating leadership competencies34 Regularly disseminating performance scores35 Satisfaction scores are measured, discussed, and compared across units and

different hotels

Table I.A summary of sharedemployee experiences atthe Gaylord Palms

JSMA1,2

156

employee-level perceived organizational support and customer-level service qualitycan be explained, in part, by a high level of operational clarity, oft over- under- orill-specified in (service) firms. Extensively developed cultural content (such as thatsummed up in Figure 1, Table I and the Appendix) does guide and support Gaylord’semployees’ behavior in their daily work, especially in situations that they have notbeen trained for or are untrainable (Schein, 1991; Sørensen, 2002). Thus, culturalcontent guides Gaylord’s employees in how to behave appropriately at work. Goal-paththeoreticians would applaud the highly ambitious or challenging vision and the highspecificity of unconflicting, experiential and value-based resources offered by Gaylordto their employees, through which it would explain Gaylord’s high performance (Lockeet al., 2006, Locke, 2007). Baum et al. (1998, p. 51) also showed that the content of avision affects firm performance directly. They confirmed that visionary content “ismore likely to affect performance if employees know about it and understand it.”

The positive role of perceived organizational support in the Gaylord Palms can alsobe explained through emotional contagion processes (Grandey et al., 2005; Locke, 1996;Vandenberghe et al., 2007). After being carefully selected, Gaylord employees are mademore fully acquainted with its positive values, jobs and culture-crystallizing practicesand events (Table I). Staff experiences are geared toward employee feeling good aboutthemselves in hopes that they will treat each other, guests/customers and owners in asimilar manner. Thus, positive emotions dominate at Gaylord: positive emotionalcontent is infused and mirrored in the behaviors of employees to themselves, to eachother and to guests, customers and owners. In this sense the Gaylord Palms cultureexemplifies the solid empirical evidence that “employee job satisfaction affectscustomer satisfaction even for employee groups that are not in direct interaction withcustomers” (Wangenheim et al. 2007, p. 690). Also “positive organizationalscholarship” is amassing evidence for the performance effects of “positive socialinteractions,” “compassion at work” as well as “empowerment” (Heapy and Dutton,2008; Lilius et al., 2008; Spreitzer, 2008), as illustrated by the Gaylord Palms’ culture.The Gaylord Palms case also illustrates that a culture built on a particularly highpositive commitment to employees leads to a concomitantly high commitment tocustomer service, as predicted by the “service profit chain” (Heskett et al., 1997).Affective events theoreticians (Weiss, 2002) may see in the events that Gaylord isstaging with its employees anecdotal substantiation of its “proposed behavioralconsequences” that “are only rudimentary investigated” (Niklas and Dormann, 2005,p. 368).

In other words, Gaylord’s culture does not merely address “the single questionof what’s better for the customer” (Bezos et al., 2007, p. 74). Gaylord has a verystrong employee centricity, but not in an atomistic way; its values and practiceslink employee- and customer-centricity. Gaylord even exemplifies Gummesson’splea for “balanced centricity” (Gummesson, 2008, p. 15). According to Shah et al.(2006, p. 113), “many firms are still struggling to fully align themselves to thecustomer-centric paradigm” (Kumar et al., 2006). Gaylord questions whether themere customer-centricity of other service firms is overly restrictive as it excludesthe employee stakeholder through which the customers are treated. And accordingto Gummesson (2008, p. 17) “all stakeholders have the right to satisfaction ofneeds and wants.” In the service sector, balanced centricity might become even a


157

service-business imperative (Shah et al., 2006). This means that not only allcustomers but, at the same time, all employees must be treated as core strategicbusiness targets.

Within the academic Strategy area, there is hardly any published work on how andwhy managers develop a culture focused on high customer service/value[3]. In otherwords, from the Strategy literature one cannot derive well-founded insights on how togo about infusing a particular corporate culture or identity (He, 2008). The GaylordPalms exemplifies how it uses culture strategically. This example may stimulateefforts of Strategy researchers: to enter the culture arena. Seen from astrategy-as-practice approach the Gaylord illustrates “the micro-foundations ofstrategy dynamics and their inherently social and cultural embeddedness” (Regner,2008, p. 566). The 38 value-driven “activity configurations” of Table I sums upGaylord’s “social fabric of cognitive frames, language and artifacts” and they seem tohave helped Gaylord “in the build-up of organizational assets” (Regner, 2008, p. 581).The Gaylord Palms certainly showcases the emergence of a strategic advantage:through careful development of a particular, sector- and context-specific firm-cultureconstellation (Barney, 1986). The Gaylord Palms therefore exemplifies how one canstrategize with cultural content when starting a service firm. By implication, culturalengineering or strategizing the culture is a top-managerial task, in alignment with thelargely external, macro-strategic context that tends to dominate strategicconversations. It is failed implementation, i.e. failed cultural strategizing, thattypifies many failed strategic moves. Cultural strategizing is thus much more thanhaving HRM hanging a set of values on the wall. Unlike a recent popular piece entitled“cashing in on corporate culture” (Gordon, 2008, p. 50) it is not true that “whenmanagement spends time defining, discussing and acknowledging the corporatevalues, the behaviors and expectations of staff become clear and consistent;” A merevalues statement, no matter how many values are endorsed, does not suffice. It doesnot work on its own.

The Gaylord case points to the need for more management and research attention tothe particularly configured cultural content of firms. This idea is reflected in Walshet al.’s study (2008, p. 301) in the hotel industry. They showed that the relativelycomplex human skills and expertise of a firm’s professional and other servicepersonnel are indeed strategic assets in executing a firm’s strategy. They argue, justlike the Gaylord illustrates, that “investing in human capital” is a strategic choice foreach service firm and “can enhance a firm’s profitability.” They conclude that we still“understand little about the ways”. . . “capital investments synergistically worktogether.” Creating the Gaylord culture was taken by the founding manager as astrategic design-and-implementation type task and very few firms go to that strategiclength: “Managers often overlook or ignore organizational culture as a tool in theirstrategic armory” (Kemp and Dwyer, 2001, p. 77).

The specific cultural content woven into employees’ life at the Gaylord Palms aimsto instill learning, continuous improvement and organizational trust among itspersonnel. Gaylord emphasizes, for instance, staff learning in the forms of: learningone’s job; getting to know the entire organization and its culture; learning from the joband from various colleagues and customers as well as from the performance resultsobtained. All employees are thus asked to spend time to learn-from-doing. AlsoGaylord’s intranet tool (“hits and misses”) contribute to evolving and learning

JSMA1,2

158

collectively as a system of collective meaning. This focus on learning and improving isin order to safeguard that the (obviously strong) culture is not stagnating (Sørensen,2002). Indeed, given the greatly varying and potentially changing guests, customers’and employees’ needs, all this learning enables the high level of professionalism withwhich employees are expected to do their daily jobs. Gaylord’s work values andconcomitant work experiences safeguard an open and so-called learning culture(Garvin et al., 2008). Note, furthermore, that learning and organizing “are mutuallyconstitutive” (Clegg et al., 2005, p. 147; Sørensen, 2002). If organizing managers areactually making use of employees’ new insights, a culture is likely to engage, in turn, inso-called second-order learning which has been shown to benefit firms (Garvin et al.,2008; Skerlavaj et al., 2007). Gaylord’s leaders are hired, trained and rewarded for beingopen to the comments from their staff members who are encouraged to learn.According to Wilderom (1991, p. 12): “the optimal functioning of a service organizationdepends heavily on client information, gathered at the base of the organization andsent upwards.” And one key condition for effective upward communication withinfirms is an organizational culture of high trust (Leifer and Mills, 1996; Nugent andAbolafia, 2006), something Gaylord approaches.

Gaylord grants their employees a high level of discretion in how they do their jobs,and that presumes leaders’ listening for subordinate improvement ideas. Gaylord’sculture aims therefore to be what Rosenthal (2004, p. 618) calls an “interactive control”system rather than a mere normative control culture. In an interactive control systemworkers “control and influence those parties with whom they directly interact.”It would be interesting to examine more explicitly how Gaylord’s employees see the(elsewhere oft) delicate “balance of power between workers and management andcustomers.” We propose that the less delicate this balance is at Gaylord, the morevirtuous and viable its culture will remain.

Within the academic organizational-culture area cultural content has not hadmuch attention. Not only is there a split in culture with authors taking either aqualitative or quantitative focus, but most published organizational-culture papersare not very applicable for managers seeking to create or improve a culture.Among the quantitatively oriented culture scholars, the range of specific culturalelements studied is limited. Seen qualitatively, from Gaylord’s angle, it is thedeliberately created and strategically motivated content of its variousorganizational-culture expressions that matters more than any other firm-culturevariable such as the widely popular yet unclear notion of “culture strength.” Eventhough the culture of Gaylord may be considered by some as “strong,” we arguethat it is not mere strength that adds practical value. The Gaylord Palms’ culture isauthentic or well-aligned to its explicit mission and work values; it is felt ascoherent and effective by most of its employees; it is strategically motivated,adjustable and exportable as well. Those insights are much less opaque than theconcept of culture strength, even though still used widely (Lyons et al., 2007); Theconcept of culture strength lacks unambiguous meaning; valid operational metricsfor the variable hardly exist. Moreover, Sorensen (2002, p. 89), using an external,opinion-based culture measure, has shown that “strong-culture firms encounterdifficulties during periods of fundamental change.” Schneider et al. (2002) noted that“in the culture literature, culture strength has not been found to be a main effectagainst organizational performance (Wilderom et al., 2000).” That set against the


159

Gaylord Palms case, of careful and successful investing in firm-cultural content,made clear how other managers may need to focus their energies on designing,enacting and developing organizationally specific cultural content. Cultural strength(by some measure) could become a resulting feature of their efforts but we proposethat the “devil is in the details” of their cultural-content strategy. We would advisemanagers and consultants therefore to strive for particular context-alignedfirm-culture content rather than pursuing organizational-culture strength. Welchand Welch (2006, p. 14) concluded recently that a strong corporate culture may “notbe in the best interest of MNC management.” Not the strength but the particularcontent of a culture can safeguard the firm’s continuation in the face of harshexternal realities: for a telling example of a similar cultural system solving theSARS-crisis in Shanghai’s Portman Ritz-Carlton (Yeung, 2006, p. 272).

All in all, this paper showcases how a new organizational service culture wasshaped; Just like JetBlue Airlines and the Portman Ritz Carlton Hotel in Shanghai(Yeung, 2006), the Gaylord Palms is profitable while achieving high levels of staff andcustomer satisfaction. The Gaylord’s organizational culture came into existencethrough a careful design and enactment of value-driven practices. Buried or nestedwithin the endorsed values and crafted employee experience is the value of serving theguest/customer extremely well. While there is much written on the importance of acustomer-driven firm culture in managing hospitality and service organizations, thereis little published guidance on how to actually create and sustain one. Gaylord’sculture-creation case provides a model for others who seek to create a “collaborativeculture” (Gratton and Erickson, 2007). Gaylord’s emergence as detailed and analyzed inthis paper also hopes to show how much further some hotels are in terms of Wood’sseminal paper (1994, p. 76) in which he concluded that the relations in and aroundhotels are “less well-studied at the micro-social level.” Oberoi and Hales’ work (1990, p.717) on the quality of British conference hotels concluded a need for betterunderstanding of how “service providers will be in a better position to anticipateconsumer requirements.” Gaylord’s current position to that effect may not last forever.Gaylord’s employees’ efforts in refining its cultural content might be the key to thatbetter future.

Notes

1. To us this firm’s culture seems successful. A comparative, quantitative assessment wouldneed to be made to establish this assumed culture-performance link beyond any doubt(Wilderom et al., 2000). But given that this firm created many various situation-specificcultural elements, one wonders if any extant firm-culture questionnaire could capture themand would show improvement over time. The “service orientation” scale (Lytle andTimmerman, 2006, p. 136) made by service marketing researchers is intriguing in thiscontext. In various service industries, but not yet in the hotel industry, a “significantinfluence” was shown of “an organization-wide embracement of a basic set of relativelyenduring organizational” characteristics “on organizational performance.”

2. Started as a radio program to sell insurance policies in 1925, the WSB Barn Dance grew intoits legendary name by broadcasting the leading country and western musicians across theyears. Today, it still produces live shows in Nashville at a location next to GaylordEntertainment’s first hotel. It is recognized as the home of country music and serves as amagnet for anyone aspiring to become a professional musician. After Gaylord Palms had

JSMA1,2

160

created its service culture in Orlando, Gaylord Entertainment took that specific serviceculture back to Nashville.

3. Similarly, in nearly all Strategy textbooks a serious treatment of (service-) firm culture isabsent.

References

Adler, P.S. and Borys, B. (1996), “Two types of bureaucracy: enabling and coercive”,Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 41 No. 1, pp. 61-89.

Aitken, P. (2007), “Walking the talk: the nature and role of leadership culture within organizationcultures”, Journal of General Management, Vol. 32 No. 4, pp. 17-37.

Ashkanasy, N.M., Wilderom, C.P.M. and Peterson, M.F. (2000), Handbook of OrganizationalCulture & Climate, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA.

Barney, J.B. (1986), “Organizational culture: can it be a source of sustained competitiveadvantage?”, The Academy of Management Review, Vol. 11 No. 3, pp. 656-65.

Baum, J.R., Kirkpatrick, S.A. and Locke, E.A. (1998), “A longitudinal study of the relation ofvision and vision communication to venture growth in entrepreneurial firms”, Journal ofApplied Psychology, Vol. 83 No. 1, pp. 43-54.

Bezos, J., Kirby, J. and Stewart, T.A. (2007), “The institutional yes”, Harvard Business Review,Vol. 85 No. 10, pp. 74-92.

Bowen, J. and Ford, R.C. (2002), “Managing service organizations: does having a ‘thing’ makea difference?”, Journal of Management, Vol. 28 No. 3, pp. 447-69.

Clegg, S.R., Kornberger, M. and Rhodes, C. (2005), “Learning/becoming/organizing”,Organization, Vol. 12 No. 2, pp. 147-67.

Crosby, P.B. (1979), Quality is Free: The Art of Making Quality Certain, McGraw-Hill, London.

Crotts, J., Dickson, D.D. and Ford, R.C. (2005), “Aligning organizational processes with mission:the case of service excellence”, The Academy of Management Executive, Vol. 19 No. 3,pp. 54-68.

Deal, T.E. and Key, M.K. (1998), Corporate Celebration, Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco, CA.

Derry, M.A. and Shaw, R.N. (1999), “An investigation of the relationship between employeeturnover and organizational culture”, Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, Vol. 23No. 4, pp. 387-400.

Dickson, D., Ford, R.C. and Upchurch, R. (2006), “Internal organizational alignment:an exploratory investigation”, International Journal of Hospitality Management, Vol. 25No. 3, pp. 463-77.

Eisenberger, R., Cummings, J., Armeli, S. and Lynch, P. (1997), “Perceived organizationalsupport, discretionary treatment, and job satisfaction”, Journal of Applied Psychology,Vol. 82 No. 5, pp. 812-20.

Ford, R.C. and Heaton, C.P. (2000), Managing the Guest Experience in Hospitality Organizations,Delmar Publishing, Albany, New York, NY.

Ford, R.C., McLaughlin, F.M. and Newstrom, J.W. (2004), “Questions and answers about fun atwork”, Human Resource Planning, Vol. 26 No. 4, pp. 18-33.

Ford, R.C., Sivo, S., Fottler, M., Dickson, D., Bradley, K. and Johnson, L. (2006), “Aligning internalorganizational factors with a service excellence mission: an exploratory investigation inhealth care”, Health Care Management Review, Vol. 31 No. 4, pp. 259-69.


161

Garvin, D.A., Edmondson, A.C. and Gino, F. (2008), “Is yours a learning organization?”, HarvardBusiness Review, Vol. 86 No. 3, pp. 109-16.

Gioia, D.A. (1986), “Symbols, scripts, and sensemaking”, in Sims, H.P. (Ed.), The ThinkingOrganization, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA, pp. 49-74.

Gordon, C. (2008), “Cashing in on corporate culture: an organization that has a well-definedculture can achieve higher profitability than one that doesn’t”, CA Magazine, Vol. 141No. 1, pp. 49-51.

Grandey, A.A., Fisk, G.M., Mattila, A.S., Jansen, K.J. and Sideman, L.A. (2005), “Is ‘service with asmile’ enough? Authenticity of positive displays during service encounters”,Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Vol. 96 No. 1, pp. 38-55.

Gratton, L. and Erickson, T.J. (2007), “Eight ways to build collaborative teams”, HarvardBusiness Review, Vol. 85 No. 11, pp. 100-9.

Gummesson, E. (2008), “Extending the service-dominant logic: from customer centricity tobalanced centricity”, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Vol. 36 No. 1, pp. 15-17.

Hallowell, R., Bowen, D. and Knoop, C.I. (2002), “Four seasons goes to Paris”, Academy ofManagement Executive, Vol. 16 No. 4, pp. 7-24.

Hart, C.W.L. (1995), “The power of internal guarantees”, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 73 No. 1,pp. 64-73.

He, H. (2008), “Corporate identity/strategy interface: implications for corporate level marketing”,European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 42 Nos 1-2, pp. 10-15.

Heapy, E. and Dutton, J. (2008), “Positive social interactions and the human body at work:linking organizations and physiology”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 33 No. 1,pp. 137-62.

Heskett, J.L., Sasser, W.E. jr and Schlesinger, L.A. (1997), The Service Profit Chain: How LeadingCompanies Link Profit and Growth to Loyalty, Satisfaction, and Value, The Free Press,New York, NY.

Kemp, S. and Dwyer, L. (2001), “An examination of organizational culture: the Regent Hotel,Sydney”, Hospitality Management, Vol. 20 No. 1, pp. 77-93.

Klidas, A., van den Berg, P.T. and Wilderom, C.P.M. (2007), “Managing employee empowermentin luxury hotels in Europe”, International Journal of Service Industy Management, Vol. 18No. 1, pp. 70-88.

Kumar, V., Lemon, K.N. and Parasuraman, A. (2006), “Managing customers for value:an overview and research agenda”, Journal of Service Research, Vol. 9 No. 2, pp. 87-94.

Leifer, R. and Mills, P.K. (1996), “An information processing approach for deciding upon controlstrategies and reducing control lass in emerging organizations”, Journal of Management,Vol. 22 No. 1, pp. 113-37.

Lilius, J., Worline, M., Dutton, J., Kanow, J., Frost, P. and Maitlis, S. (2008), “Contours ofcompassion at work”, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Vol. 29 No. 2, pp. 193-218.

Locke, K. (1996), “A funny thing happened! The management of consumer emotions in serviceencounters”, Organization Science, Vol. 7 No. 1, pp. 40-59.

Locke, E.A. (2007), “The case for inductive theory building”, Journal of Management, Vol. 33No. 6, pp. 867-90.

Locke, E.A. and Latham, G.P. (2006), “New directions in goal-setting theory”, Current Directionsin Psychological Science, Vol. 15, pp. 265-8.

Lyons, R.K., Chattman, J.A. and Joyce, C.K. (2007), “Innovation in services: corporate culture andinvestment banking”, California Management Review, Vol. 50 No. 1, pp. 174-91.

JSMA1,2

162

Lytle, R.S. and Timmerman, J.E. (2006), “Service orientation and performance: an organizationalperspective”, Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 20 No. 2, pp. 136-47.

McLoughlin, I.P., Badham, R.J. and Palmer, G. (2005), “Cultures of ambiguity: design, emergenceand ambivalence in the introduction of normative control”, Work, Employment & Society,Vol. 19 No. 1, pp. 67-89.

Niklas, C.D. and Dormann, C. (2005), “The impact of state affect on job satisfaction”, EuropeanJournal of Work and Organizational Psychology, Vol. 14 No. 4, pp. 367-88.

Nugent, P.D. and Abolafia, M.Y. (2006), “The creation of trust through interaction and exchange:the role of consideration in organizations”, Group & Organization Management, Vol. 31No. 6, pp. 628-50.

Oberoi, U. and Hales, C. (1990), “Assessing the quality of the conference hotel service product:towards an empirically based model”, The Service Industries Journal, Vol. 10 No. 4,pp. 700-21.

Ogbonna, E. and Harris, L.C. (2002), “Managing organizational culture: insights from theHospitality industry”, Human Resource Management Journal, Vol. 12 No. 1, pp. 33-53.

Ormrod, S., Ferlie, E., Warren, F. and Norton, K. (2007), “The appropriation of new organizationalforms within networks of practice: founder and founder-related ideological power”,Human Relations, Vol. 60 No. 5, pp. 745-67.

Regner, P. (2008), “Strategy-as-practice and dynamic capabilities: steps towards a dynamic viewof strategy”, Human Relations, Vol. 61 No. 4, pp. 565-88.

Rosenthal, P. (2004), “Management control as an employee resource: the case of front-line serviceworkers”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 14 No. 4, pp. 602-22.

Schein, E.H. (1991), “The role of the founder in the creation of organizational culture”, in Frost,P.J., Morre, L.F., Lousi, M.R., Lundberg, C.C. and Martin, J. (Eds), ReframingOrganizational Culture, Sage, Beverly Hills, CA, pp. 1-25.

Schein, E.H. (1992), Organizational Culture and Leadership, 2nd ed., Jossey-Bass,San Francisco, CA.

Schneider, B., Salvagio, A.N. and Subirats, M. (2002), “Climate strength: a new direction forclimate research”, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 87 No. 2, pp. 220-9.

Shah, D., Rust, R.T., Parasuraman, A., Staelin, R. and Day, G.S. (2006), “The path to customercentricity”, Journal of Service Research, Vol. 9 No. 2, pp. 113-24.

Simpson, S. and Cacioppe, R. (2001), “Unwritten ground rules: transforming organization cultureto achieve key business objectives and outstanding customer service”, Leadership &Organization Development Journal, Vol. 22 No. 8, pp. 394-401.

Skerlavaj, M., Stemberger, M.I., Skrinjar, R. and Dimovski, V. (2007), “Organizationallearning culture: the missing link between business process change andorganizational performance”, International Journal of Production Economics, Vol. 106No. 2, pp. 346-67.

Song, M., Podoynitsyna, K., van der Bij, H. and Halman, J.I.M. (2008), “Success factors in newventures: a meta-analysis”, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Vol. 25 No. 1,pp. 7-27.

Sørensen, J.B. (2002), “The strength of corporate culture and the reliability of firm performance”,Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 47 No. 1, pp. 70-91.

Spreitzer, G. (2008), “Taking stock: a review of more than twenty years of research onempowerment at work”, in Cooper, C. and Barling, J. (Eds), Handbook of OrganizationalBehavior, Sage, Thousands Oaks, CA, pp. 57-72.


163

Susskind, A.M., Kacmar, K.M. and Borchgrevink, C.P. (2003), “Customer service providers’attitudes relating to customer service and customer satisfaction in the customer-serverexchange”, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 88 No. 1, pp. 179-87.

Trice, H.M. and Beyer, M. (1993), The Cultures of Work Organizations, Prentice Hall, EnglewoodCliffs, NJ.

van den Berg, P.T. and Wilderom, C. (2004), “Defining, measuring, and comparing organizationalcultures”, Applied Psychology: An International Review, Vol. 53 No. 4, pp. 570-82.

Vandenberghe, Ch., Bentein, K., Michon, R., Chebat, J., Tremblay, M. and Fils, J. (2007),“An examination of the role of perceived support and employee commitmentin employee-customer encounters”, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 92 No. 4,pp. 1177-87.

von Wangenheim, F., Evanschitzky, H. and Wunderlich, M. (2007), “Does the employee-customersatisfaction link hold for all employee groups?”, Journal of Business Research, Vol. 60,pp. 690-7.

Walsh, K., Enz, C.A. and Canina, L. (2008), “The impact of strategic orientation on intellectualcapital investments in customer service firms”, Journal of Service Research, Vol. 10 No. 4,pp. 300-17.

Weiss, H.M. (2002), “Deconstructing job satisfaction: separating evaluations, beliefs,and affective experiences”, Human Resource Management Review, Vol. 12 No. 2, pp. 173-94.

Welch, D.E. and Welch, L.S. (2006), “Commitment for hire? The viability of corporate culture as aMNC control mechanism”, International Business Review, Vol. 15 No. 1, pp. 14-28.

Wilderom, C.P.M. (1991), “Service management/leadership: different frommanagement/leadership in industrial organisations?”, International Journal of ServiceIndustry Management, Vol. 2 No. 1, pp. 6-14.

Wilderom, C.P.M., Glunk, U. and Maslowski, R. (2000), “Organizational culture as a predictor oforganizational performance”, in Ashkanasy, N.M., Wilderom, C.P.M. and Peterson, M.F.(Eds), Organizational Culture & Climate, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 193-209.

Wood, R.C. (1994), “Hotel culture and social control”, Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 21 No. 1,pp. 65-80.

Yeung, A. (2006), “Setting people up for success: how the Portman Ritz-Carlton Hotel gets thebest from its people”, Human Resource Management, Vol. 45 No. 2, pp. 267-75.

Further reading

O’Reilly, Ch. (2008), “Corporations, culture, and commitment: Motivation and social control inorganizations”, California Management Review, Vol. 50 No. 2, pp. 85-100, (Reprint of the1989 paper).

JSMA1,2

164

Appendix. Fictitious vision letterMr Kemp GallineauHotel ManagerOpryland Hotel Florida6000 Osceola ParkwayKissimmee, Florida 34746, USA

May 25, 2007

Dear Mr Gallineau:As a professional meeting planner, I’m not inspired to send a letter of praise very often, but thestaff at Opryland Hotel Florida well deserves the effort.

I know you realize that you have the most incredible hotel in Central Florida – the facility isbeyond beautiful. What you may not realize is that your staff makes it even more incredible.Don’t take these words lightly – please pass my note on to every single one of them as theycollectively made our company’s Annual General Meeting incredible.

I could single out a few names for having provided such great service – but that would beimpossible! The level of personal service we received from every one of your staff members –from bell services to housekeeping to convention services – mixed to make a perfect experience.

When I suggested holding our meeting in Orlando, my company president laughed.“Orlando’s for tourists,” he said. “This is a very important meeting and we need the very bestservice. I’m not sure an Orlando hotel can offer the level of service we require.”

Having held meetings in the past at Opryland Hotel Nashville, I knew that the resort’sreputation for knock-your-socks-off customer service would surely continue in Orlando. Youshould be proud to know that it has.

I just received a note from our president saying he’s ready to “eat his words.” He admittedthat he was wrong. Let me tell you one thing: he never admits to being wrong.

As I mentioned, I have seen it all. As a meeting planner for 15 years, I know that a great hotelexperience is dependent on the little details. The best hotels allow their staff members to go out oftheir way to make a difference for each and every guest. Both of these are evident at Opryland.I could write all day, but let me give you some examples:

. It all started with your Door Greeter. Her combination of playfulness and professionalismwas balanced perfectly. You just knew she enjoyed her job. But it wasn’t just her.Every employee I encountered offered a warm smile and a friendly greeting. And theywere all so willing to help. For instance, I was searching for a bathroom, and a member ofyour maintenance staff must have noticed that I was lost, and he cheerfully offereddirections.

. When we first arrived, we were pleasantly surprised to hear the Door Greeter call us byname, and welcome me back to Orlando. We had not introduced ourselves, our nameswere hidden within our luggage tags, and yet, somehow both she and the Bellman knewour names. Either they must be psychic, or somehow they knew that we were coming andwhat we looked liked! It made us feel like we were special, important, just like the rich andfamous.

. Check-in went flawlessly. John, the gentleman at the front desk, was extremely friendly– he even greeted my children! (I take special note to busy adults who take a second to saya few words to my two boys. He made them feel like VILPs – Very Important LittlePeople.) It was an extremely hot day and my son was telling me that he was hot andthirsty. Without missing a beat, John brought the kids a bottle of ice-cold water. Now thatis service I will never forget!

. Department specific example


165

. The convention services staff was incredible. To be honest, it’s not easy to find help in ahotel convention center. Not so here. We received a warm reception, and we neededsomething, it was never a problem. At one point, we needed additional pens and paper.I only saw a catering host. I knew he was in a different department, but I asked himanyway. A few minutes later, he arrived with the requested materials. Now, I know theconflicts between departments that exist in hotels, but at Opryland, everybody seemed topitch in and help each other!

. After our “long” day of meetings, most of the team gathered in the Key West section for animpromptu happy hour of sorts. The poor servers must have been overwhelmed, as we allarrived at the same time! It wasn’t a problem. In fact, servers from the nearby restaurantjoined and helped out until the rush was over. Now that’s teamwork! And the appetizersand drinks, by the way, were incredible! Best apps in Orlando!

. My husband was so impressed with the landscapes under your atrium. Several times, Icaught him poking around, chatting with your horticulture staff. They were friendly andpatient with him, and answered all of his questions. One staff member even ran back to hiscart to fetch some materials that identified the hotel’s plants and gave growing tips!

As I am certain that you both know, our Annual General Meeting is extremely important to ourcompany, as it brings our team and our shareholders together, and is critical to reinforcingshareholders’ belief and confidence in our vision and our company. I am pleased to say thatOpryland Hotel Florida exceeded our wildest dreams.

Thanks to the entire team at Opryland Hotel for delivering to our shareholders an experiencelike never before. . . Thanks to both of you and your team for delivering the promises made to us.You truly took care of our every need. And for that, we’re fans for life!

Best Regards,Karen B. WoodBig Mega Corporation34 Hamilton Place Park LaneChicago, Illinois 48176, USA

About the authorsRobert C. Ford (PhD, Arizona State) is a professor of management at the University of CentralFlorida where he teaches management of service organizations. Bob has authored or coauthorednumerous publications in both top tier research and practitioner journals. He has also publishedtexts in managing customer service in hospitality and in health care. Bob has served extensivelythe Academy of Management (AOM) and the Southern Management Association (SMA). He hasserved AOM as the editor of The Executive, Director of Placement, and division chair of both itsManagement History and Management Education and Development divisions. He has servedSMA in every elective office including president. He was elected to SMA Fellows, served as itsdean and recognized by its Distinguished Service Award. Bob’s service extends to otherorganizations. He served as a founding member and Chair of the Accreditation Commission forPrograms in Hospitality Administration. Ford currently serves on the Accreditation Commissionfor Destination Marketing Association International.

Celeste P.M. Wilderom (PhD, New York State, Buffalo) is a professor of Management andOrganizational Behavior at the University of Twente, The Netherlands, where she is responsiblefor the Master of Science in Service Management (Business Administration). Celeste co-authors agreat variety of publications in both research and (Dutch) practitioner journals and she iscurrently a senior editor of the British Journal of Management. Previously, Celeste has servedthree years as one of two associate editors of the Academy of Management Executive (when thefirst author was her editor-in-chief). In Europe she initiated and heads EGOS’ standing

JSMA1,2

166

workgroup on Professional Service Work and Organizing (together with Royston Greenwoodand Huseyin Leblebici). Currently Wilderom publishes in the areas of service innovationand organizational leadership, change and culture (e.g. SAGE’s 2000 and prospectively, the 2ndedition of the Handbook of Organizational Culture & Climate, together with Neal Ashkanasy andMark Peterson). Celeste P.M. Wilderom is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: [email protected]

John Caparella is executive vice president and chief operating officer for Gaylord Hotels.He joined Gaylord Hotels in 2000 as senior vice president and general manager of the GaylordPalms Resort & Convention Center. Prior to joining Gaylord Entertainment, Caparella served asexecutive vice president, planning, development, and administration and president ofplanethollywood.com for Planet Hollywood International, Inc. Before joining PlanetHollywood, Caparella was with ITT Sheraton for 17 years in convention, resort, business andfour-star luxury properties, as well as with ITT Sheraton’s corporate headquarters. Caparella hasalso held leadership positions in lodging properties in New York, Boston, Washington, DC,Baltimore and Orlando. He received his undergraduate degree from the State University ofNew York at Delhi and serves on its Hospitality Advisory Board. He received his Master’s degreein Business Administration from Rollins College.


167

To purchase reprints of this article please e-mail: [email protected] visit our web site for further details: www.emeraldinsight.com/reprints

Strategically Crafting a Customer-focused Culture

Documents

van den berg

grand ole

positive social

administrative

service prot

harvard business

california

executive