Power Relationships and Empowerment in Hotels Available to Purchase

Discusses the main approaches to power and power relationships and uses this discussion as the basis for analysing how power relationships evolve between employees at the lower level of an organizational hierarchy (traditionally perceived as the least powerful) and customers of a service organization. Derives analysis from data collected during a period of observation on a “luxury” hotel in a major city in England. Finally, evaluates current approaches to“empowerment” in the hotel and catering industry within the context of the preceding sections; and argues that many of the strategies for empowering employees are misdirected, since they have a mistaken and simplistic conception of the nature of empowerment.