Managing Instability in the Hospitality Operations Environment. Part One: Variability

Increasing complexity and scale in hospitality company operations combined with intensifying competition in a maturing market is creating an unstable and rapidly changing strategic and operational environment for the hospitality industry. Such instability often leads to the generation of unnecessary and undesirable variety in organisational structures, processes and products. The consequence of this is frequently an increase in complexity for the hospitality operations manager. This issue is addressed through an analysis of the sources of variability and a consideration of potential techniques to avoid, reduce or eliminate the incidence of this instability as a means to reduce complexity and enhance performance.