The Council for Hospitality Management Research (CHME) has been at the vanguard of hospitality research since it was formed ten years ago. CHME has done much to emphasize the dynamic and heterogeneous nature of the industry and to promote scholarly enquiry by students and researchers. There are lots of difficulties in doing this. For example, how to define the characteristics of an industry in which units, like sand in the desert, are constantly changing? Similarly, it is possible to establish a definitive topic categorization to arrange papers logically? Taking account of the “messy business of research”, in 1999, CHME decided to theme papers according to submissions rather then prescribed topic areas in order to remain “fully inclusive”.
In their introduction, the editors, Yvonne Guerrier and Angela Roper, state the papers presented in this book represent changes in the UK hospitality industry and UK university sector over the last ten years. They note that there are more specialist hospitality academics and the increase in full time PhD students in this area, and remark that five of the eight papers included represented part‐time doctoral research. It is to be hoped that this trend continues in the light of declining undergraduate numbers and the re‐structuring of university departments into larger business schools.
The book’s structure is interesting. The idea of a personal introduction and retrospective comment by the author(s) of each of the eight chapters (papers) is a good one because it gives the opportunity to reflect on what has changed over the decade. Inevitably, some authors grasp this critical nettle better than others, but it is always interesting to read different interpretations of past research. Chapters are structured in three broad themes: size and structure, service processes and people issues.
Morrison (1992) asks if the small firm is an endangered species, while Roper et al. (1998) considers what makes a successful international group. Three chapters are devoted to research into service processes by Laws (1999) in service blueprinting, Lashley (1994) on empowerment and Pittaway and Chell (1999) on entrepreneurship. I enjoyed reading Lynch’s (2000) exploration of the setting and significance of the homestay sector for several reasons. He reports on a neglected sector (a term often repeated in this book) and uses metaphors such as theatre to explore performance and authenticity in this domestic hospitality setting. For me, this paper encapsulates the paradoxical conundrum of hospitality: trying to apply macro theories to micro people interactions, at the interface of theory and reality. As may be expected, many papers presented at CHME conferences and published in their literature concern people issues. There are chapters on pay policy in hospitality (Radiven and Lucas, 1996) and pay inequality in some European countries (Doherty and Stead, 1996).
In summary, it is impossible to represent the sum total of ten years of CHME‐led hospitality research in eight very different research papers. These papers cannot give a complete picture of the richness and interaction of the nine conferences to date or the work that has gone into both preparing for them and writing the papers. The editors claim that hospitality research since 1992 has become a much livelier, intellectually challenging and diverse arena in which research methods have become more sophisticated. Perhaps it is because the hospitality community is so fragmented that animated debate takes place in the bar during CHME conferences! It is to be hoped that the next decade sees an even stronger hospitality research base and larger research community.
