Howard Hotel Group Case Study

Introduction

The Howard Hotel Group is a well-established hotel chain. It was once a small family business and has now more than 50 hotels spread around the UK. Until now, the company operated only in the domestic market and it is the next logical step to move over international borders and expand the business internationally. As this is a very big step, there are many difficult and new decisions that have to be made. Due to the limitations of this report it is not possible to cover all the related issues. Never the less, first it is important to understand which organisational change the company undertakes. This will have an impact on all the following decisions. Obviously, it is a big difference if a company operates only in one, the domestic, market or if it runs subsidiaries in foreign countries too. The different types of international employees and staffing policies must be examined carefully. On the first look it may be a dispensable decision ether to employ managers from the home country or the host country, but in fact there are a number of consequences that should be taken into consideration. That is why the ethno-, poly-, geo-

The company is going to undergo an organisational change. Adler and Ghadar developed a four different phases model which describes the process of globalisation.

Phase I

The first phase is called the domestic phase where the focus is on the home market. The main orientation is about the product or service and there is no active global strategy. Of course, it is possible for foreign customers to buy or order the product or service, but the company does not actively promote their product in another market than the domestic one. Human Resource management therefore has no need for an international approach. There are no expatriations except of short business trips in case of special projects. Technical and managerial skills are the only required