businesses, and the analysis will primarily focus on how change is experienced within the boundaries of the individual business. Theoretically, the term business and organizations will be used interchangeably in the following, trying to establish what characterizes small tourism businesses as organizations.
An organization can be defined following Aldrich (1999:2) as “goal-directed, boundary-maintaining, and socially constructed systems of human activity”. These characteristics set the organization apart from other social institutions such as the family or a group of friends. While there traditionally has been a bias towards theory development based on the study of large organizations (Ibid: 8), the body of research on small businesses is growing. Some of the particularities of the small tourism business appear when they are seen in relation to Aldrich’s definition above.
Aldrich first describes organizations as goal-directed, where the activities of the organization are designed to lead towards that goal. Organizations are in that sense purposive, although the individual members of the organizations may have very different feelings towards these goals (Ibid: 3). In a business context, profit may be seen as an expected over-arching aim.
Research on small tourism businesses has found that entrepreneurs often have very different aims with their start-up. Motives related to being one’s own boss, being in
control or pursuing a certain lifestyle are important drivers for starting and running a tourism business (Bredvold, 2011; Ateljevic and Doorne; 2000; Shaw and Williams, 1994).
Dewhurst and Horobin, 1998) have developed a model where the small tourism business owner-managers can be placed on a continuum between on the one end commercial goals and strategies, and on the other end lifestyle-oriented goals and strategies. The model displays that there is an alternative set of motives and thereby alternative ways to understand “business success”. In this perspective, success is not necessarily measured in commercial and growth terms, but rather seen in relation to whether or not the entrepreneurs manage to pursue their chosen lifestyle. Ateljevic and Doorne (2000:381) describe this way of conceptualising entrepreneurship as being revolutionary, as it implies that the concept of entrepreneurship “comprises social and cultural values as ‘success’ factors, rather than just ‘development and business growth’.” (Ibid: 381). When an organization is described as being goal-directed, it should therefore be understood in a wide sense. The second characteristic of organizations mentioned by Aldrich is that they are boundary-maintaining. This means that there are some forms of distinguishing features for being a member vs. a non-member; people are employed, receive a monthly paycheck, wear a uniform, etc. In the small tourism business these boundaries are often blurred as organizations are family owned, run as a part time businesses and draw on voluntary help on busy days. Even when the employment situation is more regular, small business employment has some specific features. Jameson (1998) describes the close, personal vertical relationships between e.g. managers and front-line staff as distinct aspects of social relationships in small businesses. Another aspect is the close relationship between employees both during work time but also during leisure time in the tourism industry (Ibid: 185). With reference to Price’s (1993) study from hotels and restaurants, she uses the term ‘one big happy family’. Jameson further warns that this harmonic model of the small business may mask other features of the industry; low wages, long hours, high labour turnover and low levels of union organization (Ibib: 185).
To some extent, the boundaries between work and leisure time, family and work relationships, paid and unpaid work, can be seen as more fleeting and informal (Ibid.186). Boundaries may instead be maintained through the more emotionally processes of being involved in a small business; a sense of trust, community and loyalty.
Finally, Aldrich (1999) describes organizations as characterized by socially constructed activity systems. These are ways to organize work to get things done, involving different and interdependent roles and sets of routines (see e.g. Nelson and Winter, 1982). In the small tourism business, the systems may be vaguer and the entrepreneur or owner-manager has a wider set of roles and different priorities from those running larger enterprises (Beaver, Lashley and Stewart, 1998:171).
Owner-managers of small tourism and hospitality businesses must lead the way in most parts of business development.
With a wide range of functions, findings still indicate that these small business managers lack industry-specific expertise or experience in business ownership (Dewhurst and Horobin, 1998). Experience is rather built gradually through trial and error, problem solving and processes of discovery (See e.g. Deakins and Freel, 1998). In their daily interaction with the surrounding environment the entrepreneurs are forced to alter their behaviour through experiential learning (Ibid. pp 146). Another feature concerning tourism organizations as socially constructed activity systems is the relatively high staff turnover in the industry. Staff turnover is in general found to be higher in the tourism and hospitality industries than in other sectors, with wages being an important explanatory factor (Hjalager, 2005:178). Her findings indicate that tourism businesses with low value added systematically experience a higher labour turnover than businesses which perform better; a relation differing from other sectors where the relationship between turnover and profitability is u-shaped. She sees this as a support of the idea that “tourism utilizes numerical flexibility to a considerable degree, and that strict, even Tayloristic, work management pays better than many firms like to admit” (Hjalager, 2005:179). Level of turnover should also be seen in relation to type of job in a diverse industry. Lashley (2005:2008) has found that certain parts of the tourism industry including cultural activities, travel agencies, recreational activities, sports and tour operators have quite good staff retention. The difficulties in filling jobs within sports and recreational activities were related to positions for maintenance and catering staff, not for the more specialized service positions (Ibid). Lashley’s study indicates higher staff retention in the more specialized part of the industry. As safety requirements and quality demands in adventure tourism businesses can be quite high, these findings are very relevant for this part of the industry.
A final feature of tourism businesses as socially constructed activity systems is training. There has been identified a lack of skills both among the entrepreneurs and employees of tourism businesses (Hjalager, 2002; Jensen et al. 2001; Shaw and Williams, 1998; Ioannides and Peterson 2003; Bredvold, 2003). Research findings indicate that most entrepreneurs in tourism SMEs have no education in tourism studies (Ioannides and Petersen, 2003; Bredvold, 2003) and that formal education is not something entrepreneurs in small businesses see as necessary (Emmelin and Johnsson, 1989, Bredvold, 2003), as the entrepreneur learns through his or her profession and thereby develops necessary skills. The ability to provide good service and work long hours has been found to be more important.
The low education level among employees in tourism businesses is neither seen necessarily as a problem. A Danish study found no relationship between performance of tourism businesses and proportion of staff with a formal education (Hjalager, 2005). High performance was rather connected to the ability to organise
and manage efficiently a large number of unskilled employees. This may suggest that in most part of the tourism industry informal competencies and personality traits are sufficient. This pattern is reflected in a limited focus on training.
Research on training in small service businesses has shown ambiguous findings, and the training is in several ways found to be different than in bigger, more formal organizations. Reviewing the literature on skills and training in the UK tourism and hospitality industry, Dewhurst et al finds that “… training is often patchy, informal and reactive rather than proactive” (Dewhurst, Dewhurst and Livesey, 2007:136). The informality of the training is also mentioned in a study by Moore (2005). He describes formality as “... the importance placed on training by the organization; how this importance is conveyed to staff by the unit management; the regularity of staff appraisals; and the type of training records used”(s.208). He argues that training in SMEs as often being ad hoc, and thereby never gaining the impression among staff of being a priority and an important organizational function.
There may be several reasons why the general demand for training is lower in small businesses. In their study of training and motivation to train in small firms, Kitching and Blackburn (2002) list some of the factors influencing low investments in training. For one thing the small businesses’ uncertainty about the future may lead the entrepreneurs to stick with investments that have a short time horizon, and therefore be less willing to invest in training. Other reasons are related to the costs of training, courses that are not tailored well enough to fit the needs of employees in small companies and the difficulties of seeing a demonstrated effect of training provision on business performance. The alternative value system of many small business entrepreneurs may also influence attitudes to training.
While the level of training seems to be low in the tourism and hospitality sector, there are important differences. Business size has been found to be an important determinant of the attention given to training (Kitching and Blackburn, 2002) (Moore, 2005). In a study of staff training in the South-East Wales hospitality industry, Moore (2005) found a marked contrast between the large (more than 20 rooms) and the small hotels, with the larger hotels expressing a progressive approach towards training. Moore’s research indicated that amongst the small hotels “there is little evidence of formal induction, on-going training or career enhancement strategies, such as encouraging staff to study for further qualifications” (Ibid:204).
Another factor influencing training routines is juridical instruction, playing a particularly important role in the restaurant sector. Within adventure tourism, safety regulations and industry standards play a similar role. These regulations vary both from country to country and according to the activity in question. Such variations will naturally influence the emphasis placed on training in the individual business. Based on the above, it is evident that many of the theories of organizational knowledge based on large, goods producing organizations will need to be reframed
in the context of the small tourism business. The intangibleness and complexity of knowledge also make operationalization challenging. The interview guides will emphasise issues described in this section; recruitment situation, staff turnover and training. Additional aims are to capture the potential knowledge needs recognized, and how the entrepreneurs experience their business’ knowledge resources.
While this section has emphasized knowledge-related features of small tourism businesses, the following section will examine more in depth how these features influence knowledge development and knowledge transfer, seen as prerequisites for organizational change and innovation.