AbstractsBusiness Management & Administration

The productive & symbolic functions of management control in the Chinese hotel industry: a Foucauldian analysis

by Jenny Jing Wang




Institution: AUT University
Department:
Year: 2014
Keywords: Foucauldian; Chinese hotel industry; Management control mechanism; Accountability
Record ID: 1301054
Full text PDF: http://hdl.handle.net/10292/7198


Abstract

Purpose – Thus, this thesis concerns, more generally, the mobilisation of accounting control mechanisms in organisations. The generic research question is: “How is accountability determined by measuring the productive and symbolic functions of staff labour in hotels in China”. The question is employed in the context of hotel organisations in China. Foucault’s concepts are employed to explain “how power is exercised” by managers to achieve performance and to maintain and improve Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Power involves and promotes surveillance, examination/inspection, and discourse (what is said and what is unsaid) to provide managers with necessary power/knowledge to be effective decision makers (Foucault, 1980). The empirical illustrations are drawn from the author’s own experience as an employee of various Chinese hotels. Design/methodology/approach – the approach is ethnological employing the theories of Foucault on techniques of management control in the Chinese hotel industry. This is an empirical study based on the researcher’s own working experiences in several hotels within various positions. For this purpose, throughout her working experience a journal record was maintained of meetings and conversations with other staff. Ethnography as a research methodology, based on the researcher’s experiences is applied to this thesis. It is an approach that allows the researcher’s observations to develop the empirical elements necessary to meet the research questions posed in this thesis. Central to Foucault’s work is the question, “How power is exercised”, and, “What is its mechanism” (Foucault, 1980, p. 89). Power is exercised by mostly managers over staff to the end of what Foucault calls the triple function of labour (Foucault, 1980, p. 161). Foucault (1980) considers that accountability comprises three functions: the productive function - ensuring the work is done; the symbolic function - where staff are used to represent the organisation as in the Singapore Airlines ubiquitous “Singapore girl”; and the dressage or discipline function - where staff are enclosed and made uniform. It is the contention of this thesis that the dressage function is fundamental to maintain performance in the productive and symbolic functions. Findings – The surveillance, inspection and use of key performance indicators are control features familiar to accountants and auditors, whose function is to impose discipline and to enclose for accountability. By borrowing the disciplinary processes of accounting, managers can separate and enclose staff by function. With regard to the productive function record keeping and quantifying are necessary elements as are establishing performance indicators. The symbolic function has grown out of the productive function and the key performance indicators are harder to quantify as the function is more qualitative in application than quantitative. Nonetheless, to establish accountability, staff must be enclosed and made into efficient, uniform bodies aware of being always under the…