Barriers to creativity in the hotel industry ±
perspectives of managers and supervisors
Keywords
Creativity, Barriers, Hotels,
Management, Supervisors,
Hong Kong
Abstract
Aims to identify the job-related
barriers to creativity as perceived
by managers and supervisors in
the Hong Kong hotel industry.
Two pilot tests using individual
in-depth interview and
dichotomous selection test were
conducted to identify possible
barriers. Based on the result of the
first pilot study, 25 job-related
barriers to creativity were
consolidated and finally 17
statements were developed
through the respondents'
selection in the second pilot
study. Factor analysis of Principal
Components Analysis with a
Varimax Rotation was conducted
and four major dimensions of
barriers were identified with a
factor loading of 0.5 or higher.
Significant differences were
observed when analyzing the
demographic variable of education
with the factor of ``fear of change
and criticism'' and ``time and work
pressure''. Suggests
recommendations on how to
reduce the barriers inhibiting
creativity in the hotel industry
aiming at improving the creative
potential of hotel employees.
International Journal of
Contemporary Hospitality
Management
15/1 [2003] 29-37
# MCB UP Limited
[ISSN 0959-6119]
[DOI 10.1108/09596110310458963]
Chak-keung Simon Wong
Department of Hotel and Tourism Management, The Hong Kong Polytechnic
University, Hong Kong
Wai-Ling Loretta Pang
Administration and Programme, Movielink (Hong Kong) Limited, Hong Kong
Introduction
In today's business environment, an
essential element to an organization's
success is adaptability ± people must be able
to manage at the speed of change and that
takes creativity and innovation (Carr and
Johansson, 1995). Creativity is often
considered unique to artists, writers and
musicians. However, it is also essential to
those who plan business projects, identify
market niches, motivate employees,
structure deals and take responsibility for
the daily operation (Hanson, 1993).
Increasing global competition, coupled
with rapidly changing technology and the
shortening of the product life cycle, has made
corporations more vulnerable to failure than
at any time in the past. Therefore, it has
become of the utmost importance for
organizations to address business issues
creatively. While corporations continue to
hire the best managerial brains, creativity
remains the element that is in short supply in
today's executives (Jalan and Kleiner, 1995).
In the service-oriented hotel industry,
service is an intangible process which is
difficult to measure. Similarly, creativity
may include many intangible elements.
Therefore, in order to make it measurable,
the tangible forms of organizational creative
outcomes including product innovations,
continuous improvement, and improved
customer services will be used. These are all
organizational desirable outcomes that will
eventually lead to better business results and
revitalization.
The confirmation of the opening of
Disneyland in Hong Kong in 2005 really gives
some ideas of the importance of creativity
and imagination in the future development of
the hospitality industry. In today's rapidly
changing business climate, organizational
The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister
success is more dependent than ever on
creativity and innovation. Tapping the
well-spring of employee creativity is a
hallmark of Disney, and the primary driver
behind its continued success. Creativity may
be one of the most important elements in
business development of the hospitality
industry in the twenty-first century.
People's creativity can be affected by
various attributes including individual
personality (Amabile, 1988, 1996a), social
environment and working environment
(Amabile, 1996b, 1997). Since creativity is a
very broad and complicated subject, the
research focuses on discovering the barriers
to creativity from the perception of managers
and supervisors in the Hong Kong hotel
industry only. In other words, the problem
question is ``What are the job-related barriers
blocking employees' creativity and how can
they be reduced to help the hoteliers?''
Job-related barriers to creativity are the
focus of this study since they diminish
employees' creativity and simultaneously
reduce the opportunity in reaching a creative
solution. As stated by J. William Keithan,
former senior vice president of Westin Hotels
and Resorts in 1990, ``One block to creativity
is whether or not management actually uses
the creative suggestions to the advantage of
the customers, the owners, and the providers
of the ideas. Another block can be how
creative people are viewed and rewarded and
whether they are criticized if a creative idea
is unsuccessful. If they are heavily criticized
and constantly reminded that it was their
idea that didn't work, then they stop being
creative'' (Berger and Ferguson, 1990, p. 75).
Nevertheless, in spite of the growing
concern over creativity, no previous
research has been done, and no journal
publications are available that discuss the
dimensions of barriers towards creativity in
the hotel industry. This research will
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/0959-6119.htm
[ 29 ]
Chak-keung Simon Wong and
Wai-Ling Loretta Pang
Barriers to creativity in the
hotel industry ± perspectives
of managers and supervisors
International Journal of
Contemporary Hospitality
Management
15/1 [2003] 29-37
[ 30 ]
investigate the perception of managers and
supervisors working in the Hong Kong hotel
industry.
Literature review
In reviewing the literature, the work
environment inventory (WEI) developed by
Amabile and Gryskiewicz (1989) is a classic
which sets a yardstick for similar research in
creativity. They identified eight scales
describing environmental stimulants to
creativity and four scales describing
environmental obstacles to creativity. The
four environmental obstacles to creativity
are:
1 time pressure;
2 evaluation;
3 status quo; and
4 political problems.
Besides, in Amabile and Gryskiewicz's (1987)
research study on content analysis, they also
reviewed nine qualities of environments that
served to inhibit creativity:
1 various organizational characteristics
such as inappropriate reward systems;
2 constraint such as lack of freedom;
3 organizational disinterest;
4 poor project management;
5 evaluation;
6 insufficient resources;
7 time pressure;
8 over-emphasis on the status quo; and
9 competition.
While traditional and non-Western societies
like China, Japan and Singapore are more
conservative, they may resist or present
alternatives to the increasingly global
ideology of creativity; even within the West,
creative efforts routinely encounter a wide
range of obstacles. In fact, the number of
possible obstacles to creativity are virtually
infinite and it is remarkable how the
environments affect individuals differently
(Weiner, 2000).
The authors concurred with the successful
identification of all environmental obstacles
existing in the western culture as stated in
previous literature, however, the question
was raised: ``Are the same obstacles present
in the Chinese population?'' In Chinese
culture, chaos is highly prohibited and
unwelcome. Creative acts always challenge
the status quo. A self-disciplined child is
generally more welcome than a naughty
genius in Chinese culture. This inspired the
interests of the authors to discover any
different perception held by Chinese people.
Methodology
An extremely rigorous methodological
approach was used by having individual in-
depth interviews with 20 hotel professionals
by convenience sampling. Open-ended
questions were used to identify the areas of
concern felt by managers and supervisors to
be the barriers.
After the interviews, 25 areas were
identified as barriers. In order to eliminate
redundant items and validate the reliability
of the open-ended findings, a dichotomous
selection test was used to ask another pilot
test group comprising 20 hotel professionals
to choose either ``yes'' or ``no'' in relation to
the named items according to whether they
think that those items are barriers or not.
Items with less than 50 percent respondents
saying that they are barriers were then
eliminated. Based on the respondents'
selection, 17 statements were developed.
In order to check the appropriateness of
the instrument developed, ten hotel
supervisors were asked to comment on the 17
statements in order to check whether any
misunderstanding of the original meanings
had occurred. Several English words were
amended to make the statements clearer and
to measure explicitly only one thing at a
time. After the corrections, a Chinese
translation was made and back translation
from Chinese to English was done to confirm
its accuracy. A bilingual version of the
questionnaire with English and Chinese
wording was thus produced. To ensure
further the validity of the instrument,
another group of ten hotel supervisors was
asked to comment on the whole
questionnaire. Comments were received on
improving the presentation of the statements
and several Chinese words were changed. A
final instrument was developed with 17
statements measuring barriers and seven
statements asking for demographic data. A
Likert scale ranging from ``1'' as ``strongly
disagree'' and ``5'' as ``strongly agree'' was
used to measure the respondents' level of
agreement with the named barriers.
Findings and discussion
A total of 288 valid responses were received
in February 2001. Factor analysis was
conducted in order to discover the
underlying dimensions that existed in the
working environment in Hong Kong about
barriers to creativity. Following the factor
analysis, independent-samples t-test and
ANOVA analysis were used to test any
significant difference by gender, age group,
Chak-keung Simon Wong and
Wai-Ling Loretta Pang
Barriers to creativity in the
hotel industry ± perspectives
of managers and supervisors
International Journal of
Contemporary Hospitality
Management
15/1 [2003] 29-37
working departments, education levels and
year of service. The findings will hopefully be
used to enhance the employees' creativity by
reducing the barriers and, at the same time,
recommending possible strategies to reduce
obstacles impeding creativity. This research
definitely can help hoteliers to understand
the situation more in order to increase the
competitive advantage of the hotels in a
turbulent environment.
Profile of respondents
Around 60 percent of the respondents were
male and 40 percent were female. The
majority, around 57 percent, of the
respondents fell within the age range of 26 to
35. Around half of the total respondents
received secondary education and the other
half graduated from vocational institutes
(19.1 percent), or universities or even
obtained postgraduate degrees (31.3 percent).
The respondents come from various
departments including accounting (9.4
percent), engineering (5.2 percent), F&B
service and kitchen (34.3 percent), front office
(16.3 percent), housekeeping (17.4 percent),
human resources (4.2 percent), sales and
marketing (8.3 percent) and others such as
purchasing, security and EDP (4.9 percent). A
total of 59 percent of them are supervisors
and 41 percent are in managerial grading or
above. Over 85 percent of them had worked in
the hotel industry for more than three years,
which is similar to the actual situation in the
Hong Kong hotel industry since employees
should normally pass through the rank and
file levels for several years before they are
able to achieve a supervisory level position.
With regard to working experiences abroad
in the hotel industry, only 22 percent of the
respondents had worked abroad before.
Moreover, 24.7 percent respondents come
from high-tariff A hotels, 33 percent from
high-tariff B hotels and 42.4 percent from
medium-tariff hotels.
Factor analysis
The overall mean value of all 17 job-related
barriers to creativity was 3.69 and the
standard deviation was 0.59. This implied
that most of the respondents agreed on these
statements in general. Further on, the 17
statements were factor-analysed by using
Principal Components Analysis with
Varimax Rotation to determine the
underlying dimensions. The selection
criteria were based on three statistical
calculations:
1 factor loading > 0.5 for each statement;
2 factor's eigenvalue must be higher than
1.0; and
3 internal reliability test ± alpha value must
be bigger than 0.5 (Hair et al., 1998).
Four factors emerged and they were (refer to
Table I):
1 Factor 1. Low commitment to organization
and system (eigenvalue = 6.47 and alpha =
0.87).
2 Factor 2. Fear of change and criticism
(eigenvalue = 1.70 and alpha = 0.84).
3 Factor 3. Time and work pressure
(eigenvalue = 1.43 and alpha = 0.81).
4 Factor 4. Rigid rules and company style
(eigenvalue = 1.08 and alpha = 0.55).
Factor 1. Low commitment to organization
and system
Six statements were loaded into this factor
with very high reliability alpha at 0.87, and
an overall mean value of 3.74. In view of these
six statements, they could be divided into two
groups. The first group included statements
on lack of communication, conflicting goals
and objectives; and lack of peer cohesion and
support. All these being grouped together
showed the system of the company, the
external environment from which employees
were unable to get the support and clear
direction from the company. The second
group included statements on employees not
feeling involved, low morale and no
recognition and appreciation of work done.
Owing to the surrounding environment and
coming together with the internal feeling of
employees not feeling involved or not
receiving any recognition and appreciation
of work done, they could not maintain
sufficient morale to fulfil job duties; low
morale would occur in the organization.
Employees not feeling involved continuously
reduced their commitment to the
organization. If the working atmosphere led
to low morale, employees would become less
committed to the organization and it would
directly discourage them from being
creative. They would not want to serve the
company whole-heartedly, nor would they
like to help the company with creative
thinking.
Factor 2. Fear of change and criticism
Seven statements were loaded into this factor
with reliability alpha at 0.84. It attained the
lowest mean value of 3.59 amongst the four
factors of barriers to creativity. In view of
these seven statements, they were also
divided into two groups. The first group
included five statements of risk aversion,
fear of failure, maintaining the status quo,
management turning down suggestions and
not being supported by the management.
First of all, the management wanted to keep a
stable environment, and there was fear of
[ 31 ]
Chak-keung Simon Wong and Table I
Wai-Ling Loretta Pang Factor analysis with varimax rotation and reliability analysis of the job-related barriers to
Barriers to creativity in the
hotel industry ± perspectives creativity from the perception of the supervisory employees in the Hong Kong hotel industry
of managers and supervisors
Factor Overall Commulative
International Journal of
Contemporary Hospitality Attributes Mean loading Factor mean variance (%)
Management Not feeling involved 3.80 0.80 Factor 1. Low commitment 3.74 38.06
15/1 [2003] 29-37
Low morale 3.80 0.79 to organization and system
Lack of communication 3.80 0.78
Conflicting goals and
objectives 3.76 0.69
Lack of peer cohesion and
support 3.66 0.69
No recognition and
appreciation of work done 3.69 0.69
Risk aversion 3.47 0.82 Factor 2. Fear of change 3.59 48.08
Fear of failure 3.45 0.81 and criticism
Threatening evaluation 3.47 0.59
Destructive criticism 3.74 0.53
Status quo 3.62 0.53
Management turn-down of
suggestions 3.67 0.51
Not supported by the
management 3.76 0.50
Time pressure 3.86 0.89 Factor 3. Time and work 3.85 56.48
Work pressure 3.84 0.83 pressure
Rules and regulations to Factor 4. Rigid rules and 3.69 62.85
follow 3.60 0.78 company style
Conservative management
style 3.78 0.71
Notes: N = 288; the overall mean value of the 17 statements was 3.69, with standard deviation 0.59; no
statement was deleted after conducting the factor loading and internal reliability test. The factor loading for all
statements was greater than or equal to 0.50

taking risk, and fear of any mistake leading
to task failure; therefore, they would not like
to give support to the employees and just
reject their new and creative suggestions.
They tried to maintain the status quo and
were fearful of any change (Weiner, 2000).
Moreover, they would not like to accept new
and novel ideas or implement any innovative
measures, thus blocking the creativity of all
employees. As stated by Gurteen (1998, p. 9),
``Fear is one of the more common blocks on
creativity ± the fear of getting it wrong, losing
face, making a fool of oneself, failure. In the
Western culture such fear is crippling
enough, but in other cultures it is far worse.''
The situation clearly identified that fear was
common in the Chinese culture, and it was
sure that fear of change was one of the main
barriers blocking creativity in the working
environment.
Besides, threatening evaluation and
destructive criticism would be given to those
employees with suggestions that are
unsuccessful in solving the problems.
Therefore, when the employees' performance
[ 32 ]
was evaluated and criticized, they would
become frustrated and began not to give any
creative idea to the organization, which
directly acted as the barriers towards
creativity.
Factor 3. Time and work pressure
Two statements were loaded into this factor
with high reliability alpha at 0.81. It attained
the highest mean value of 3.85 amongst the
four factors of barriers to creativity. Both
statements shared one common
characteristic in that they all have direct
relationship with the job-related pressure.
Hotel employees treated pressure as an
extremely high block inhibiting their
creative thinking. In the existing
environment, hotel industry still came across
the problems of tight manpower, heavy
workload and intensive competition. Hotel
employees needed to complete a lot of work
within a limited time allotment. Excessive
workload dominated most of their time and
in fact no spare time was available for them
to settle down and think of any creative idea
Chak-keung Simon Wong and
Wai-Ling Loretta Pang
Barriers to creativity in the
hotel industry ± perspectives
of managers and supervisors
International Journal of
Contemporary Hospitality
Management
15/1 [2003] 29-37
for tackling the problem. This finding is
similar to that of Amabile's (1988) who also
notes that the strategy of ``fire-fighting'' was
frequently used to solve the immediate
problem promptly. Employees were busy
tackling the problems all the time and that
created a hindrance to creativity.
Factor 4. Rigid rules and company style
Two statements were loaded into Factor 4
with reliability alpha at 0.55. Its overall mean
value was 3.69. These two statements
included rules and regulations to follow and
conservative management style.
Management has a tendency to preserve the
established traditions, and therefore many
rules and standard procedures were set for
the employees to follow and keep them under
control. In fact, corporate bureaucracies
often became rigidly formal and might
greatly inhibit creativity (Weiner, 2000).
``Although no manager wanted his or her
own freedom of initiative reduced, it was an
unusual manager who did not attempt to
routinize the areas under his or her control''
(Adams, 1986, p. 149). As a result, the possible
dimensions within which a worker might be
creative were sometimes severely limited.
Since these two statements were loaded and
had a similar characteristic relating to the
decided policy of the company and
management, it was named ``Rigid rules and
company style'' showing the overall meaning
and related area of this dimension.
Ranking of factors
After analysing the overall mean value of
four dimensions on barriers, the ranking was
listed in descending order of mean value
ranging from ``1'' as ``strongly disagree'' to ``5''
as ``strongly agree''. In general, the hotel
employees at supervisory level or above
agreed that the four derived factors were
barriers to creativity, but in different degree
of importance.
Amongst all these four factors, the hotel
managers and supervisors agreed that Factor
3 ``Time and work pressure'' was the most
important factor that could impede their
creativity with a mean value of 3.85. It
represented a strong inclination that their
creativity was blocked by the daily routine
job, the pressure coming from the tight time
schedule and excessive workload. It really
reflects the actual conditions in Hong Kong,
where the workload for hotel employees is
quite high. They are facing a hard time and
pressure, directly blocking their creative
thinking.
The second one was Factor 1 ``Low
commitment to organization and system''
with a mean value of 3.74. It seemed those
employees agreed that interaction between
management and co-workers was important.
However, lacking communication and peer
support, and simultaneously without a
compromise on the goal setting, employees
would be hindered from being creative in
such a situation. Their enthusiasm in
fulfilling the job tasks would be diminished.
Therefore, such a situation would negatively
affect the employees' creativity.
Factor 4 ``Rigid rules and company style''
was placed third with a mean value of 3.69.
Employees were blocked in creativity if the
organization had many rules and regulations
for the employees to follow, and did not allow
them to think and act according to their
preference. As mentioned by Simonton
(1975), it would seem that any sort of control
emanating from the environment had
negative effects. Given that creative people
tended to be disinhibited, one would expect
that environmental control of any sort would
be especially hard for them.
Finally, Factor 2 ``Fear of change and
criticism'' was found to be the least
important blocking factor with a mean of 3.59
and standard deviation of 0.69. This implied
that hotel employees were reluctant to be
creative because they agreed in general that
the management in the hotel industry always
wanted to maintain the status quo. Moreover,
when employees tried to give creative ideas
to the top management, they would be
threatened by destructive criticism if the
ideas were not successful.
The impact of demographic factors on the
identified barriers to creativity
In order to gain a better understanding of the
significant difference of these four factors on
job-related barriers to creativity germane to
different demographic variables, the
independent-samples t-test and ANOVA
analysis were conducted. Only two
significant findings were found (refer to
Table II).
From the aspect of education, significant
differences were found in Factor 2 ``Fear of
change and criticism'' and Factor 3 ``Time
and work pressure''. Employees educated in
vocational institutes agreed fear of change
and criticism as well as time and work
pressure were more important in blocking
them from being creative than the other
employees. It is commonly known that
employees with secondary education or
below were less affected by Factor 2 ``Fear of
change and criticism'', since they might
want to keep their secure status to avoid the
loss of existing job because of their lower
education level. Moreover, those educated
in vocational institutes did not have a
strong academic background compared
[ 33 ]
Chak-keung Simon Wong and
Wai-Ling Loretta Pang
Barriers to creativity in the
hotel industry ± perspectives
of managers and supervisors
International Journal of
Contemporary Hospitality
Management
15/1 [2003] 29-37
with university graduates, and their
capabilities were mainly operational rather
than managerial; therefore, they took
positions at the supervisory level, rather
than managerial level. Besides, working at
the supervisory level, it was not surprising
that they were most probably facing a
heavy workload and had a limited time
frame to complete their daily duties.
On the other hand, it was interesting to
discover that no significant difference was
found in relation to all other demographic
variables like gender, age, working
department, level in organization, years of
service in the hotel industry, worked abroad
as well as different grading of hotels. All the
employees with a supervisory or above level
possessed the same view in agreeing that
those four identified factors were job-related
barriers to creativity. Since Hong Kong was
confronting a serious economic down-turn,
many hotels had to adopt a strategy of

Table II
Summary of hotel supervisory employees' demographic impacts on four barriers to creativity identified by independent-
samples t-test and ANOVA analysis
Factor 1
Low commitment to Factor 2 Factor 3 Factor 4
organization and Fear of change and Time and work Rigid rules and
system criticism pressure company policy
Demographic variable Valid N Mean F-value Mean F-value Mean F-value Mean F-value
Gender 0.08 1.43 0.22 0.41
Male 173 3.76 3.58 3.88 3.67
Female 115 3.72 3.62 3.81 3.72
Level in organization 2.28 0.41 0.40 0.58
Managerial or above 118 3.90 3.68 3.90 3.72
Supervisory 170 3.63 3.54 3.82 3.67
Working abroad 1.96 2.11 0.02 0.02
Yes 63 3.78 3.56 3.84 3.60
No 225 3.73 3.60 3.85 3.72
Age (years) 2.27 0.48 1.23 1.98
25 or below 38 3.47 3.56 3.86 3.61
26-30 82 3.82 3.67 3.85 3.84
31-35 81 3.82 3.58 3.98 3.71
36 or above 87 3.72 3.55 3.72 3.57
Education 1.98 4.87* 3.45* 3.00
Secondary or below 143 3.66 3.47 3.76 3.60
Vocational institute 55 3.88 3.75 4.12 3.69
University or above 90 3.79 3.70 3.83 3.84
Working department 1.24 0.80 0.59 1.11
Accounting 27 3.78 3.52 3.96 3.61
Engineering 15 3.70 3.67 3.93 3.77
Food and beverage 99 3.62 3.63 3.78 3.77
Front office 47 3.78 3.50 3.98 3.67
Housekeeping 50 3.82 3.59 3.79 3.58
Human resources 12 3.44 3.70 3.96 3.92
Sales and marketing 24 4.01 3.67 3.79 3.79
Others 14 3.95 3.54 3.86 3.36
Years of service in the hotel industry 1.81 1.46 1.29 0.64
<3 39 3.51 3.53 3.87 3.82
>3-<5 44 3.86 3.79 4.07 3.75
> 5 - < 10 94 3.79 3.58 3.84 3.67
> 10 111 3.73 3.55 3.77 3.64
Hotel grading 0.92 0.26 0.72 1.53
High tariff A 71 3.64 3.55 3.96 3.77
High tariff B 95 3.80 3.63 3.82 3.75
Medium tariff 122 3.76 3.59 3.81 3.60
Notes: * Indicates significance difference level < 0.05 by using LSD test; Mean value on a five-point Likert scale, where ``1'' indicated ``strongly
disagree'' and ``5'' indicated ``strongly agree''; No significant difference was found in gender, level in organization, working abroad, age, working
departments, years of service in the hotel industry and different grading of hotels; Only one demographic factor, ``Education'', exerted significant
differences on Factor 2 (fear of change and criticism) and Factor 3 (time and work pressure)

[ 34 ]
Chak-keung Simon Wong and
Wai-Ling Loretta Pang
Barriers to creativity in the
hotel industry ± perspectives
of managers and supervisors
International Journal of
Contemporary Hospitality
Management
15/1 [2003] 29-37
re-engineering, or even cut-backs and
retrenchment in order to sustain their
competitive advantages in the sluggish
market. A lot of hotel employees were laid off
by various hotels and further created a
threatening effect in hotel employees. They
were most probably facing the condition of
heavy workloads arising from the policy of
an employment freeze. No spare time could
be available for them to relax or to be free
from the stressful environment.
Recommendations
Although the visitor arrivals in Hong Kong
increased tremendously in the year 2000 and
hit a new record topping 13 million for the
first time, the hotel business in fact cannot be
improved and benefited proportionally to its
advantage since the hotels were able to get a
higher occupancy rate but the hotel room
rate was facing a sharp decrease. The average
stay of the tourists has been reduced and
directly decreased the hotels' revenue in
accommodation. Therefore, if a hotel wants
to maintain a unique position in such a
competitive environment in Hong Kong, it is
important for the hotel management to
improve employees' creativity by fostering
feasible methods and, at the same time, to
reduce the obstacles that affect their
creativity.
Pursuant to the results of this research,
several notable recommendations are
developed to improve the situation and they
might be worthy of consideration by the hotel
management. They include the following:
. Reschedule the duties to meet the time
frame and increase flexibility to handle
the routine tasks; and allow employees to
have spare time to be creative;
. gain a common understanding and
stimulate one another's motives;
. management to change their conservative
attitude and be open to accept creative
ideas; and
. management and employees to
understand the importance of creativity,
prepare to change and implement the
innovative measures.
It is a reality that the workload for employees
is heavy in the Hong Kong hotel industry.
Starting from the Asian financial turmoil in
late 1997, the hotel industry in Hong Kong
has been suffering a tremendous down-turn.
The tourism industry has been facing a hard
time, too. Therefore, hotel management have
mostly adopted a retrenchment policy and
cut down all the related expenses to a
minimum. The staff-to-guest ratio has
dropped and the management have frozen all
vacant positions. Therefore, the workload of
the employees has been increased
proportionately since the remaining
employees need to share the work of the now
lowered headcount. Based on the
demographic data, nearly 70 percent of the
respondents are working in F&B service,
kitchen, front office and housekeeping,
which in fact is the actual reflection of the
manpower distribution in the Hong Kong
hotel industry. Their departmental job
nature always encounters rigid time
schedules and highly routinized operations.
Therefore, too much work within the time
allotted deprives the individual of free time
for creative thinking (Amabile, 1988; Amabile
and Gryskiewicz, 1989). In order to reduce the
time and work pressure, which inhibits the
employees' creativity, the management
should reschedule the duties to meet the
limited time frame and increase flexibility to
handle the routine tasks. Employees should
then be able to have some more free time to
relax and refresh their minds, and to
continuously provide more creative ideas in
the daily operations.
Second, when the hotel employees do not
feel involved, lack peer cohesion and support,
their morale will then be directly decreased
and low commitment shown to the
organization and system. Therefore, it is
recommended that all employees should gain
a common understanding with each other.
Thorough communication between the
management and employees is strongly
suggested; enhancement of their morale will
then lead the hotel employees to be more
willing to commit to the company and
simultaneously reduce the obstacles blocking
their creativity.
Third, once the company has established
certain systems, there will be inertia against
change. People are not willing to change,
simply because the systems already exist.
Rules, regulations, and procedures can be
another set of obstacles hindering creativity
in organizations. When these rules,
regulations and procedures become ends by
themselves, employees will just rigidly apply
them in every situation, even in those that
are not appropriate (Tan, 1998). An
organization may have inherited an outdated
organization structure with many rigid rules
and regulations, even though it has good
managers and employees who are ready for
and desire creativity. Nevertheless, the
management should initiate a change to its
conservative attitude, adapt to the fast-
changing environment and be open-minded
to accept creative ideas.
When management leads in a style that
kills ideas prematurely, discourages risk-
[ 35 ]
Chak-keung Simon Wong and
Wai-Ling Loretta Pang
Barriers to creativity in the
hotel industry ± perspectives
of managers and supervisors
International Journal of
Contemporary Hospitality
Management
15/1 [2003] 29-37
[ 36 ]
taking and experimentation, and inhibits
feedback from the ground, creativity is
hindered. People-related barriers to
creativity include resistance to change,
conflicts and incompetence (Tan, 1998). In
fact, hotels in Hong Kong need creativity to
develop new products, improve customer
services and revitalize them. Both the
management and employees should
understand the importance of creativity, how
it may help to achieve a unique position in
such a turbulent environment and prepare to
implement innovative measures.
Conclusion
Understanding the job-related barriers
impeding creativity in the hotel industry in
Hong Kong is very important because it can
help to achieve the common objectives of
hotels: being successful and gaining a unique
position in the hotel industry. This research
has identified creativity barriers within the
working environment in a Hong Kong
perspective, with reference to employees in
the hotel industry. Creative, action-based
decision-making processes should supersede
the traditional strategic planning processes
(Groth and Peters, 1999).
Most of the barriers matched with the
previous findings including time pressure,
heavy workload, evaluation, maintain the
status quo and organizational disinterest.
However, to a certain extent, some barriers
blocking employees' creativity under the
Western culture stated in the previous
literature review were not suitable for the
environment in Hong Kong; for example,
political problems. On the surface, at least, it
seemed obvious that the greater the degree of
political freedom, the more likely creativity
would be to flourish (Weiner, 2000). As
recommended by Amabile and Gryskiewicz
(1989), political problems were one of the
environmental obstacles to creativity under
the research in the USA. However, based on
the current research findings, no employee
responded that the political problem is an
issue inhibiting employees' creativity; since
the working environment in Hong Kong,
especially the hotel industry, is unlike that in
the USA, employees are rarely disturbed by
political problems.
By the same token, the findings should be
viewed as a preliminary step to
acknowledge the perception of the
employees at present; all those involved in
the hotel industry need to be alert to the
future challenge of the need to develop
creativity. In this research, several
potential problems may impose limitations
on the results, and sample size is one of the
limitations. Owing to the limited time
frame, only 400 questionnaires were
distributed and the sample size has a
certain limit to show a representative
result. Second, employees at supervisory
level or above were chosen as the target
sample for this research to examine job-
related barriers to creativity. The
findings were limited to those levels that
represented a small portion in the
industry and were not strong enough to
support the case of the whole hotel
industry.
The author decided to use employees with
supervisory grading or above as an
introductory stage in this survey because
supervisors have more opportunities to
exercise creativity within daily operations
in the hotel industry. Further study is
needed to include all levels of employees
such as management, supervisory and
operational. Besides, the point of view of the
owners and the hotel guests should also be
considered and research exploring more on
the Chinese culture towards creativity is
recommended, since most of the operational
and supervisory employees are Chinese in
the hotel industry in Hong Kong.
Nevertheless, the visionary insight should
be addressed on the support from all parties
and how the hotels are able to survive in
such a fast-changing environment by
fostering their competitive advantages
through the enhancement of creativity.
Besides, research on exploring more of the
Chinese culture towards creativity may be a
point of interest to see any differences
compared to Western culture.
References
Adams, J.L. (1986), Conceptual Blockbusting,
3rd ed., Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA.
Amabile, T.M. (1988), ``A model of creativity and
innovation in organizations'', Research in
Organizational Behavior, Vol. 10, pp. 123-67.
Amabile, T.M. (1996a), ``Unlimited genius'',
Success, Vol. 43 No. 7, pp. 36-7.
Amabile, T.M. (1996b), Creativity in Context:
Update to the Social Psychology of Creativity,
Westview Press Inc., Boulder, CO.
Amabile, T.M. (1997), ``Motivating creativity in
organizations: on doing what you love and
loving what you do'', California Management
Review, Vol. 40 No. 1, pp. 39-58.
Amabile, T.M. and Gryskiewicz, N. (1989), ``The
creative environment scales: the work
environment inventory'', Creativity Research
Journal, Vol. 2, pp. 231-54.
Amabile, T.M. and Gryskiewicz, S.S. (1987),
``Creativity in the R&D laboratory'', Technical
Report No. 30, Center for Creative Leadership,
Greensboro, NC.
Chak-keung Simon Wong and
Wai-Ling Loretta Pang
Barriers to creativity in the
hotel industry ± perspectives
of managers and supervisors
International Journal of
Contemporary Hospitality
Management
15/1 [2003] 29-37
Berger, F. and Ferguson, D.H. (1990), Innovation:
Creativity Techniques for Hospitality
Managers, John Wiley & Sons, New York, NY.
Carr, D.K. and Johansson H.J. (1995), Best
Practices in Re-engineering, McGraw-Hill,
New York, NY.
Groth, J.C. and Peters, J. (1999), ``What blocks
creativity? A managerial perspective'',
Creativity and Innovation Management, Vol. 8
No. 3, pp. 179-87.
Gurteen, D. (1998), ``Knowledge, creativity and
innovation'', Journal of Knowledge
Management, Vol. 2 No. 1, pp. 5-13.
Hair, J.F., Anderson, R.E., Tatham, R.L. and
Black, W.C. (1998), Multivariate Data
Analysis, 5th ed., Prentice-Hall, Englewood
Cliffs, NJ.
Hanson, B. (1993), ``Executive creativity'', Lodging
Hospitality, Vol. 49 No. 9, 28 August.
Jalan, A. and Kleiner, B.H. (1995), ``New
developments in developing creativity'',
Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 10
No. 8, pp. 20-3.
Simonton, D.K. (1975), ``Age and literary
creativity: a cross-cultural and trans-
historical survey'', Journal of Cross-Cultural
Psychology, Vol. 6, pp. 259-77.
Tan, G. (1998), ``Managing creativity in
organizations: a total system approach'',
Creativity and Innovation Management, Vol. 7
No. 1, pp. 23-31.
Weiner, R.P. (2000), Creativity and Beyond ±
Cultures, Values and Change, State University
of New York Press, New York, NY.
[ 37 ]