Demand better results--and get them

This HBR classic, first published in 1974, asks and answers one of management's most important questions: Why do so few organizations reach their productivity potential? The answer: because most senior executives fail to establish expectations of performance improvement in ways that get results. They fail because making heavy demands involves taking risks and threatens those who have the demands imposed on them. It's safer to ask for less. To avoid facing the reality of underachievement, managers may rationalize that their subordinates are doing the best they can or that better performance requires more authority or greater resources. They may put their faith in incentive plans that don't need their personal intervention. They may actually set high goals but let subordinates escape accountability for results. To get out of these doldrums, executives have to be willing to invest time and energy; responsibility can be delegated only so far. The key to the recovery strategy is to set a specific, modest, measurable goal pertaining to an important problem in the organization. If this goal is met, management uses the success as a springboard for more ambitious demands, each one carefully supported by plans, controls, and persistence directed from the top. Resistance can be expected from many levels. But as the organization registers genuine achievement, consciousness-raising in the form of recognition transforms expectations into positive factors. The fact is, most people like to work in a results-oriented environment. In a retrospective commentary, the author writes that while companies today are more impressed with the need for performance improvement, the ability to establish high expectations is still the most universally underdeveloped managerial skill.     

Revisiting Attributes: How Important Is Green in the Consumer Selection of Hotel Rooms?

Consumers’ buying behavior is not always consistent with their positive attitude, particularly toward environmentally friendly products. In a survey of 197 travelers, the relative importance consumers ascribe to the attribute of green was assessed. Through a multi-methods study involving interviews, focus groups discussions, and forced-choice experiments that simulate market buying situation, it was found that consumers’ selection of hotel rooms is still much dictated by traditional choice factors. Through a conjoint analysis, it was found that consumers highly prioritized the price attribute. The green attribute was assigned a low relative importance of 4% among the respondents. Managerial and theoretical implications are discussed.     

Speculations about geopolitics in the late 21st century

Speculations are made about the global power balance in the next century. The time frame is 50–100 years and the driving forces are economic, technological, and natural resource availability. It is believed that three dominant coalitions will emerge: a Western hemisphere maritime grouping led by the US and including the UK; a European grouping dominated by France and Germany; and an East and South Asia grouping led by Japan and including India. The underlying motivation for these alignments is the postulated failure of the World Trade Organization to achieve long-term global free trade. A short-term policy recommendation to upgrade the buying power of Western hemisphere consumer populations is developed from the analysis.     

Strategy, organization structure and success in the lodging industry

Has Hyatt's success been the result of the way it has structured its organization? Research evidence has accumulated indicating that the way an organization is structured can have profound effects on its performance.Should every lodging organization adopt the same type of structure? Probably not! However, determining the appropriate organizational structure for a lodging organization requires considerable thought and analysis.The results of some of the more compelling research findings relative to the factors that affect the structuring of an organization and the relationship between organizational strategy, structure and effectiveness are examined. Some of these concepts are then applied in an analysis of the structure of three different lodging organizations.     

Theory of planned behaviour: predicting tourists’ pro-environmental intentions after a humpback whale encounter

Nature-based experiences can contribute to individuals’ connection to nature and intentions toward sustainable environmental behaviours. Conservation psychology can use tourism as a platform to modify tourists’ intentions and behaviours regarding key marine threats such as single-use plastics. This study examined changes to pro-environmental intentions, particularly regarding plastic use, in 267 nature-based tourists from Australia and Tonga who completed a whale watching/swim experience. A theory of planned behaviour (TPB) framework was used incorporating moral norms and environmental identity, which have been previously implicated in explaining pro-environmental actions. This study found that including moral norms in the TPB model significantly increased the ability to predict pro-environmental intentions. Further, when controlling for the TPB and moral norm variables, environmental identity explained a further 15% of tourists’ pro-environmental intentions. The findings suggest the original TPB model may be less suitable within a marine conservation context. Collectively, positive nature-based experiences, environmental identity, and moral norms are important in understanding tourist’s intentions to engage in sustainable environmental behaviours.     

The psychological barriers to management effectiveness: Ways to overcome invisible mechanisms

Everyone subtly molds his behavior for what appear to be rational goal-oriented reasons; actually, we are also satisfying psychological needs. In the case of managers, this universal mechanism often interferes seriously with the enterprise. The author describes how managers escape anxiety provoking situations through perceptual distortion and counter-productive behavior. The claim of “doing all I can” and denial of certain facts are examples of the first; busyness, the manager's “Linus blanket,” and escapes into structure are examples of the second. An understanding of these forces can help management. The author lists the principles that underlie three strategic concepts: the use of multivariate strategies for change, imposition of work disciplines on the management job, and maintenance of tough achievement goals.     

Private information, trading volume, and stock-return variances

New evidence is provided on the determinants of stock-returnvariances. First, when the Tokyo Stock Exchange is open on Saturday,the weekend variance increases; weekly variance is unaffected,however, despite an increase in weekly volume. Second, the listingof U.S. stocks in Tokyo substantially increases the number oftrading hours, but Tokyo volume is negligible for these U.S.stocks and their 24-hour variance is unaffected. The overallresults are consistent with the predictions of private-information-basedrational trading models, but inconsistent with both the irrationaltrading noise and public-information hypotheses.