Management in Tourism Organisations: Managerial Processes, Functions, Skills and Roles, the Evolution of Management Thought, the Systems, Contingency and Operational Approaches, the External and Internal Environment of Managerial Decisions, and the Social Responsibilities of Business

Management is the process of getting things done through and with people in organised groups, using resources efficiently (doing things right) and effectively (doing the right things) to reach goals. It is described as a process because its functions follow and feed one another continuously. Henri Fayol (1916) named five elements: to plan (forecast and plan), to organise, to command, to coordinate and to control. Luther Gulick (1937) expanded them as POSDCORB: planning, organising, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting and budgeting. Harold Koontz and Cyril O'Donnell settled on the five functions the syllabus lists: planning, organising, staffing, directing and controlling.

Robert Katz (1955) identified three skills every manager needs in different proportions. Technical skill is the knowledge and proficiency in specific methods and tools, most important for supervisors and first-line managers (a chef de partie's cooking, a reservations supervisor's command of the system). Human skill is the ability to work with, understand and motivate people, needed at every level. Conceptual skill is the ability to see the organisation as a whole, understand how its parts relate and how it fits its environment, most important for top management (a general manager deciding the hotel's positioning). As managers rise, the weight shifts from technical to conceptual, while human skill stays constant.

The three approaches the syllabus names integrate these schools. The systems approach sees an organisation as a system of interrelated parts (subsystems) that takes inputs from its environment (guests, staff, capital, supplies, information), transforms them and returns outputs (satisfied guests, profit, and wastes), with feedback; it is an open system, dependent on its environment, and it warns that a change in one department affects the others, as a kitchen delay affects the restaurant, room service and guest satisfaction. The contingency approach holds that there is no single best way to manage: the right structure and style depend on the situation, the environment, technology, size and people; Tom Burns and G. M. Stalker (1961) found mechanistic structures suited stable environments and organic ones changing environments, and Joan Woodward and Paul Lawrence and Jay Lorsch developed the idea. The operational or management process approach, associated with Harold Koontz, treats management as a universal process of functions, planning, organising, staffing, directing and controlling, that can be analysed, taught and applied in any organisation, drawing on the knowledge of other schools; Koontz famously described the rival schools as a "management theory jungle".

Managers decide within an environment they only partly control. The internal environment consists of the organisation's owners and board, its employees and their skills, its culture, its structure, its physical and financial resources and its technology. The external environment has a task (specific) part, the customers, competitors, suppliers, intermediaries, regulators, trade unions and the local community with which the organisation deals directly, and a general part, the economic, political and legal, socio-cultural, technological, natural and international forces that affect all firms. For a tourism business these forces are unusually strong and volatile: exchange rates, fuel prices, visa rules, terrorism, pandemics, extreme weather and technology shifts can change demand overnight. Decisions follow a process, identifying the problem, generating alternatives, evaluating them, choosing, implementing and evaluating the result; they range from programmed (routine, such as reordering linen) to non-programmed (novel, such as entering a new market); and, as Herbert Simon showed, managers usually "satisfice" within bounded rationality rather than optimise with perfect information.

The social responsibility of business is its obligation to act in ways that serve society as well as its owners. A business owes responsibilities to its shareholders (a fair return and honest accounts), employees (fair wages, safe conditions, dignity, development), customers (safe, honest, value-for-money products), suppliers and intermediaries (fair terms and prompt payment), the community (local employment and purchasing, respect for culture), the government (lawful conduct and taxes) and the environment (conservation, pollution control, the sustainable use of resources). Archie Carroll's pyramid (1991) arranges corporate social responsibility in four layers: economic responsibility at the base (to be profitable), then legal (to obey the law), ethical (to do what is right beyond the law) and philanthropic (to be a good corporate citizen) at the top. R. Edward Freeman's stakeholder theory (1984) argues that firms must be managed for all who affect or are affected by them, while Milton Friedman (1970) had argued that the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits within the rules; John Elkington's "triple bottom line" asks firms to report on people and planet as well as profit.

In tourism, social responsibility takes concrete forms: hotels that hire and train local people and buy local produce; operators that respect local cultures and sacred sites and reject exploitative practices; airlines and hotels that cut emissions, water use and plastics; companies that support heritage conservation, as under the Adopt a Heritage scheme; fair treatment of seasonal and informal workers; and, in India, the statutory CSR spending under the Companies Act 2013 by companies above its thresholds. Responsible tourism is this principle applied to destinations.