Mintzberg, managers and methodology: some observations from a study of hotel general managers

Mintzberg's model of managerial roles is well established in the canon of management theory despite being derived from an,unrepresentative' small and precisely chosen sample of senior executives. There are a number of applications of Mintzberg's model in the hospitality literature, most focused on (generally successful) attempts at replication of his findings. This paper queries conventional applications of Mintzberg's model in the context of the international hotel industry, the commentary deriving from a mixed method study of general managers of luxury hotels in Thailand. The study examined the utility of Mintzberg's framework in the Thai context with specific reference to general managers' time allocations to Mintzberg's ten managerial roles. The study also considered cross-cultural issues in time allocations to these roles by Thai and non-Thai general managers. A number of issues emerged that posed interesting challenges to the application of Mintzberg's model in the hospitality context. (C) 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.