Prejudice and Discrimination in Hotels, Restaurants and Bars

Presenting expert-led discussion of a range of themes and topics, Prejudice and Discrimination in Hotels, Restaurants and Bars explores the rigidities that restrict recruitment into frontline job roles in hotels restaurants and bars.

Despite decades of legislation banning gender and racial discrimination in most service economies, selecting the ’right person for the job’ in practice results in some applicants appearing to be ’more right’ than others. This book makes a unique contribution to the study of hospitality management practices that define, both consciously and unconsciously, recruits’ appearance and behaviours that inevitably include some, and exclude others, from being selected for the job concerned. Dealing primarily with social class, gender and race, the issues discussed in the book are of international interest and authors are drawn from both the Northern and Southern hemisphere.

This book will be of great interest to both upper-level students and researchers of hospitality management and human resource management, as well as wider social science communities, such as scholars of sociology, anthropology, industrial relations, human resource studies and personnel management.

Conrad Lashley is Professor Emeritus and Managing Editor of Research in Hospitality Management as well as Editor Emeritus of Hospitality & Society. He was previously Professor in Hospitality Studies in the Academy of International Hospitality Research in the Netherlands. He has had professorial appointments at several UK universities, and regularly makes keynote research presentations in Australia, Brazil, Germany, New Zealand, the Netherlands, the USA, and Sweden as well as in Great Britain. He is the author or editor of twenty-two books, including the sister volume to this text, Slavery and Liberation in Hotels, Restaurants and Bars. He has also published over one hundred papers in refereed research journals and volumes of conference proceedings. He has worked extensively with industry and generated commercial income from research and consultancy, as well as in-company management programs.