Portman Hotel Case
Ensuring that the Personal Valets (PV) are motivated to work productively should have been the primary managerial responsibility of the managers at the Portman Hotel. If Spencer Scott had implemented a first-class program for the PVs, the Portman Hotel would have been rewarded with a workforce that expressed little dissatisfaction and exerted high levels of effort from its inception. ... This error can easily be characterized in the Portman Hotel case by the fact that all the managers of the hotel assumed that all of their employees would naturally share the same passion and enthusiasm that they had for the Portman Hotel. ... The mission statement for the Portman Hotel clearly states that management wanted to “show our trust and pride in each person on our staff, and to work in ways that help each person grow” (Holland, 3). The PVs were frustrated and angry because there were floaters and “slouches” that could not pull their weight around the Portman Hotel in the newly created teams. When many of the loyal PVs saw that nothing was being done to discipline the PVs who could not pull their weigh, they began to lose faith in the Portman Hotel management and the mission that the hotel was based on. Scott was the main source of the fundamental attribution error because he “did not believe it was part of the hotel’s philosophy to discipline poor performers” (Holland, 10). ... This example of fundamental attribution error applies to the theory because Scott and the rest of the management at the Portman Hotel believed that their employees would not take advantage of the system they implemented at the hotel. If Scott would have simply listened to the PVs complaints and showed some discipline to the poor performers, the PVs could have trusted the Portman Hotel management and their policies. ... This would lead to PV’s lack of commitment to quality which is what the Portman Hotel’s niche was based on.