The Multi-unit manager Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3750 words

The Multi-unit manager - Essay Example Practical and Implications – The knowledge obtained from this study will help the multi-unit restaurant operation in the development of Human resource in terms of recruitment, selection and training needs. Introduction In the United Kingdom, the service industry represented over 77.1 percent of Gross Domestic Production in 2010 (CAI Fact book, 2011). There are many international hotels such as Hiltons or Accor that have expanded all over the world. In restaurant sector, most restaurants seem to be a small business or family business, which has only one unit. After raising more profit, the business tends to expand its outlets to both national and overseas level. McDonald’s, for example, has expanded its branches, which are approximately 31,000 restaurants in 2010 (Ritzer 2011). Multi-unit restaurants could be defined as a company which rivals in the sector with more than one unit of a concept or theme (Olesen et al 1992). Due to intense competitiveness in the restaurant sector, cost reduction and standardization have been consistently focused on in multi-unit firms in order to get returns on investment of its brand (Jones 1993). In a chain of restaurants, â€Å"manager of managers† or the manager who operates between operations and cooperate level managers is called as the Multi-unit manager (Drucker 1995). According to Goss-Turner (1999), in a multi-unit firm or the multi-unit area responsible for 2 to15 units, the responsibilities of the Multi-unit managers are to concentrate on strategy of business rather than single unit operations. As a result of standardizations that have increased in nineteenth century, the multi-unit has grown along with systematic assessment for selection of training for the multi-unit manager (Goss-Turner 1999). It could be seen that with the intention of expanding in chain, multi restaurant outlets and the multi-unit area need to develop simultaneously. To gain a competitive advantage, the company should be able t o develop quality of their employees especially the multi-unit manager. It can be said that most of the academic study has focused on the role, responsibilities and skills of single-unit operation, but on the multi-unit company. The skills of the area manager are likely to be different from the single unit managers. Umbreit and Smith (1990) claimed that almost all the area managers are recruited from single units. Consequently, the multi-unit managers have faced problems in making the transition from single-units to multi-units because of the role, responsibility and skills that are different from single operation managers. Umbreit and Tomlin (1986) surveyed many multi-food services and highlighted that most functions of the multi-unit managers are related to restaurant operation, human resource, and finance. Subsequently, Muller and Campbell (1995) also showed that human resource was the most significant issue for the multi-unit managers. In addition, in 2009 human resource, restau rant operation and finance were still the major requirements for the multi-unit manager position. For these reasons, at the heart of this study is to analyze the roles, responsibilities and skills of the multi-unit managers in restaurant industry by providing a case study of Pan Asia group. A semi structure conducts interview of the multi-unit