**Author details**

To maintain its market leadership position in China, Marriott continued to strategically build and market their brand as the employer of choice in the domestic market. Being the employer of choice enabled Marriott to select and recruit a skilled workforce to maintain and deliver its

*…the one child policy has contributed to the current skill-shortage situation in China. However, hotels are also competing with the domestic government departments for skilled employees, as the domestic governments are now providing benefits such as welfare, less hours and higher salaries to attract talents* 

*Marriott was awarded the top employer in China by the Corporate Research Foundation Institute in* 

*Marriott builds on its success by using initial strategy coupled with domestic experience and learning…Marriott's new processes and services in China are blended with domestic culture to create a* 

Given the results of this qualitative analysis, we propose the following five-stage knowledge management process model (see **Table 1**) for the emerging Chinese hotel industry. This process model illustrates Marriott's experience in assessing its knowledge management deficiencies in its Chinese operations, and the human resource/strategic management practices used

Stage One Assessing the organisation's cross-cultural knowledge-base

Stage Three Developing domestic labour-market/domestic employee knowledge

Stage Five Managing domestic employee satisfaction and commitment

Stage Two Accessing domestic labour-market knowledge

Stage Four Developing domestic supply-chain knowledge

**Table 1.** A knowledge management process model for the Chinese hotel industry.

In terms of assessing the organisation's cross-cultural knowledge base, Marriott utilised its human resource inventory systems not only to audit the store of human resources it controlled in its Chinese hotel operations but also to gauge the extent to which the organisation had the capacity to access the tacit knowledge it possessed. Strategically, therefore, the initial stage of the knowledge management process required not only an understanding of what information/ knowledge deficiencies the organisation possessed, but also what data-gathering deficiencies it had in this regard. In terms of accessing domestic labour-market knowledge, Marriott recognised the importance of its recruitment and selection processes; in particular, it recognised that it had to adapt its recruitment and selection processes (that had been effective in the Western context) to account for the idiosyncrasies of the Chinese labour market. Strategically, Marriott recognised the need to establish itself as an "employer of choice" within the Chinese

quality service level and to combat protected domestic competitors:

*(Human Resources Director 3, Personal Interview, 2009).*

**5. Concluding remarks**

248 Knowledge Management Strategies and Applications

to address them.

*2012 (Human Resources Director 1, Personal Interview, 2012).*

*unique quality standard (General Manager 1, Personal interview, 2012).*

Tommy Wong\*, Linda French and Mark Wickham

\*Address all correspondence to: tommy.wong@utas.edu.au

University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
