Erica Van Keuren
Theoretical Application
Within the hospitality and service group, the selected sites revealed new insights that may or
may not have been consciously aware of such as race and gender in relation with employee
composition and guest clientele. I have been working at Stone Mountain Park since July of 2004.
Through the years, I have noticed that race and ethnicity of the majority of the employees is of a
minority of African American or similar to the like. This is an interesting fact to note especially
since the top of Stone Mountain was once a meeting place for the Klu Klux Klan, a notoriously
racist and white supremacist group. This introduces a reading from class that discusses an
applicant’s employability based upon name which may also indicate the applicant’s race or
ethnicity that can influence the employer’s hiring decision.
Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal?: A Field Experiment on
Labor Market Discrimination by Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullaninathan. According to
job applicant protocols, employers cannot discriminate against color, race, religion, gender,
ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other physical characteristics not included above. If this is
true, then how does one account statistically, or otherwise, for the dominant employee’s race
being African American at Stone Mountain Park? This reading states “we find that employers
significantly favor applicants with white names.” (249). Most of the African American
employees have ethnic names or unusual or nontraditional spellings for names. What contributes
to the racial majority at my site, what other facts are influencing the application process or
hindering it?
People Like Us video. Various scenes in the movie provide insight into the division of social
class within society from the “wasp” group to the “red necks” in East Dublin Georgia. This
relates to the diverse individuals who come to visit Stone Mountain Park as mentioned in field
notes. The specific example is of the couple who inquired about the cost of the daily adventure
plan and when I told them the price, they responded, “This must be a rich people’s place.” Stone
Mountain Park strives to be accessible to people from all walks of life and classes, maybe there
is a discrepancy between the striving and the reality that needs to be addressed. The movie
acknowledges that there are class differences by showing individuals in his or her own
community or setting and the actions and/or behaviors that transpire. Stone Mountain Park tries
to be accessible to all yet, there are always going to be those individuals who cannot afford to
pay the admission price to experience the “great family fun” that the park markets the public to
desire and take part in; the financial aspect of a family experience separates and divides a general
population between those who can afford and those who cannot afford a day at Stone Mountain
Park.
Nickel-and-Dimed: On (not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich. This reading was
a set of field notes and personal observation by Barbara Ehrenreich and her struggle to make
ends meet on a minimum wage budget and working for less than 40 hours a week. Much like the
jobs in the hospitality and service industry as this group is involved with, we to must learn how
to make finances work; the significant difference is that we do not have the luxury of returning to
our comfortable lifestyle that we were accustomed to before beginning our experiments.
Ehrenreich mentions that many of the people she observed during her field based time were
either potential candidates for or make use of welfare. At times, my co-workers and I
contemplate the idea of applying for food stamps or some sort of government assistance because
minimum wage can only go so far especially when employees are in school. Another difference
between my co-workers and Ehrenreich’s co-workers is that many of them had been living in a
minimum wage lifestyle and that their current jobs were the permanent job: the lifers versus the
seasonal. Every job has this dynamic and knowing how to approach it effectively without
victimizing another is a challenge.
The scholarly and peer-reviewed sources that were consulted, “A case study in
establishing a positive service culture: Attachment and involvement in the workplace” by
Catherine R. Curtis and Randall S. Upchurch from the Journal of Retail and Leisure Property.
This piece discussed the importance of hospitality in terms of guests’ satisfaction and experience.
At the beginning of each new season, all employees (at Stone Mountain Park) are required to
attend a guest interaction workshop that coincides with the author’s statement of “Given the
critical role that the hospitality labour force provides to the guest’s overall service experience,
employers need to gain a better understanding of the systems, practices and procedures than
create a service culture that is tailored in such a manner to be personally rewarding to the
employee. Therefore, the process of creating a service culture becomes a management process
due to the highly personalized nature of the hospitality industry (132).” Curtis and Upchurch
further explain the “two components of social bonding theory seem to encase the concepts within
this study, attachment and involvement. These components capture the emotional construct,
service construct and the variables that contribute to a positive (fun) work environment and
therefore the establishment of a strong service culture (132).” Stone Mountain Park prides itself
on friendliness and exceptional service. To be effective with this mission, “(1)the organization
must truly support effective service standards, (2)service and human resources must be
developed as strategic tactics that are valuable to the organization, (3)managers and supervisors
must believe that these tactics are vital to the success of the organization and support a service
organization and customer conscious employees, and (4) employees must have an understanding
of relationship marketing, employees should know that in addition to their main tasks, they also
have a responsibility to do marketing on the firm’s behalf (133).” The service industry builds its
foundation on the fact that when an employee is in uniform, said employee is a representative of
the company and everything that company holds true and valuable. This is a key component
involved with working at Stone Mountain Park.
“Applicant-employee similarity and attraction to an employer” by Shelba A. Devendorf
and Scott Highhouse from the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology. This
reading shows the connection between the workplace’s projected image and a potential
employee’s own interests in regards to the employer’s image. Some explanations are “the first
reason that we might expect applicants to be attracted to an organization whose employees are
similar to them is that similarity facilitates social interaction and provides a sense of comfort,
presumably from avoidance of disagreement. People like to be liked, and similarity enhances
expectations of mutual need gratification in the form of reciprocal liking. A second reason to
expect applicants to be attracted to organization whose employees are similar to them is that
people want to be seen with other who are like them. Social identity theory suggests that people
tend to classify themselves and others into various social categories (608).” This attraction to a
place like that employees those of a similar background would account for the employee
composition being African American. However, the guests who visit Stone Mountain Park are
not usually of a similar background or race like that of the employees; guests often appear to be
white and middle class. Do the guests prefer to be served by people who are different from
themselves?
“Minimizing Workplace Gender and Racial Bias” from Contemporary Sociology and
published by American Sociological Association. This piece focused on the gender stereotyping
that can occur in the workplace as seen in “experimental studies on stereotyping show that male
and female job applicants with identical personal traits are matched according to their gender to
jobs that are considered predominantly male and predominantly female (122).” Because Stone
Mountain Park is a service and hospitality site, is there a correlation between the significantly
higher numbers of females over males employed to suggest that females are more adept with
providing customer service and guest satisfaction as opposed to the male counterpart? For any of
the electrical or maintenance jobs at the park, the workers have all been males from what I have
seen in the last five years of working there. Is there a gender separation occurring during or
within the hiring process that should be addressed?
Bibliography
Bertrand, M., & Mullainathan, S. (2007). Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha
and Jamal?: A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination. In D. B. Grusky, & S.
Szelénji, The Inequality Reader: Contemporary and Foundational Readings in Race,
Class, and Gender (pp. 246-252). Boulder: Westview Press.
Bielby, W. T. (2000, Jan). Minimizing Workplace Gender and Racial Bias. Retrieved November
5, 2009, from JSTOR: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2654937
Curtis, C. R., & Upchurch, R. S. (2008). A case study in establishing a positive service culture:
Attachment and involvement in the workplace. Journal of Retail & Leisure Property , 7
(2), 131-138.
Devendorf, S. A., & Highhouse, S. (2008). Applicant-employee similarity and attraction to an
employer. Journal of Occupational and Organization Psychology , 81, 607-617.
Ehrenreich, B. (2007). Nickel-and-Dimed: On (not) Getting by in America. In D. B. Grusky, &
S. Szelényi, The Inequality Reader: Contemporary and Foundational Readings in Race,
Class, and Gender (pp. 123-134). Boulder: Westview Press.