PROJECT MANAGEMENT HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY

Project Management Hospitality Industry

Project Management Hospitality Industry

Introduction

Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) is the international standard for food safety management, and its use is advocated in the hospitality industry. Many HACCP uptake studies are methodologically limited, showing higher levels of implementation than is likely to be the case. Indeed as the depth of the research increases, figures on the successful uptake of HACCP decrease. Despite this, figures from the hospitality industry have always been especially low, from 4 to 33 per cent. In 2002, a wide reaching international survey concluded that there had been no systematic, effective implementation of HACCP in the hospitality industry anywhere in the world (Taylor, 2008a).

Project Management Hospitality Industry

It is widely recognised that there are barriers to the implementation of HACCP, and papers one and two in this special theme issue explain the reasons for this from both a theoretical and practical point of view (Taylor, 2008b; Taylor and Forte, 2008). However, there is little in-depth, discovery-based research in this area, and none that focuses on the hospitality industry. The aim of this research is to carry out a detailed and in-depth investigation into the practical and psychological barriers to food safety management and HACCP in the hospitality industry. This paper will present the results of narrative interviews and documentary analysis in 22 small businesses, carried out as part of the development process of a new method of HACCP for hospitality. Their purpose was to identify the barriers to HACCP and food safety management in hospitality.

The outcomes from this paper were used as a starting point to develop an innovative new method of HACCP for the hospitality industry in 2002; this is detailed in Paper Four in this special theme issue (Taylor and Taylor, 2008).

Research in the field of HACCP and food safety, both complex and sensitive subjects, is often methodologically limited for several reasons. These include a reliance on self-reporting often at a distance, superficial categories or questions, generalisations made from very low response rates and a lack of “discovery” (Taylor and Taylor, 2008).

The narrative interview technique used in this research project is based on the biographic-interpretive method that was used in Germany in the 1970s. Schütze (1977) argued that standardised interviews were experienced as something strange by the interviewees, as something that did not have anything to do with their everyday communication, and forced them into a passive role. He explored the use of biographic narratives to understand the meanings that individuals give to their lives and the social phenomena that they have experienced.

The use of “story telling” as a valid research technique has gained growing recognition in recent years. Indeed, the use of biographies, narratives and personal accounts has grown so dramatically in the social sciences it is even debated whether there is a fundamental paradigm shift towards this type of research (Chamberlayne et al., 2000).

In 2001, Taylor and Taylor (2003, 2004) utilised an adapted form of the narrative interview method to uncover and expand the understanding of barriers to the ...