The research conducted for this article is of benefit to both academics and
practitioners alike. It has demonstrated that in some industry/country contexts a
‘best-practice’ approach may deliver more benefits to hotel businesses and their
employees than a ‘best-fit’ approach. The findings should give confidence to
Barbadian hotel employers and industry bodies that their approaches to the
management of people are effective in their context and that they do not have to be
seduced by more recent US-influenced models of HR. This may be attributed to the
fact that national and corporate cultures are likely to be different as one crosses
borders. For example, we know from Hofstede’s (1994) work on national culture
that developing countries are more likely to be characterized by high collectivism and
high power distance—just the opposite of the cultural characteristics of the US and
the UK. The authors would like to finish with an exhortation that more studies
should be conducted in countries that are not predominantly influenced by an
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Anglo-American ideology. This would provide an important counter-balance to our
existing knowledge about different approaches to the management of people.