Management Shadowing Program: An Incubator for Prospective Managers in the Tourism and Hospitality Industry

Year 2019, Volume: 9 Issue: 2, 169 - 184, 30.12.2019

Demet Ceylan Duygu Özyeşil

Abstract

The hospitality industry needs qualified work-ready graduates with skills but unfortunately tourism students are changing their career paths outside tourism and/or cannot obtain a managerial perspective. The Management Shadowing Program joins up the dots between academia, graduates and practitioners with real-life experiences from the management perspective, which opens a new window of opportunity for tourism graduates in a preference towards a career in tourism. This program enables theoretical in-class learning and summer internship practical experience at a managerial level, leading to the utilization of data within practical contexts. The holistic multiple explanatory case study method utilized in this study reveals how industry-academia cooperation can effectively produce prospective managers of hospitality. Semi-structured interviews, focus group, weekly report content analysis, participant observations and questionnaires were used for the triangulation of data collection and analysis. The aim of this study is to propose a model for a Management Shadowing Program that can be used as an incubator for prospective graduates with the clear target of developing their managerial skills via experiential learning and creating a talent pool for the industry, as well as assurance of curriculum for academia and to evaluate the outcomes of the program from the perspectives of both alumni and the sector.

Keywords

Management Shadowing, Academia and Tourism Industry Partnership, Mentor - Protégé Learning-Teaching Method, Developing and Retaining Talents in Tourism and Hospitality

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