Integrating algorithmic management in hotels: Emerging challenges and opportunities for frontline managers
通过德尔菲法研究，探讨酒店引入算法管理后一线管理者角色转变，发现其需从控制者转为支持者，承担沟通、绩效、社交和创意促进职能，并催生“算法教练”新角色。
The increasing adoption of Algorithmic Management in the hospitality sector presents a number of challenges and opportunities. Emergent research has considered the impacts on operational staff. However, the implications for frontline managers, who have to negotiate between the interests of multiple stakeholders and organisational pressures, are less well understood. This paper examines key factors that will affect the comprehension and enactment of managerial roles within algorithmically managed hotels, drawing on a three-stage Delphi study with hotel managers and academic experts, built on the Competing Values Framework. The findings stress that Algorithmic Management’s impact on productivity and process standardisation will intensify work demands, and risk stifling employee motivation and collaboration. Hence, managers must evolve from controllers to supportive actors, improving understanding, facilitating employee empowerment and aiding transparency in algorithmic decisions. We conceptualise these functions as communication, performance, social and creative facilitation. The findings are used to theorise how emerging socio-technological arrangements will transform line management, driving the expansion of translational work and the emergence of what we call ‘algorithmic coaching’. • Uses Delphi method to identify impacts of adopting algorithmic management systems. • Shows how algorithmic principles and practices could shape employee experiences. • Proposes communication, performance, social and creative facilitation as responses. • Examines the growing importance of line managers’ translational capacities. • Conceptualises the potential of algorithmic coaching in human-technology relations.