Setting up a Restaurant La Napoli in Hong Kong

Contents Page

Executive Summary 3

Introduction 4

The body 5

Conclusion 10

Recommendations 11

Bibliography 12

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Executive Summary

La Napoli is a new restaurant opening in Hong Kong that will provide a high quality of service and standard of food to its clients. La Napoli has been trading for 18 months and is owned and funded by the Tom Brown's Restaurant Group but currently managed by the American/ Italian Master chef Luigi Campio.

La Napoli has chosen to target a high priced market, one of a few in and around the area of Hong Kong. La Napoli has currently a very disorganised staffing situation with all kind of problems involving the organisation of the stock.

Current trade is slow for La Napoli, and with no consideration for the other half of the possible custom their current staff are only able to speak English and therefore no consideration was taken into account for the Cantonese speaking nationals of Hong Kong. Due to the disagreements in management in La Napoli, the only current member of managerial staff left is Luigi Campio.

A search for a solution of the differences that occurred between the staff that lead to the failure of La Napoli, with the obvious assumption that there was too many people working in the organisational structure with completely different cultural beliefs.

For La Napoli to successfully turn their short-comings around they are analysed and can clearly see that Campio's input is making the situation in hand far worse than better. A solution may be to incorporate more locals into the organisation with more of a general idea of the local cultural psychology, and will therefore have more of an idea of the demand and taste for cuisine in and around Hong Kong.

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Introduction

The culture of Hong Kong, the framework of Hong Kong's society and the locals beliefs is to be tested with the company Tom Brown's Restaurant Group. Tom Brown's Restaurant Group is a mid-priced chain established in the administrative region of Hong Kong and has been approached by Compio an International Masterchef who prides himself on his Italian cuisine, of which was based in the United States.

John Clarke, a board member of Tom Brown's Restaurant Group requires analysis on the shortcomings and why the culture issues facing La Napoli restaurant.

La Napoli has symptoms and problems to be analysed, with key management problems to which will be identified along with solutions a link to theory, the culture shock and what emotions are in the workplace throughout.

La Napoli is a Restaurant created to capitalise upon the availability and market gap for the demand of Italian food in Hong Kong, there was only a little market research taken but proved to be quite useful and in fact meant that Luigi Compio (An American/ Italian Master chef) who had proposed the idea to Chris Parkes (Tom Brown's CEO) had found himself a potentially prosperous idea.

Luigi Compio had his own thoughts of how the restaurant/ pasticeria should be run and had asked for his own individual choice of how the business should be run. The result of Luigi Compio's demands meant that other managerial bodies in the office had many disagreements due to cultural and psychological management differences. The result of Luigi Compio's management styler meant that the faith of his staff, and the board was lost due to his short fuse and temperament level, and management beliefs.

A report has therefore been created to identify the problems that are involved in the trading of La Napoli, outlining the cultural problems with the local rituals and routines, the organisational structure and cultural differences between the local employees and the cultural ideas of Luigi Compio.

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The Body

Luigi Campio has moved himself from the United States to the everchanging and globalizing Hong Kong, somewhere of which Campio knew a lot and how to satisfy the tastes of the American culture but unfortunately has not took into account and the consideration of the locals of Hong Kong. The cultural differences between them both was not exactly anaylsed and the event of Campio using his culture and normality has meant that the normality of the American was quite clearly different to the normality of Hong Kong. Globalization advancing and expanding and the business environment constantly changing, some researchers have conducted cross-national analyses of ethical beliefs (Preble &Reichel, 1988; Lysonski & Gaidis, 1991; Nyaw & Ng 1994).

Campio must have some theories in that all behaviour is learned (Locke) and his option to attempt to pay as little as possible led to the result of many staff being absent. Campio seemed to have gender roles set in place, with the male gender having the job roles of serving customers in the restaurant, where as the female staff was limited to the pasticeria, which was actually only 3 staff members.

Problems outlined with staff also included the language barrier, and although communication was okay within the company and with only one member of staff having little capabilities of speaking English thoroughly there was still a language barrier between the potential customer base, the reason being that 50% of Hong Kong's language maybe English but the other 50% was Cantonese, a language of which Campio had not considered when hiring his staff.

The organisational culture was a problem for La Napoli, including the individual behaviour of employees, the way in which employees interact with each other, the management and developing of employees with the difference in cultural normalities, the company's framework and the social desirability, the way in which the team works together including the relationships bonding together with consideration taken place with the work practices and work orientation.

Campio's behaviour towards his staff, his fellow management team and just