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Case Study

Accor: Global excellence through people

By Philip Rosenzweig

33 pages

August 1999

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Reference: IMD-3-0756

In 1998, Accor was the world’s leading hotel and business service company. It had developed the most extensive hotel network in the world, the second largest network of travel agencies worldwide, the largest fleet of rental cars in Europe and was the world leader in service vouchers. Accor’s workforce of more than 120,000 employees, made it one of the largest multinationals in terms of employment. This case describes Accor’s distinctive approach toward workforce management. Part I traces Accor’s growth and evolution, with specific attention paid to its philosophy and principles of management. Part II describes Accor’s workforce, segmenting it along several dimensions. Part III discusses training at Accor, with a particular focus on the Acadimie Accor. Part IV briefly describes a few aspects of career development at Accor. Part V shows how Accor combines training and career development to achieve a particular objective: setting up a new hotel in a foreign country. Part VI offers a few summary observations about Accor’s approach to managing a complex multinational business. The objective is to convey some of the ways that Accor achieves global excellence through its emphasis on people.

Keywords

Workforce Management, Employee Empowerment, Decentralization, Hotel

Settings

World/global, France
1997-1998

Type

Field Research

Available Languages

English

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