Human Resource and Management

Course number: 26336
Course leader: Denise Thursfield

Human Resource and Management Assignment:

Thomas Cook warns of job losses and blames weak consumer spending

Table of Contents Introduction 4 Thomas Cook’s Business Strategy 4 Thomas Cook’s Model of Strategic HRM 4 Defining the Best Fit Approach 5 Strategy Recommendations 5 Ethical Issues 6 The Resource Based View Approach 6 Defining the Resource Based View Approach 6 Strategy Recommendations 7 Conclusion 7 Bibliography 8 Articles 8 Books 8 Websites 8

Introduction

Over the past few years the travel industry has faced an extremely uncertain outlook and we have observed the negative impacts of the economical crisis on the tourism market’s growth.
This unstable context makes the customers’ demand decrease and their behaviours evolve in terms of their way of purchasing, choice of destination and budget.
Managers across the globe were forced to change their company’s priorities and establish competitive strategies allowing them to compete within this new environment.
As the labour force is the most important capital in the company, the managers tend to, little by little, mobilise and develop the HR for a better performance matching their business strategy to a strong SHRM.

We will discuss the way that companies can face the demand’s decrease on the travel market by taking the case of Thomas Cook, a touristic travel agency implanted in 21 countries, and also affected by the irregular situation of the market (down £0.5bn on last year’s turnover).
We will first outline its business strategy, then study its Best Fit approach and how the strategy might be applied. Finally, we will compare its model of strategic HRM with the Resource Based View to show the different solutions a company could use.

Thomas Cook’s Business Strategy

For several months, the company suffered weak demand because of the volcanic ash cloud that closed UK