The contribution of internship in developing industry relevant management competencies among hotel and tourism management students - Theory and Practice in Hospitality and Tourism Research - page 3

The contribution of internship in developing industry relevant
management competencies among hotel and tourism management
students

A.H. Ahmad Ridzuan & N.C. Ahmat
Faculty of Hotel and Tourism Management, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Penang, Malaysia

A.A. Azdel
Faculty of Hotel and Tourism Management, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam, Malaysia

ABSTRACT: Among the goals of higher education is to prepare students for their future career. Tradi-
tionally, universities and colleges education emphasises on teaching theoretical knowledge, but industry
demand practical skills and practices. This disparity somehow create imbalance between what industry
wants and what academician are offering. Hospitality and tourism employers reported that they faced
scarcity of suitably qualified employees in both management and skilled workers. With that, internship
has become a major factor in the curricula and has been actively pursued as a viable procedure for bridg-
ing the theoretical world of academia and the practical world of industry. It is said that education of these
potential future employees need to be more aligned with the industry in order to compete in the rapidly
changing business practical skills and management competencies besides strengthen the networking with
the opportunity to screen potential employees.

Keywords : Hospitality, internship, management competencies

1 INTRODUCTION further raised a critical question whether there is

any development in hospitality student's manage-
ment competencies before and after the internship
program in order to measure the effectiveness of
the internship program. However, limited attempts
have been made to provide empirical support to
claim that a practical internship experience devel-
ops management competencies in hotel and tour-
ism students especially in Malaysia hospitality
education context. This paper will investigate the
contribution of internship in developing industry
relevant management competencies among hospi-
tality and tourism students.

Hospitality career education program is offered
to train individuals to work in the vast sector of
hospitality industry which demand a significant
amount of young trained professional. Due to
fast paced changes in the hospitality industry with
great emphasis on employability skills, there is a
need to determine the level of competencies that
graduates in hospitality management program
should possess before moving on to workplace.
With the increasing number of hospitality gradu-
ates, questions have emerged regarding industry
expectations pertaining to the generic managerial
competencies. Do hospitality education programs
adequately prepare their students with the employ-
ability skills? If not, can the program be improved
or changed to meet the demands of the employers?
What is at stake is significant or else, colleges and
universities may be failing to prepare graduates to
meet the demands and expectations of the indus-
try (Robinson, 2006). The combination of theory
with practical is viewed as an essential component
in hospitality and tourism management education.
Internship, which originated as apprenticeship and
then evolved into academic based experience have
long been regarded as important experiences. This

2 REVIEW OF LITERATURE

2.1 Management competencies
Previous scholars defined manager competencies
as traits, skills, and values of effective managers
(Boyatzis, 2008; Mihail, 2006) or in other words of
saying, competencies are a combination of observ-
able and applied knowledge, skills, and behaviours
that create a competitive advantage for an organi-
zation. However, Quinn, Faerman Thompson,and
McGrath (2003) argued that competency suggest