Modelling Power; Based on Women’s Low Participation at Senior Levels in Elite Kitchens in the United Kingdom

Modelling Power; Based on Women’s Low Participation at Senior Levels in Elite Kitchens in the United Kingdom

This paper emerged from a case study on women’s low participation at senior levels in elite, Michelin rated kitchens in the United Kingdom (UK), where one of the key contributions to theory was a model of the field of power. It aims at exposing how operational powers cause women’s low participation. This study will explain how the power model was developed and enriched by the in-depth interpretations gained through interviewing detached expert observers of the industry. The aim of this paper is to encourage the application of the developed power model by academics and practitioners in a variety of contexts, particularly where power is thought to effect poor outcomes in the hospitality industry. The model enables a researcher to cover complexity in terms of its scope, and richness in terms of the power dimensions, filling an enormous theoretical gap where comprehensive power models are almost totally absent. The model has been used to stimulate and enrich other studies. In various ways, it has been crucial and very constructive in unravelling the theoretical complexity of social power, so that structure and order can be given to a hypothesis. It was very successfully used as a framework in the completion of another study that focussed on a completely separate issue in Hospitality Management. The model must also be seen as generic and has demonstrated great potential for conceptualising power in any social setting