The emergence of hotel consortia as transorganizational forms

Recent research has queried the capability of hotel consortia organizations to compete in the hotel sector. Discusses the results of this investigation. A working definition was developed and employed to classify a fieldwork sample of 29 organizations. The concepts of generic strategy and organization structure and process were then used as a framework for identifying and isolating distinctive organizational characteristics relating to each consortium in order to construct strategic groups. The subsequent classification of multiple strategic groups indicated the forces of competitive rivalry in the hotel sector and the pertinent linkages between strategy and structure were identifiable in these groupings. An extended analysis of three consortia used a qualitative case approach to address in more detail the characteristics of a smaller set of organizations. Shows that consortia by nature can only partially, if at all, optimize the structure and process characteristics necessary for sustaining effective collective strategies. Therefore questions the long‐term survival of these “transorganizational” forms.