Organizational change in the hospitality industry: The change drivers in a longitudinal analysis

The aim of this contribution is to develop an understanding of the trajectories and drivers of organizational change in small and medium hospitality enterprises from the 1920s to the 2010s, focusing on an Italian seaside destination that experienced an enduring success: Rimini. By conducting oral history fieldwork and integrating this with documentary evidence, we reconstructed the organizational models adopted by 42 entrepreneurs, which can be captured by 4 prevailing organizational ideal types: Managerial, Informal, Customized, and Bureaucratic. The findings explain the historical evolution of organizational models in SMEs by focusing on the different role played in each period by specific change drivers, such as generational shift, customer behaviour and competition, between tourist destinations. In addition, they allow an understanding of the process through which the resilience of old organizational models creates a context of functional redundancy, which strengthens the competitiveness of the tourist destination.