ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the concept of bounded rationality and explores how managerial knowledge can be categorised to show to what purpose it can be applied. It also explores how prior knowledge impacts upon decision-making and suggests that there are ways of seeing managers own knowledge. What makes collective knowledge personal is that organisational activities, cultural signs and routines convey internalised principles and a rationale which has the effect of being accepted as personal knowledge by individuals. Like any traditional industry, hospitality is built upon a foundation of practical knowledge, some of which amounts to skilled craftsmanship. Three perspectives on knowledge are helpful to unravelling those implications: those managers have limits to our knowledge, that knowledge is something that carries value, and that knowledge is accumulated in a social context. The value of using prior knowledge is fairly obvious, and in a traditional industry like hospitality the manager may be on safe ground.
