[Review of the Book The Challenge of Organizational Change: How Companies Experience It and Leaders Guide It]

[Excerpt] Overall, this book is an important contribution to the organizational studies literature. The Big-Three Model and the case studies supporting it provide new insights regarding the ways in which changes affect individuals and organizations. Further theoretical developments should build on this framework, and incorporate elements of this model into more detailed schemas of change. The authors have exposed many new research questions and provided many lessons for practitioners. I look forward to additional work from them.

Improving the Utilization of Front-Line Service Delivery System Personnel

There are two types of work typically performed in services which differ in the degree of control management has over when the work must be done. Serving customers, an activity that can occur only when customers are in the system is, by its nature, uncontrollable work. In contrast, the execution of controllable work does not require the presence of customers, and is work over which management has some degree of temporal control. This paper presents two integer programming models for optimally scheduling controllable work simultaneously with shifts. One model explicitly defines variables for the times at which controllable work may be started, while the other uses implicit modeling to reduce the number of variables. In an initial experiment of 864 test problems, the latter model yielded optimal solutions in approximately 81 percent of the time required by the former model. To evaluate the impact on customer service of having front-line employees perform controllable work, a second experiment was conducted simulating 5,832 service delivery systems. The results show that controllable work offers a useful means of improving labor utilization. Perhaps more important, it was found that having front-line employees perform controllable work did not degrade the desired level of customer service.

Accounting for the Multi-Period Impact of Service When Determining Employee Requirements for Labor Scheduling

Providing good customer service, inexpensively, is a problem commonly faced by managers of service operations. To tackle this problem, managers must do four tasks: forecast customer demand for the service; translate these forecasts into employee requirements; develop a labor schedule that provides appropriate numbers of employees at appropriate times; and control the delivery of the service in real-time. This paper focuses upon the translation of forecasts of customer demand into employee requirements. Specifically, it presents and evaluates two methods for determining desired staffing levels. One of these methods is a traditional approach to the task, while the other, by using modified customer arrival rates, offers a better means of accounting for the multi-period impact of customer service. To calculate the modified arrival rates, the latter method reduces (increases) the actual customer arrival rate for a period to account for customers who arrived in the period (in earlier periods) but have some of their service performed in subsequent periods (in the period). In an experiment simulating 13824 service delivery environments, the new method demonstrated its superiority by serving 2.74% more customers within the specified waiting time limit while using 7.57% fewer labor hours.

It is Time for Something New: A 21st Century Joint-Employer Doctrine for 21st Century Franchising

[Excerpt] The joint-employer doctrine is perhaps the hottest issue in labor and employment law for 2015 and the foreseeable future. In the September 2015 Browning-Ferris ("BFI”) decision, the National Labor Relations Board (the "NLRB" or the "Board"), the administrative agency that enforces the National Labor Relations Act (the "NLRA" or the "Act"), issued what is expected to be the first of two decisions, expanding the joint-employer doctrine. In the BFI decision, the so-called putative employer (e.g., the lessor of employees or a franchisor) is now considered the employer of individuals who had in the past been considered employees of the supplier employer. Like in Browning-Ferris, a number of McDonald's employees and the Service Employees International Union ("SEIU") are arguing that the world's largest franchisor is the joint employer of all its franchisees' employees. At first blush, one might believe that this is another esoteric labor and employment law issue that only lawyers and scholars care about. However, depending on how the Board and courts rule on this issue, the joint-employer doctrine could fundamentally change business in the United States by destroying the franchise model.

Free Drink or Free Mug? Managing Service Experience with Experiential vs. Material Complimentary Gifts

In the marketplace, complimentary gifts can take the form of experiential elements (e.g., a meal) or material items (e.g., tangible objects such as a mug). We identify these free gifts as a meaningful service design choice that helps service providers innovate service. Specifically, we examine the circumstances under which experiential or material gifts are preferred and generate greater consumer satisfaction, enhancing the overall service experience. Across three experiments, we demonstrate that consumers are generally happier with experiential offerings, and they prefer (and are more satisfied with) experiential offerings on ordinary consumption occasions; experiential elements are believed to further enrich otherwise mundane experiences. However, this experiential advantage disappears for consumers on meaningful and special occasions because of a strong desire to obtain a memory cue that will help them recall the experience. Indeed, the preference for a material item holds only when the gift has the quality to serve as a salient memory marker, but not when it lacks this quality. This research provides insight for managers to take into account consumption occasions or type of consumers (e.g., special occasions, repeat customers) to effectively design service bundles with complimentary gifts and thus better manage overall service experience.

The Influence of Table Top Technology in Full-service Restaurants

The use of tabletop technology continues to grow in the restaurant industry, and this study identifies the strengths and weakness of the technology, how it influences customers, and how it can improve the bottom line for managers and business owners. Results from two studies involving a full-service casual dining chain show that dining time was significantly reduced among patrons who used the tabletop hardware to order or pay for their meals, as was the time required for servers to meet the needs of customers. Also, those who used the devices to order a meal tended to spend more than those who did not. Patrons across the industry have embraced guest-facing technology, such as online reservation systems, mobile apps, payment apps, and tablet-based systems, and may in fact look for such technology when deciding where to dine. Guests’ reactions have been overwhelmingly positive, with 70 to 80 percent of consumers citing the benefits of guest-facing technology and applications. The introduction of tabletop technology in the full-service segment has been slower than in quick-service restaurants (QSRs), and guests cite online reservation systems, online ordering, and tableside payment as preferred technologies. Restaurant operators have also cited benefits of guest-facing technology, for example, the use of electronic ordering, which led to increased sales as such systems can induce the purchase of more expensive menu items and side dishes while allowing managers to store order and payment information for future transactions. Researchers have also noted the cost of the technology and potential problems with integration into other systems as two main factors blocking adoption.