The definition, theoretical modelling and empirical research of front-line service employee corporate identity within a UK national grocery retailer:determining the FLE corporate brand identification construct

Over the past forty years the corporate identity literature has developed to a point of maturity where it currently contains many definitions and models of the corporate identity construct at the organisational level. The literature has evolved by developing models of corporate identity or in considering corporate identity in relation to new and developing themes, e.g. corporate social responsibility. It has evolved into a multidisciplinary domain recently incorporating constructs from other literature to further its development. However, the literature has a number of limitations. It remains that an overarching and universally accepted definition of corporate identity is elusive, potentially leaving the construct with a lack of clear definition. Only a few corporate identity definitions and models, at the corporate level, have been empirically tested. The corporate identity construct is overwhelmingly defined and theoretically constructed at the corporate level, leaving the literature without a detailed understanding of its influence at an individual stakeholder level. Front-line service employees (FLEs), form a component in a number of corporate identity models developed at the organisational level. FLEs deliver the services of an organisation to its customers, as well as represent the organisation by communicating and transporting its core defining characteristics to customers through continual customer contact and interaction. This person-to-person contact between an FLE and the customer is termed a service encounter, where service encounters influence a customer’s perception of both the service delivered and the associated level of service quality. Therefore this study for the first time defines, theoretically models and empirically tests corporate identity at the individual FLE level, termed FLE corporate identity. The study uses the services marketing literature to characterise an FLE’s operating environment, arriving at five potential dimensions to the FLE corporate identity construct. These are scrutinised against existing corporate identity definitions and models to arrive at a definition for the construct. In reviewing the corporate identity, services marketing, branding and organisational psychology literature, a theoretical model is developed for FLE corporate identity, which is empirically and quantitatively tested, with FLEs in seven stores of a major national retailer. Following rigorous construct reliability and validity testing, the 601 usable responses are used to estimate a confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation model for the study. The results for the individual hypotheses and the structural model are very encouraging, as they fit the data well and support a definition of FLE corporate identity. This study makes contributions to the branding, services marketing and organisational psychology literature, but its principal contribution is to extend the corporate identity literature into a new area of discourse and research, that of FLE corporate identity

Overall justice, work group identification and work outcomes:test of moderated mediation process

This study examined an integrated model of the antecedents and outcomes of organisational and overall justice using a sample of Indian Call Centre employees (n = 458). Results of structural equation modelling (SEM) revealed that the four organisational justice dimensions relate to overall justice. Further, work group identification mediated the influence of overall justice on counterproductive work behaviors, such as presenteeism and social loafing, while conscientiousness was a significant moderator between work group identification and presenteeism and social loafing. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

The role of wisdom in organisational leadership

This thesis begins with a review of the literature on wisdom models, theories of wise leadership, and existing wisdom measures. It continues with a review of how the concept of wisdom may add value to existing leadership models, highlighting the need to empirically identify the characteristics of wise leaders and develop a wise leadership measure. A nomological framework for wise leadership is then presented. Based on a review of the wisdom and leadership paradigms, a mixed-methods research design is described for three studies to define the characteristics of wise leadership in organisations; identify specific leadership challenges that might require wise responses; and to develop the wise leadership measure comprising of vignettes. The first study involves critical incident interviews with 26 nominated wise leaders and 23 of their nominators, which led to the identification of nine wise leadership dimensions which include Strong Ethical Code, Strong Judgement, Optimising Positive Outcomes, Managing Uncertainty, Strong Legacy, Leading with Purpose, Humanity, Humility, and Self-Awareness. The second study includes critical incident interviews with 20 leaders about organisational challenges associated with the nine dimensions, to elucidate the wise leadership measure. The third study includes the design of 45 vignettes based on organisational challenges that measure the nine wise leadership dimensions. The measure is then administered to 250 organisational leaders to establish its construct validity, leading to the selection of 18 vignettes forming the final wise leadership measure. Theoretical, methodological and practical implications of this research are then discussed with recommendations for future research.

Transition to Product Service Systems: methodology based on scenarios identification, modelling and evaluation

Part 4: Transition Towards Product-Service Systems

Texture for Script identification

The problem of determining the script and language of a document image has a number of important applications in the field of document analysis, such as indexing and sorting of large collections of such images, or as a precursor to optical character recognition (OCR). In this paper, we investigate the use of texture as a tool for determining the script of a document image, based on the observation that text has a distinct visual texture. An experimental evaluation of a number of commonly used texture features is conducted on a newly created script database, providing a qualitative measure of which features are most appropriate for this task. Strategies for improving classification results in situations with limited training data and multiple font types are also proposed.