The impact of employees' customer orientation and service orientation behaviours on customers' service evaluation

In this paper the authors conceptualize and test the effects of service employees’ customer orientation and service orientation behaviors within an extended service evaluation model encompassing service quality, service encounter quality, perceived value and customer satisfaction. The context is 271 Indian retail customers. Data analysis incorporates confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. We find that Findings indicate that: 1) customer orientation is positively related to service orientation, customers’ perceptions of service encounter quality and service quality; 2) service orientation influences customers’ perceptions of service encounter quality and service quality; 3) customers’ perceptions of service encounter quality influence customers’ perceptions of service quality and customer satisfaction; 4) customers’ perceptions of service quality influence value perceptions; 5) service quality influences customer satisfaction; and 6) customer satisfaction influences customers’ behavioral intentions. The importance of these findings for practitioners and academics, research limitations and future research avenues are subsequently discussed.

The relative influence of organisational commitment and job-satisfaction on service quality of customer-contact employees in banking call centres

An inter-disciplinary approach is adopted to provide a deeper understanding of the human resource-service quality relationship. The paper tests the relationships organisational commitment and job satisfaction have with service quality of customer-contact employees. Hypotheses are constructed by reviewing literature in the areas of human resource management and services marketing. A study comprising 342 employees was conducted in four telephone call centres of a major UK retail bank. Investigates how different forms of organisational commitment and job satisfaction influence the service quality delivered by contact employees. Findings indicate that job satisfaction and organisational commitment of employees have a significant impact on service quality delivered. The affective component of commitment was found to be more important than job satisfaction in determining service quality of customer-contact employees.

A comparative analysis of cultural value orientations of Polish and Turkish employees:implications for international human resource management

This study empirically compares and contrasts the cultural value orientations of employees from Poland and Turkey by testing the compatibility of their values in three stages through seven cultural dimensions. The first phase of the study deals with the assessment of inter-country cultural value differences; the second phase investigates the intra-country cultural dynamics between selected demographic groups; and the third phase examines the inter-country cultural differences among the selected demographic groups of employees. The research has been conducted adopting the Maznevski, DiStephano, and Nason's (1995) version of cultural perspectives questionnaire with a sample of 744 (548 Polish and 196 Turkish) respondents. The results show significant cultural differences between Poland and Turkey, a presence of cultural dynamics among certain demographic groups within the country, and a mixture of convergence and divergence in the value systems of certain demographic groups both within and between the two nation(s). The research findings convey important messages to international human resource strategists in order for them to employ an effective and rational employment policy and business negotiation approach(es) to effectively operate in these countries. It also highlights that diversity of cultural values not only requires viewing each of them through cultural dimensions at a macro-level with a cross-country reference, but also requires monitoring their dynamics at the micro-level with reference to controlled demographic groups. © 2013 Taylor & Francis.

The impact of relational demography on the quality of leader-member exchanges and employees' work attitudes and well-being

This study investigated the role of differences in age, organizational tenure and gender between manager and employee as potential moderators between employees' leader-member exchanges (LMX) and related work outcomes. The results support the interaction effect of manager-employee organizational tenure difference with LMX and outcome variables. Employees with a high organizational tenure difference from the manager reported the worst work outcomes when they perceived LMX was of low quality, whereas when the quality of LMX was high, they reported the highest work attitudes and well-being.

Angel grants employees their wish – for time off in return for high performance:new breed of incentives based on what staff really want from their employer

Purpose – Describes a new breed of HR strategies that encourage employee involvement and commitment as part of high-performance working (HPW). Design/methodology/approach – Focuses on managing employee attitudes and skills through careful attention to leadership, reward and job-design policies. Highlights the differences between people's formal employment contracts and their less formal “psychological contracts”, and emphasizes the importance of the latter. Provides a case study of UK recruitment consultancy Angel Services Group Ltd, which allows staff who meet their daily targets to go home an hour early. Findings – Urges companies to have processes in place to understand the needs of individual employees. This can be done through leadership policies that require all supervisors and managers not only to manage their staff but also to know them as people. Practical implications – Emphasizes that organizations need to see HPW initiatives as part of the normal way of managing people, and not as “flavour of the month”. Originality/value – Outlines a wide range of initiatives that could help organizations to gain their employees' commitment.

The link between job satisfaction and organizational commitment:differences between public and private sector employees

Employees in the public and private sectors experience different working conditions and employment relationships. Therefore, it can be assumed that their attitudes toward their job and organizations, and relationships between them, are different. The existing literature has identified the relationship between organizational commitment and job satisfaction as interesting in this context. The present field study examines the satisfaction–commitment link with respect to differences between private and public sector employees. A sample of 617 Greek employees (257 from the private sector and 360 from the public sector) completed standardized questionnaires. Results confirmed the hypothesized relationship differences: Extrinsic satisfaction and intrinsic satisfaction are more strongly related to affective commitment and normative commitment for public sector employees than for private sector ones. The results are discussed, limitations are considered, and directions for future research are proposed.

Individual spirit at work and its outcomes:an empirical examination in corporate Thailand

The purpose of the present study was to conduct empirical research in corporate Thailand in order to (1) investigate the relationships between individual spirit at work and three employee work attitudinal variables (organisational identification, job satisfaction and psychological well-being) and three organisational outcomes (in-role performance, organisational citizenship behaviours (OCB), and turnover intentions) (2) further examine causal relations among these organisational behaviour variables with a longitudinal design (3) examine three employee work attitudes as mediator variables between individual spirit at work and three organisational outcomes and (4) explore the potential antecedents of organisational conditions that foster employee experienced individual spirit at work. The 715 completed questionnaires were received from the first wave of data collection during July 2008 and the second wave was conducted again within the same organisations and 501 completed questionnaires were received during April 2009. Data were obtained through 52 organisations which were from three types of organisations within Thailand: public organisations (N=237,185), for-profit organisations (N=244,155), and not-for-profit organisations (N=234,161). Confirmatory factor analysis of all measures used in the study and hypothesized model were tested with structural equation modeling techniques. Results were strongly supportive. In addition, although the model was invariant across rater of performance and OCB, there were differences across self report and supervisor rating. Additionally, the antecedents of organisational conditions that fostered employees experienced individual spirit at work and the implications of these findings for practice and research are discussed.

Health of entrepreneurs versus employees in a national representative sample

Prior research has found entrepreneurs to experience significantly higher job control and job demands compared with employees. This suggests that entrepreneurs have so-called active jobs and thus may benefit from positive health consequences. The present research compared entrepreneurs' health with employees' health in a national representative sample with regard to the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, 10th revision (ICD-10) diagnoses of somatic diseases, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition (DSM-IV) diagnoses of mental disorders, blood pressure, well-being (life-satisfaction) as well as behavioural health indicators (sick days, physician visits). Entrepreneurs showed significantly lower overall somatic and mental morbidity, lower blood pressure, lower prevalence rates of hypertension, and somatoform disorders, as well as higher well-being and more favourable behavioural health indicators. The results are discussed with regard to the active job hypothesis and recommendations for future research are provided.

Tissue protein turnover and its modulation by biochemical, nutritional and physiological factors

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Understanding key mechanism by which internal communication influences prosocial service behaviors of front-line employees

This paper contributes to the prosocial service behavior (PSB) literature by investigating the nature of the relationships between internal communication and PSBs, and whether role stress and organizational commitment mediate these relationships. According to the literature, internal communication plays an important role in influencing FLEs job attitudes and behaviors, as well as reducing role stress. Data collected from FLEs in a UK based service organization was used to test our conceptual framework. The results show that FLE perceptions of internal communication practices influence their role stress and organizational commitment, which, in turn, affect the performance of PSBs. Our findings highlight the significance of studying role stress and organizational commitment as mediators in the relationship between internal communication and PSBs, and shed light on the mechanisms by which internal communication influences PSBs. The limitations of the study are then sketched, and suggestions for future research are also made.

Senior management leadership, social support, job design and stressor-to-strain relationships in hospital practice

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of the quality of senior management leadership on social support and job design, whose main effects on strains, and moderating effects on work stressors-to-strains relationships were assessed. Design/methodology/approach: A survey involving distribution of questionnaires was carried out on a random sample of health care employees in acute hospital practice in the UK. The sample comprised 65,142 respondents. The work stressors tested were quantitative overload and hostile environment, whereas strains were measured through job satisfaction and turnover intentions. Structural equation modelling and moderated regression analyses were used in the analysis. Findings: Quality of senior management leadership explained 75 per cent and 94 per cent of the variance of social support and job design respectively, whereas work stressors explained 51 per cent of the variance of strains. Social support and job design predicted job satisfaction and turnover intentions, as well as moderated significantly the relationships between quantitative workload/hostility and job satisfaction/turnover intentions. Research limitations/implications: The findings are useful to management and to health employees working in acute/specialist hospitals. Further research could be done in other counties to take into account cultural differences and variations in health systems. The limitations included self-reported data and percept-percept bias due to same source data collection. Practical implications: The quality of senior management leaders in hospitals has an impact on the social environment, the support given to health employees, their job design, as well as work stressors and strains perceived. Originality/value: The study argues in favour of effective senior management leadership of hospitals, as well as ensuring adequate support structures and job design. The findings may be useful to health policy makers and human resources managers. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Extra compensation for inventive employees:is our system equitable, unbiased and motivating?

There is a presumption that invention is good. It provides us with innovative goods, services and ways of doing things leading to greater employment, wealth and health. This article looks at the two recent UK cases regarding statutory extra compensation that may be awarded to employee inventors under the Patents Act 1977. Most universities worldwide and many companies have individual inventor reward schemes. Researchers now work in teams made up of both industry and academic researchers who are often based in different countries where different legal regimes apply. Is leaving the decision to award employees extra financial compensation up to individual companies unfair, unequal and de-motivating? Is having differing legislative systems in different European countries counter productive and a barrier to economic growth? There must be a balance between the inventor and the innovator. Do we have it right and if not what should it be? Legislation: Patents Act 1977 s.39 , s.40 , s.41 Cases: Kelly v GE Healthcare Ltd [2009] EWHC 181 (Pat); [2009] R.P.C. 12 (Ch D (Patents Ct)) Shanks v Unilever Plc [2010] EWCA Civ 1283; [2011] R.P.C. 12 (CA (Civ Div))

The antecedents and consequences of anticipatory identification

The aim of this thesis was to investigate anticipatory identification: newcomers’ identification with an organisation prior to entry; in particular by exploring the antecedents and consequences of the construct. Although organisational identification has been frequently investigated over the past 25 years, surprisingly little is known about what causes an individual to identify with a new organisation before entry and whether this has an impact on their relationship with the organisation after formally taking up membership. Drawing on a Social Identity approach to organisational identification, it was hypothesised that newcomers would more closely identify with an organisation prior to entry when the organisation was seen as a source of positive social identity and was situationally relevant and meaningful to the newcomer, i.e. salient, during the pre-entry period. It was also hypothesised that anticipatory identification would have post-entry consequences and would predict newcomers’ post-entry identification, turnover intentions and job satisfaction. An indirect relationship between anticipatory identification and post-entry identification through post-entry social identity judgements (termed a “feedback loop” mechanism) was additionally proposed. Finally anticipatory identification was also predicted to moderate the relationship between post-entry social identity judgements and post-entry identification (termed a “buffering” mechanism). Four studies were conducted to test these hypotheses. Study One served as a pilot study, using a retrospective self-report design with s sample of 124 university students to initially test the proposed conceptual model. Studies Two and Three adopted experimental designs. Each used a unique sample of 72 staff and students from Aston University to respectively test the hypothesised positive social identity motive and salience antecedents of anticipatory identification. Study Four explored the relationship between anticipatory identification, its antecedents and consequences longitudinally, using an organisational sample of 45 employees. Overall, these studies found support for a social identity motive antecedent of anticipatory identification, as well as more limited evidence that anticipatory identification was associated with the salience of an organisation prior to entry. Support was inconsistent for a direct relationship between anticipatory identification and post-entry identification and there was no evidence that anticipatory identification was a significant direct predictor of turnover intention and job satisfaction. Anticipatory identification was however found to act as a buffer in the relationship between post-entry social identity judgements and post-entry identification in all but one of the four samples measured. A feedback loop mechanism was observed within the experimental designs of Studies Two and Three, but not within the organisational samples of Studies One and Four. Overall the findings of these four studies highlight key ways through which anticipatory identification can develop prior to entry into an organisation. Moreover, the research observed several important post-entry consequences of anticipatory identification, indicating that an understanding of post-entry identification may be enriched by attending more closely to the extent to which newcomers identify with an organisation prior to entry.

Frontline employees' collaboration in industrial service innovation:routes of co-creation's effects on new service performance

From a Service-Dominant Logic (S-DL) perspective, employees constitute operant resources that firms can draw to enhance the outcomes of innovation efforts. While research acknowledges that frontline employees (FLEs) constitute, through service encounters, a key interface for the transfer of valuable external knowledge into the firm, the range of potential benefits derived from FLE-driven innovation deserves more investigation. Using a sample of knowledge intensive business services firms (KIBS), this study examines how the collaboration with FLEs along the new service development (NSD) process, namely FLE co-creation, impacts on service innovation performance following two routes of different effects. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) results indicate that FLE co-creation benefits the NS success among FLEs and firm’s customers, the constituents of the resources route. FLE co-creation also has a positive effect on the NSD speed, which in turn enhances the NS quality. NSD speed and NS quality integrate the operational route, which proves to be the most effective path to impact the NS market performance. Accordingly, KIBS managers must value their FLEs as essential partners to achieve successful innovation from an internal and external perspective, and develop the appropriate mechanisms to guarantee their effective involvement along the NSD process.