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A Meta-Analysis of Relationships Linking Employee Satisfaction to Customer Responses
Abstract
The authors report a meta-analysis of relationships linking employee job satisfaction to customer satisfaction and perceived service quality in studies that correlate employee data with customer data. Overall, both relationships are positive and statistically and substantively significant. Moderator analyses show that service industry characteristics (relationship versus encounter, personal versus non-personal) and methodological characteristics (aggregated versus individual level of analysis, concurrent versus predictive survey) moderate these relationships. Estimation of a path analytic model using the aggregated data shows that customer-perceived service quality completely mediates the relationship between employee job satisfaction and customer satisfaction. Implications for research and practice are discussed.
... In synthesizing fragmented evidence on core relationships within the SPC, several meta-analyses have complemented primary studies testing the complete SPC (Brown and Lam 2008;Hong et al. 2013;Hogreve et al. 2017). These studies find overall support for the SPC. ...
... A key element of the SPC is the satisfaction mirror, which implies that emotions flow from employees to customers; more than one-third of the SPC studies we reviewed (n = 57; 37.3% of our sample) examined both employee and customer satisfaction while 50 studies (32.7% of our sample) tested the satisfaction mirror (see Table 1 and Figure 1). However, empirical evidence suggests that emotional contagion effects between employees and customers are weaker than employee satisfaction's indirect effect on customer satisfaction via external service quality (e.g., Brown and Lam 2008). We encourage future research exploring how and under which conditions employees' attitudes might directly spill over to customers' evaluations of-and reactions to-external service quality (e.g., Subramony and Holtom 2012). ...
... Though the SPC logic holds across various industries and business types, meta-analyses suggest that the core SPC links' strength varies according to service industries and service characteristics. Brown and Lam (2008) and Hong et al. (2013) show that the SPC links' strength differs between personal and non-personal services. Similarly, Hogreve et al. (2017) find that intangibility and coproduction moderate several SPC relationshipsand that key SPC relationships differ in strength between B2B and B2C services. ...
Over the past 25 years, the service–profit chain (SPC) has become a prominent guidepost for service managers and researchers. In this article, we reflect on and synthesize published research to clarify what researchers have learned about the SPC and what remains less well understood. Based on an in-depth discussion of the field, we present a revised SPC and propose multiple areas in which further research would be worthwhile, such as internal service quality as specific systems of human resource management practices, both employee and customer well-being as additional mediators, different targets of employee and customer loyalty, contingencies, and non-linear and feedback effects. We conclude by reimagining the SPC, and we discuss digital and artificial-intelligence–driven changes to the SPC’s structure. Finally, based on the insights we discuss, we inform scholars of the current state of SPC research and provide a detailed agenda for future research.
... Consumers become a satisfied consumer if they think that their needs are understood and addressed by the store as well as the store environment is pleasant and clean. Brown and Lam (2008) reported a meta-analysis of relationships linking customer satisfaction to employee job satisfaction and perceived service quality makes an effort to achieve correlate employee data with customer data. Overall, both relationships are found positive and statistically and substantively significant. ...
... Communication: The mean WAS of all the organised retailers (included in this study) has been speculated as the WAS of the industry for customer satisfaction with the advertising methods and exhibited with the red line in figure 8. 16. This WAS of the industry reclines above the satisfied customer line in figure 8. 16, which apprises that the organised retail industry satisfies an immense majority of customers with its advertising methods (i.e. ...
... Communication: The mean WAS of all the organised retailers (included in this study) has been speculated as the WAS of the industry for customer satisfaction with the advertising methods and exhibited with the red line in figure 8. 16. This WAS of the industry reclines above the satisfied customer line in figure 8. 16, which apprises that the organised retail industry satisfies an immense majority of customers with its advertising methods (i.e. instore advertising methods and out-store advertising methods). ...
The purpose of this book is to furnish a conclusive picture of retail management in the organised retail sector. Therefore, the book is multifarious and comprises the analysis of the various products & customer services and retailing strategies introduced by organised retail industry to comprehend the viewpoint of organised retailers. And to perceive the viewpoint of customers, an analysis of their buying behaviour, factors influencing their buying behaviour and satisfaction level with various products & customer services have also been incorporated in this book.
... Customer satisfaction is a critical objective for many organizations (Fournier & Mick, 1999;Tse, Nicosia, & Wilton, 1990). Research demonstrates that there is a positive relationship between employee job satisfaction and customer satisfaction (Brown & Lam, 2008). In other words, when an organization's employees are satisfied with their jobs, the organization's customers tend to be more satisfied (Brown & Lam, 2008;Homburg & Stock, 2004;Jeon & Choi, the differing compensation systems of organizations and/or by organizations being proactive and selecting employees based on this alignment ("fit") (Deckop, Merriman, & Blau, 2004;Dohmnen & Falk, 2011;Fang & Gerhart. ...
... Research demonstrates that there is a positive relationship between employee job satisfaction and customer satisfaction (Brown & Lam, 2008). In other words, when an organization's employees are satisfied with their jobs, the organization's customers tend to be more satisfied (Brown & Lam, 2008;Homburg & Stock, 2004;Jeon & Choi, the differing compensation systems of organizations and/or by organizations being proactive and selecting employees based on this alignment ("fit") (Deckop, Merriman, & Blau, 2004;Dohmnen & Falk, 2011;Fang & Gerhart. 2012). ...
... According to the P-O fit framework, hiring and employing individuals who prefer the way an organization structures its compensation system should lead to more satisfied employees. Having more satisfied employees should help ensure the satisfaction of the customers of the organization (Brown & Lam, 2008;Jeon & Choi, 2012;Homburg & Stock, 2004;Netemeyer et al., 2010;Wangenheim, et al., 2007). Conversely, hiring and employing individuals who do not prefer the way an organization structures its compensation system should lead to less satisfied employees (and consequently less satisfied customers). ...
Person-organization fit has been shown to lead to employee job satisfaction which in turn has been shown to be related to customer satisfaction. Using a person-organization fit framework, relationships between individual differences in the big five personality dimensions and preferences for characteristics of variable pay were investigated. In an experimental setting, the relationship between personality and preferences for pay contingent on individual performance versus team performance was investigated. Additionally, the relationship between personality and preferences for the degree of pay at risk (the portion of pay tied to performance) within variable pay systems was investigated. The results indicate that participants who prefer to have their pay contingent on team performance have higher levels of openness to experience than do individuals who prefer to have their pay contingent on their individual performance. Participants who prefer to have greater levels of their pay at risk have higher levels of extraversion and openness to experience and lower levels of neuroticism than do participants who prefer to have lower levels of their pay at risk. These results suggest that there are systematic differences in preferences for components of pay for performance plans by individuals with differing personalities. To maximize the likelihood of employee job satisfaction and customer satisfaction, organizations should select employees whose personalities align with the organization's pay for performance plan's characteristics.
... Although the link between engagement and service value performance is small, the findings are functionally practical. As Brown and Lam (2008) contend, it is notable that employees can explain that much of the variance given the multitude of outside influences. Furthermore, the small effect can still mean large financial savings in the downstream effect in an industry that has tight operating margins. ...
... A third limitation pertains to the secondary nature of the data, which complicates the ability to generalize the findings (Bryman & Bell, 2007). Although collecting this type of data is cost-prohibitive, it would be beneficial to understand the perceptions of external sources using primary collection techniques. ...
... Last, future research should include sampling procedures that collect responses from various types of QSR organizations to better support generalizability in the industry (Bryman & Bell, 2007). One way to do so is by evaluating the franchise community and equity groups in the QSR industry. ...
This study examines employee engagement in a quick-service restaurant's (QSR's) service profit chain. It addresses calls for new research from the service profit chain literature by using large sample sizes, a new employee perception construct (i.e., employee engagement), and financial data across multiple years. The findings support service management theory and the service profit chain, in that employee engagement was significantly linked to faster service value performance times, service value performance was significantly linked to customer perception of service, and customer perception of service was significantly linked to sales and controllable profit in year 1 and comparable (year-over-year) sales growth in year 2. The study shows that employee engagement, directly and indirectly, affects operational, customer, and financial performance measures in the QSR and provides initial support for the importance of fostering employee engagement in the workplace.
... Research to date has examined interactions between tourists and service workers, which are often deemed as essential to engineering a superior travel experience (Wei et al., 2020). For example, although quality E2T interactions can help in recovering service failure, poor E2T interactions could ruin the entire journey (Brown & Lam, 2008). Casino tourists especially demand responsive and empathetic services from the serving staff (Wan, 2010). ...
... Moreover, human components can be embedded in brand communications; as employee services (e.g., E2T interactions), for example, are considered as communicative staging of a brand's servicescape and thus affect brand experience (Ye et al., 2021). Hence, building long-term relationships between casino tourists and a casino brand might require operators to rely heavily on the quality of E2T interactions, since employee services could be more easily be manipulated through training and service design (Brown & Lam, 2008;Lai et al., 2014;Lin & Wong, 2020;Moore et al., 2005). Accordingly, the first hypothesis was proposed: ...
... Such a 'take-away' impression obtained in casinos could also enable the tourists to relish more the overall travel experience and thus, drive them to revisit the destination (Wong & Rosenbaum, 2012). Among drivers of a compelling experience, social ingredients are indeed crucial (Brown & Lam, 2008;Kim & Choi, 2016). Our research offers insights toward the effect each actor has on casino brand experience and calls for casino practitioners to holistically direct each casino tourist's behavior. ...
This study integrates tourists’ social interaction quality and experience with a casino brand to examine changes of tourist citizenship behavioral intentions between pre- and post-casino trips. A two-stage sampling method was deployed with data driven in the casino industry: a random sampling approach to select casino properties followed by a quota sampling approach to respondent selection. It advances the casino tourism literature by delineating that brand experience and attachment partially mediate the relationships leading from a triadic social interaction process to changes in casino tourists’ citizenship behavioral intentions. Moreover, branded casinos relish a greater change in such intentions, as casino tourists may feel the urge to reciprocate the tourist resources geared toward them and associate themselves with these brands.
... İş doyumunun örgütlerin etkinlik ve verimlilikleri üzerinde etkili olduğu (Şimşek vd., 2007, s.71) bilindiğinden, yöneticiler ve araştırmacılar tarafından özellikle üzerinde durulan bir husus olarak karşımıza çıkmaktadır. Alan yazın incelendiğinde iş doyumunun, örgütlerin etkinlik ve verimlilikleri üze-rinde etkili olduğu bilinen örgütsel bağlılık, mesleki bağlılık (Karataş ve Güleş, 2010;Çetin, 2006), örgütsel güven (Semercioğlu vd., 2012), örgütsel vatandaşlık davranışı (Yılmaz, 2012), iş yaşam kalitesi (Aksoy Zor, 2019), işe angaje olma (Arslan ve Demir, 2017), örgütsel özdeşleşme (Efraty vd., 1991), motivasyon (Orhaner ve Mutlu, 2018) ve tüketici tatmini (Jeon ve Choi, 2012;Brown ve Lam, 2008;Scheneider ve Bowen, 1985) gibi birçok iş tutumuyla da pozitif yönlü ilişkili olduğu görülmektedir. Ayrıca iş doyumu çalışanların tükenmişlik düzeylerini (Kış vd., 2016) ve iş streslerini azaltır, işten ayrılma niyetlerini (Turunç vd., 2010) düşürür. ...
... İş doyumu yüksek olan çalışan, müşterinin aldığı hizmete ilişkin algısını şekillendirebilmektedir (Spiro ve Weitz, 1990). Alan yazında çalışan iş doyumu ile müşteri memnuniyeti arasında ilişki bulunduğu, iş doyumunun müşteri memnuniyetini pozitif yönlü etkilediğini ortaya koyan çalışmalar bulunmaktadır (Mendoza ve Maldonado, 2014;Chi ve Gürsoy, 2009;Brown ve Lam, 2008;Payne ve Webber, 2006;Homburg ve Stock, 2004;Ugboro ve Obeng, 2000;Schmit ve Allscheid, 1995;Johnson vd., 1994;Schlesinger ve Zornitsky, 1991;Schneider ve Bowen, 1985). Ancak, bu araştırma sonuçlarının tersine iş doyumu ile müşteri memnuniyeti arasında negatif yönlü ilişki bulunduğunu (Silvestro ve Cross, 2000) ortaya koyan araştırmalar bulunduğu gibi bu iki değişken arasında ilişki bulunmadığını ortaya koyan araştırmalar da bulunmaktadır (Adcock, 1999;Brown ve Mitchell, 1993). ...
... Customer incivility is defined as the employee's perception that the customer is behaving in an uncivil manner (e.g., being disrespectful or insulting; van Jaarsveld et al., 2010) and has been negatively related to employee well-being and job satisfaction (Alola et al., 2019). While a plethora of research has shown that it has adverse effects in terms of increasing employees' stress levels (Kim et al., 2014), leading to emotional exhaustion (van Jaarsveld et al., 2010), in a domain where customer satisfaction is a central preoccupation for organizations, employee satisfaction also represents a primary outcome due to its' consistent relationship to customer service quality and customer satisfaction (Brown and Lam, 2008). Since interactions with the customer represent the main activity of a front-line retail employee and eliminating this stressor is not a straightforward option, we focus on finding moderators in the workplace dynamics with supervisors and colleagues (Yang and Lau, 2019). ...
... Based on this theoretical background, we propose a multi-level JD-R model (Figure 1) of perceived customer incivility (PCI) and job satisfaction, conceptualized as a pleasurable emotional state derived from one's work (Brown and Lam, 2008). We argue that supervisor support, defined as the extent to which employees believe that their supervisors appreciate, value, and care about their well-being (Zhu et al., 2019), is an employee-level resource that can alleviate the adverse effects that PCI has on job satisfaction (Alola et al., 2019). ...
Perceived customer incivility can be a significant day-to-day demand that affects
frontline service employees’ job satisfaction. The current research focuses on job
resources on multiple levels that serve as buffers in the face of this demand. We tested
a multi-level model in which supervisor support (at the employee level) and participative
climate (at the work-unit level) moderate the negative relationship between perceived
customer incivility and job satisfaction. We used multi-level analysis with self-reported
cross-sectional data collected from 934 employees nested in 107 work units of a large
clothing shop chain in Belgium. The results showed that both supervisor support and
participative climate moderate the negative relationship between perceived customer
incivility and job satisfaction. The theoretical contribution of this study resides in an
extension of the JD-R theory to simultaneously conceptualize resources on multiple
levels. In the meantime, we focus on practical, hands-on resources that organizations
can implement to protect service employees from the adverse effects of perceived
customer incivility.
... The mean WAS of all the organised retailers (included in this study) has been speculated as the WAS of the industry for customer satisfaction with the advertising methods and exhibited with the red line in figure 8. 16. This WAS of the industry reclines above the satisfied customer line in figure 8. 16, which apprises that the organised retail industry satisfies an immense majority of customers with its advertising methods (i.e. ...
... The mean WAS of all the organised retailers (included in this study) has been speculated as the WAS of the industry for customer satisfaction with the advertising methods and exhibited with the red line in figure 8. 16. This WAS of the industry reclines above the satisfied customer line in figure 8. 16, which apprises that the organised retail industry satisfies an immense majority of customers with its advertising methods (i.e. in-store advertising methods and out-store advertising methods). ...
The purpose of this research work is to furnish a conclusive picture of retailing strategies of products and customer services in the organised retail sector. Therefore, the research work is multifarious and comprises the analysis of the various products & customer services and retailing strategies introduced by organised retail industry to comprehend the viewpoint of organised retailers. And to perceive the viewpoint of customers, an analysis of their buying behaviour, factors influencing their buying behaviour and satisfaction level with various products & customer services have also been incorporated in this work. Both descriptive and exploratory research approaches were employed in compiling this study. The study was endeavoured in the Maharashtra state of India and the organised retail stores from various segments were selected from various parts of the state. Efforts were made to cover the entire state geographically and regionally, at least 2 well-known cities were selected from each region. The whole Maharashtra state was divided into 5 regions, i.e. northern, southern, eastern, western and central. From each region, two well-known cities were selected. Further, from each city, one retail store was selected for the study. Out of total 10 retail stores, 5 were hyper stores and remaining 5 were super stores. These hyper and super stores have also been selected by a planning that from each region one hyper and one super store must be selected for the study. A non-probability convenience sampling technique was resorted for institutional (store personnel) and individual (customers) respondents. From each retail store, an institutional questionnaire got filled up by store personnel to receive accurate data about various products, services and retailing strategies introduced by the respective retail store. In total 2000 customers of retail stores (i.e. 10 retail stores * 200 customers) were contacted. From the area of each selected retail stores 200 respondents contacted at a convenient basis for obtaining data about their buying behaviour, factors influencing their buying behaviour, and satisfaction level pertained to products and services offered by retail stores. The research work is based on both secondary and primary data. Two instruments, one for personnel of retail stores (institutional questionnaire) and another for customers of retail stores (individual questionnaire), were constructed to accomplish the objectives of the study. Both questionnaires were tested by conducting a pilot study of the few respondents selected on a random basis. Taking the insight from this pre-testing of the questionnaires, certain items were included and even excluded to modify the questionnaire for the final study. Survey method and printed questionnaires were exercised in accumulating the primary data. The questionnaires were supervised individually practising the face to face approach. The research work yields vivid research results. Most noteworthy, results depicted that retailing strategies introduced by organised retailers are significant to sustain in the hyper-competitive retail market. Results also flaunted that customers are significantly satisfied with various products & services introduced by organised retailers except a few. The research work would be rationalised for its multiple utilities. The study contributes knowledge & facts about the merchandise (products) & customer services penetrated by organised retailers. The study aspires to reveal the retailing strategies determined by organised retailers. This study also delivers evidence about the dilemmas of customers along with some potential solutions to them. The study ascribes details for the betterment needed in the merchandise (products) & services that clients want. The study also determines diverse components and customer services mandatory to persist the retailing industry. The study additionally functions to deliver the factors that serve towards the superior level of customer satisfaction in the organised retail industry. The study also offers the suggestion to the management of organised retail stores to appraise upon the retailing strategy. The study assists in comprehending the retailing environment, retailing culture and the retail decision process.
... Research in the traditional business model indicates interactions between customers and front-line employees play an essential role in customer perception and further behavioral intention toward an employee (Kumar and Pansari, 2016). This is because employees who are happy with their work tend to deliver excellent service to customers and share their positive emotions (Brown and Lam, 2008;Hogreve et al., 2017). While this is an undeveloped research area in the sharing economy, service provider satisfaction with the sharing economy is manifested in provider behavior with customers, influencing customer satisfaction with service providers and the platform (Ruan, 2020). ...
... This aligns with research on the customer-employee relationship in which employee satisfaction with the job is a significant predictor of positive customer response (Hogreve et al., 2017). In the customer-firm relationship, employee satisfaction is the main predictor of overall customer satisfaction (Brown and Lam, 2008;Jeon and Choi, 2012). However, service providers are independent of the platform and other service providers, and their satisfaction influences customer satisfaction with both the service provider and the platform . ...
The sharing economy has emerged as an influential research area in which a platform mediates customers' temporary access to service provider resources. To provide a generalizable picture of the platform's customer and service provider relationship formation process, we integrate effect sizes from 192 studies, including 214 independent samples (N = 88,154). The findings indicate there are motivators and inhibitors for individuals to join a platform as a customer or service provider and that these influence attitudinal and behavioral responses toward the platform through a two-level relationship quality pathway. Moderator analysis reveals that the impact of customer motivators and inhibitors on customer response to service providers and platforms depends on country-level moderators and cultural context. These results provide insight into relationship formation among actors in the sharing economy. The study also makes recommendations for platform managers, especially in hospitality and tourism, to more effectively manage their relationships with their users.
... Frontline employees' performance plays a crucial role in creating memorable and friendly staying experience, which is the core of the hospitality (Wang et al., 2017). There is no doubt that service quality enhanced by better service performance may help hotels to remain competitive (Tsaur and Lin, 2004), as it may leave a lasting impression that influences customers' satisfaction, loyalty and financial performance (Brown and Lam, 2008). Therefore, this study also addresses the need to seek effective ways of improving employees' job performance that plays a pivotal role in shaping guests' satisfactory service experience. ...
... Although the service-profit chain links employee satisfaction to customer satisfaction indirectly through the effect of service value created by service employees, research has shown support for the direct impact of employee satisfaction on customer satisfaction (e.g., Akdere, 2009;Brown & Lam, 2008). As such, we propose that: H5: Employee satisfaction positively affects customer satisfaction. ...
The role of service productivity in influencing the relationships among employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction, and firm performance through the theoretical lens of service-profit chain is examined. Secondary databases including COMPUSTAT, ACSI, and KLD Stats were used in testing the research hypotheses. Study findings provide broad support for the service-profit chain linking employee satisfaction to firm performance through the mediating effects of service productivity and customer satisfaction, thus extending the body of research on service productivity. These findings suggest that while optimizing profitability, managers simultaneously consider the interrelationships between customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, and service productivity.
... Good and consistent service provided by the in-store employees is hence critical. The quality of interpersonal interaction between the customers and employees affects the customer satisfaction level as greater rapport and good employee responsiveness will bring higher customer satisfaction (Bitner et al., 1994;Brown & Lam, 2008;Marques et al., 2013;Menon & Dubé, 2000). Tomazelli et al. (2017) stated that customers, especially senior citizens; prefer store personnel assistance rather than having other customers to give them a hand in their shopping activity. ...
The purpose of this paper is to contribute to knowledge on the influence to the role of hypermarket services in crafting reputation, perceived value, location, convenience, internal environment, and staff to customers, thus creating satisfied and loyal customers (hypermarkets).With the support of empirical evidence and rational arguments, a set of eight (8) hypotheses were proposed for testing. A sample of 384 respondents visiting hypermarket in Kuala Lumpur using a convenience sampling method was used. Statistical analysis was done through SPSS for primary analysis and Smart PLS for analysis of the outer model and testing the relationships hypothesized. Findings revealed that all the hypotheses were significantly supported. The originality and value of this paper is the study of consumer-oriented hypermarket services as a variable that allows competitive differentiation of the company, by improving the relationship with the consumers and the generation of satisfaction and loyalty. One of the major conclusions of the study is that hypermarket services can yield optimal performance for customer satisfaction and customer loyalty if it is combined with the knowledge, experiences, and outstanding abilities in the use of hypermarket services in crafting reputation, perceived value,
... The interaction between customers and employees has been found to affect a customer's instore shopping experience (Brown and Lam, 2008). According to Terblanche, N. S. (2018). ...
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to contribute to knowledge on the impact of corporate social
responsibility (CSR) activities (community support, environmentally friendly, sell locally
produced products, treating employees) on customer satisfaction and loyalty (hypermarkets).
This study aims to examine the influence of CSR on customer satisfaction and customer
loyalty of Malaysian consumers and whether they consider CSR for hypermarket before
making purchase decisions of the products and services. With the support of empirical
evidence and rational arguments, a set of eleven (4) hypotheses were proposed for testing. A
sample of 384 respondents loyal to hypermarket has been used to collect the data using a
convenience sampling method. Data was collected from the hypermarket in Kuala Lumpur.
Statistical analysis was done through SPSS for primary analysis and Smart PLS for analysis
of the outer model and testing the relationships hypothesized. Findings revealed that all the
hypotheses were significantly effective. The originality and value of this paper is the study
of consumer-oriented CSR as a variable that allows competitive differentiation of the
company, by improving the relationship with the consumers and the generation of
satisfaction and loyalty. One of the major conclusions of the study is that CSR and can only
yield optimal performance for the customer satisfaction and customer loyalty if it is
combined with the knowledge, experiences, and outstanding abilities in the use CSR
activities dimensions.
... In the field of services, the service-profit chain includes the view that employee satisfaction gives rise to customer satisfaction and knowing the employee leads to knowing the customers (Homburg et al., 2009). These relationships have also been studied in other studies (Brown and Lam, 2008;Punjaisri et al., 2009). In addition, employee satisfaction is associated with their survival and positive verbal communication (Boselie and van der Wiele, 2002). ...
Purpose
The concept of employee-based brand equity (EBBE) has been the center of scholars' attention in the field of marketing and brand management. The brand is one of the most valuable intangible assets of any organization. This research is a novel step in examining the brand-specific transactional leadership role in implementing the new approach of brand-building behaviors (BBBs) and EBBE.
Design/methodology/approach
The statistical population of the current study is employees of five major insurance companies in Semnan city of Iran. Using the classified random sampling method, 136 employees of these insurance firms were chosen. Likert-based questionnaires were used to collect data. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to analyze research data.
Findings
Findings show that brand-specific transactional leadership affects participation and retention positively and significantly. Also, the variables of participation, in-role brand-building behavior (IRBBB) and retention, have a positive and significant effect on the EBBE. However, no significant relationship has been found between brand-specific transactional leadership and the IRBBB.
Research limitations/implications
The study was bound by access to firms and managers' availability. On the other hand, this research is a cross-sectional study, and its data have been collected in a certain period of time, while longitudinal research can provide a richer result. Future research can benefit from the impact of brand-specific transactional leadership and brand evangelism.
Practical implications
When selecting brand leaders, manager training programs need to evaluate whether a candidate has brand-specific transactional leadership traits that will enhance the successful internalization of brand values and improve EBBE.
Originality/value
Brand-specific transactional leadership increases employee responsibility and a greater desire to engage in citizenship behaviors. In addition, using partnerships to influence customer supportive behaviors creates a good image of the company and its services in the minds of customers. Also, this research is a novel step in examining the brand-specific transactional leadership role in implementing the new approach of BBBs and EBBE.
... Second, in comparison with the wide range of scientific contributions regarding customer or employee satisfaction (Brown and Lam, 2008;Garbarino and Johnson, 1999;Homburg and Rudolph, 2001;Kenett and Salini, 2012), the concept of supplier satisfaction has received much less attention (Essig and Amann, 2009;Huettinger et al., 2012;Johnson et al., 2011). Thus, it can be argued that the contradictory empirical findings could be the result of different satisfaction conceptualizations and operationalization approaches. ...
Through the construct of supplier satisfaction, recent research explains the supplier´s preferred treatment of a given customer. This cause-and-effect phenomenon is often not contrasted with other reasons or controlled for. This work addresses this issue and uses two tactics to elaborate upon social exchange theory, namely, construct splitting and construct contrasting, to analyse the development of preferential customer treatment. For this purpose, a structural equation model is used with data from the international automotive industry. The results extend the breadth of constructs explaining PCT and challenge the existing reasoning by questioning the relative importance of supplier satisfaction. While supplier satisfaction does affect preferred customer treatment (PCT), the relative supplier satisfaction defined as a comparison of outcomes between the actual and the best alternative business relationships influences PCT much more.
Furthermore, by distinguishing between the economic and non-economic dimensions of supplier satisfaction, the study indicate that economic satisfaction has a higher influence on the relative satisfaction whereas social satisfaction a higher one on absolute supplier satisfaction.
These findings imply that despite the current debate about the importance of behavioural constructs such as supplier interaction and social capital, supplier resource allocation decisions are actually dominated by economic and relative aspects of satisfaction. This outcome calls for a more economically driven debate about behavioural supply management approaches.
... In retail and other service industries, the management of employees at the front line is crucially important to business performance. Studies in management and psychology have shown that employee job satisfaction is closely linked to customers' perceptions of service quality, consumption experience, and their repurchase decisions (Heskett et al. 1994, Payne and Webber 2006, Brown and Lam 2008, Hogreve et al. 2017). An aspect of employee satisfaction that has been underappreciated by managers and scholars of retailing is how willingness to work and wages of front-line employees depend on payment systems. ...
An important but overlooked cost of payments in retailing is the cost on checkout cashiers. This paper examines the compensating wage differential that cashiers require to handle payments in cash. First, a multicountry panel data study shows that cashier wages increase with retail cash usage, which is consistent with cashiers requiring compensation to handle cash. Second, in a discrete choice experiment where supermarket cashiers chose between collecting card and cash payments, eight of 10 cashiers preferred card to cash. Among those who preferred card, the median cashier required a wage premium of S$37.50 (US$27) a month to handle cash. The premium was lower among cashiers who are local, less risk averse, and younger. Third, in a laboratory study, subjects traded off earnings against stress. With higher frequency of cash payments, high earners experienced greater physiological stress than low earners. Earnings also increased with abilities in arithmetic and coping with stress. Collectively, these studies show that cashiers require higher wages to handle cash payments, in part due to higher stress. We offer policy, managerial, and research implications for job design, payment systems, and workplace stress.
... Employee satisfaction is significantly related to customer satisfaction, specifically if the employee is provided with a manageable workload, lower stress and opportunities for training and development. If the employee is happy and performs to the best of his/her abilities, then the probability that customers would be satisfied is very high (Brown and Lam, 2008). According to Aksoy, Cooil, Groening, Keiningham & Yalçin, (2008) a happy and content employee may provide a high quality service to the customer, leading to increased customer satisfaction, which may result in repurchase intentions, loyalty and ultimately increased future cash flows. ...
The article is based on the premise that there are a variety of factors contributing towards customer satisfaction, namely price, product, service and personnel. It also argues that management plays a significant role in agribusinesses/farmer-controlled businesses (FCBs) where the farmer is both a customer and shareholder. The results indicate that management indeed has a significant influence on customer satisfaction with the company and that it is possible to identify drivers inherent in the business units of a FCB that impact overall customer satisfaction directly. Agency theory plays an important role in FCBs, and therefore satisfaction towards management should be included in customer satisfaction measures for FCBs. The study made a contribution to theory, as well as to practice by shining light on very important aspects of customer satisfaction (management) in a FCB, which will assist in gaining knowledge on this unique business-form and the management thereof.
... Hence, at the time the development of technology is incongruent, it is only the resource of human, which likely plays an imperative role in the growth of all enterprises. Able workers can facilitate customer satisfaction, and loyalty to enterprises (Payne & Webber, 2006;Brown & Lam, 2008). According to Oladipo and Abdalkader (2011), the labor force of an enterprise is essential to its achievement, and employee performance (PE) is reliant mainly on the suitable systems of human resource management (HRM). ...
The current study has employed the regression of quantile to explore the impacts of human resource management practices on employee performance at enterprises in business. The research data was collected in Vietnam as a developing economy. The empirical results offer a quite comprehensive picture of the causal linkages from the practices of human resource management to employee performance in emerging economies. These complex linkages have been explored at different quantiles of the conditional distribution of employee performance. The findings reveal that at different points of the conditional mean of employee performance, the effects of human resource management practices are different. The current work is helpful to researchers and business directors, especially in emerging countries like Vienam, by providing them with a more comprehensive picture of the multifaceted links from the practices of human resource management to employee performance. Accordingly, they are able to make better business decisions on the implementation of suitable human resource management. Finally, their enterprises can achieve better employee performance, which in turn leads to superior firm performance.
... Providing a high-quality service requires not only having certain skills and competencies, but also experiencing and transmitting positive attitudes and emotions. Indeed, several meta-analyses have shown that employees' job satisfaction is positively related to customers' perceived service quality, which is crucial for building long-term relationships with customers and, therefore, for a firm financial performance [2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. Similarly, another meta-analysis comprising 31 studies and more than 10,000 workers concluded that there is a positive relationship between psychological well-being (which incorporates job satisfaction and mental health) and performance, measured in several ways, from leaders' and peers' ratings to organizational records [9]. ...
Social dynamics at work are crucial for understanding how internal processes in an organization are related to their performance and productivity. Following the Service-Profit Chain (SPC) theory, this study analyses, at the work-unit level, how interpersonal conflicts are related to service quality in the hospitality and tourism industry through the shared experience of well-being in the work unit. In other words, we examine the mediating role of two main aspects of work-related well-being in the unit (job satisfaction and burnout) on the relationship between interpersonal conflicts in the unit and customers’ perceptions of service quality. To do so, we conducted a cross-sectional survey study that collected data from 398 service employees (91 work units) and 1233 customers from three and four-star hotels with restaurant in Spain. Using path analysis in Structural Equation Models, our results supported a full mediation model at the work-unit level: interpersonal conflicts in the work unit are related to customers’ service quality perceptions through the work-unit’s well-being (job satisfaction and burnout). Therefore, our findings extend the SPC theory by integrating group dynamics and employees’ experiences, which should be enhanced through occupational health-oriented policies and practices to increase service quality. In this sense, this study has implications for the development of intervention programs aiming at improving the occupational well-being and quality of service in hospitality and tourism settings.
... Investigações realizadas por um processo de meta-análise estabeleceram uma relação entre a satisfação dos trabalhadores no trabalho e a qualidade dos serviços prestados aos clientes (Brown & Lam 2008;Whitman et al., 2010). Landy e Conte (2013: 157) também enfatizam o conceito de desempenho sobre comportamentos relevantes para os objetivos do trabalho "desempenho no trabalho são ações ou comportamentos relevantes para os objetivos da organização medidos em termos de proficiência de cada indivíduo". ...
Work Climate in a Higher Education Institution in Portugal
... Even though most analysts believe, the consequences of diversity in organizations add meaning. Firms that consider diversity a primary strategy would benefit far more than those that do not due to lower turnover and increased revenue (Brown & Lam, 2008). Organizations that perceive diversity as a core strategy rather than a business cost would reap much greater benefits than those that do not. ...
Purpose of the Study: The fundamental objective of this study was to examine the association between workforce diversity and employee performance in commercial banks of Pakistan. Methodology: Gender, age, education, and ethnic diversity contribute to the workforce's diversity. A standardized questionnaire was distributed amongst the 400 employees of commercial banks of Pakistan to collect data. However, 281 employees, constituting 70.25%, responded. The research hypotheses were tested by using a multi-regression model through Stata16 for data analysis. Main Findings: The outcomes indicated a positive and significant association between gender diversity and employee performance. Gender diversity and age diversity are strong predictors of employee performance in Pakistan. However, the findings revealed that employee performance is not affected by education or ethnic diversity. Applications of the study: This study has significant implications from both a theoretical and a realistic perspective. This study contributes by adding sound theoretical literature to the body of knowledge on workforce diversity and employee performance. From a practical perspective, this study sheds more light on how workplace diversity affects employee performance in the banking sector of an emerging economy like Pakistan. The results of this study can also be used to build strategies to improve the implementation of employee diversity in an existing market. Novelty/Originality of this Study: Studies have been conducted to analyze the impact of diversity on employee performance, but this is the first study that has investigated the association between workforce diversity and employees performance with rich facets and particularly in the context of an emerging economy like Pakistan and specifically in commercial banks.
... It is evident from the above-mentioned research that an employee's job satisfaction plays an important role in the satisfaction of customers; this has been observed in various industries beyond banking as well (Doucet, 2004). There are two different schools of thought that suggest that employee satisfaction is directly tied to customer satisfaction: these schools are emotional satisfaction and job benefits (Brown & Lam, 2008). The relationship between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction belongs to the theory of emotional contagion (Hatfield et al., 2018) and has been discussed in the literature (Barsade et al., 2018). ...
The frequently discussed topic of job satisfaction is not new in the field of organizational behavior research. Job satisfaction is related to customer satisfaction; however, there is a scarcity of empirical evidence regarding this link. The current piece of research examines the said relationship in the context of the online call center. In addition, this study investigates the effect of human resources (HR) practices on job satisfaction within the online call center context. The sample of the study consists of 275 employees who were working as an online call center. SMARTPLS 3 was used to analyze the data. The findings of the study indicated a positive relationship between HR practices with job satisfaction. Furthermore, a positive impact of job satisfaction on customer satisfaction is observed. The mediation of customer interaction quality is also found to be significant in the relationship between job satisfaction and customer satisfaction.
... EBSCOhost is also the only source that has the EBSCO Hospitality & Tourism Complete database, which covers scholarly research in all areas related to hospitality and tourism. Our decision to use EBSCOhost and ScienceDirect followed the practice of other meta-analyses in marketing and business research (e.g., Aguirre-Rodriguez et al., 2012;Blut et al., 2018;Brown & Lam, 2008;Dixon-Fowler et al., 2013;Edeling & Fischer, 2016;Iyer et al., 2020;Schmidt & Bijmolt, 2020;Zhang et al., 2014). ...
Music is a key and heavily researched stimulus in tourism and hospitality service settings. However, the growing body of research has produced contradictory results in terms of direction, strength, and statistical significance, rendering conclusions and evidence-based decisions questionable and precarious. This meta-analysis of 56 studies and 209 effects quantitatively synthesizes empirical evidence of the influence of music in tourism and hospitality service settings. We consider five dimensions of music and assess their effects on a wide range of customers’ organismic reactions and behavioral responses. The results indicate that it is not so much the presence as the design of music that influences customers. In addition, the preferential dimensions of music have a much stronger influence on customers than the physical dimensions of music. The large number of relationships examined offers practical guidance to professionals on the effective use of music in tourism and hospitality settings.
... External factors (17) Skills and Competency (Anderson et al., 2021;Selmer, 2010), Adjustment (Caligiuri et al., 2019;Noman et al., 2020;Okpara & Kabongo, 2011;Puck et al., 2008;Tahir, 2018;Wang & Tran, 2012), Job Performance (Bhatti et al., 2019;Chen, 2015;Prendergast, 2016;Ramalu et al., 2017;Reynolds et al., 2014;Spong & Kamau, 2012;Wurtz, 2014), Training Transfer (Combs & Luthans, 2007;Cunningham, 2012) Internal factors (25) Commitment (Kang et al., 2015;Saira et al., 2020;Thakur et al., 2016;Yap et al., 2010), Previous research has demonstrated that employee satisfaction and commitment are critically reflected in their interaction with consumers (Agyeiwaah et al., 2021;Brown & Lam, 2008;Jeon & Choi, 2012;Scotti et al., 2003). Furthermore, research has also established that employees' diversity intelligence (measured by CQ) impacts consumer interaction and satisfaction (Gaur et al., 2017;Netemeyer et al., 2010). ...
Diversity training is the most popular and effective tool for inclusion in the workplace, as evident from the growing research and investment interest. However, existing reviews have several limitations, including the absence of discussion on how and why diversity training can significantly impact consumer experiences. The current study utilizes a hybrid review combining systematic literature analysis with a theory‐context‐methodology framework to highlight future research directions. 259 articles were screened using the SPAR‐4‐SLR protocol to select 48 articles which were then analyzed to delineate the impact of diversity training on the employees and its impact on the consumer experience. The research findings demonstrate an overall positive impact of the training on employee‐related factors and underscore gaps in methodology, theory engagement, and contextualization. Future research directions, including suggestions and propositions for developing diversity training for enhancing consumer experiences, are delineated.
... Conclusively, the banking industry, particularly the interactions between consumers and workers, is a great example, as these interactions (between branch personnel and clients) do not need either individual to become engaged in task-related. On the other hand, the outcomes of the customer interaction and employee's interaction with the customer are critical to the efficient delivery of the banks' services and products, as well as a great customer experience (Brown and Lam, 2008). Employees in the banking system are in charge of managing and communicating with consumers on a daily basis. ...
Competitive advantage and sustainability emerge as important factors for the success of an organization’s overall differentiation. This research aims to identify the relationship between internet banking and bank investment decision, as well as gaging the mediating effects of sustainability and competitive advantage as attributes of investment decisions. To achieve that, a questionnaire was administrated to banks’ employees and customers. To carry out the hypothesis testing, we have employed structural equation modeling through SPSS and SmartPLS. The findings suggest that internet banking, sustainability, and competitive advantage constructs are significant antecedents of banks because they highlight valuable attributes for banks to attain future benefits. This paper contributes to bank managers and scholars by providing a framework and supporting theories that help to identify relevant constructs and strategic resource characteristics. From the findings, we recommend conducting future studies in other countries or fields to generalize our results.
... In a competitive market, the understanding of customer needs is very valuable. Satisfaction is the main source in the attracting of customers (Brown and Lam, 2008). The customer loyalty has become a major challenge for the companies in the current era (Davis, Nhat Lu and Veale, 2009). ...
The service sector is vital for economic and social growth of a country. Today, this sector has a greater growth, contributing more to the global production and employing more people than any other sector. The service sector in Albania has undergone a rapid growth and its contribution in Gross Domestic Product has increased year after year. Currently, the banks are focused to the consumer. The study was conducted only in the commercial banks in Shkodra (Albania). The sample size of the study was 100. The primary data that are collected for the study were analyzed with the help of SPSS package using ANOVA test. The findings of the study will help us to determine which are the demographic changes that affect the service quality of the banks. This information also can help banks to understand better, their customers and to improve the service quality in order to enhance the customer satisfaction. The data obtained through the questionnaire are used to analyze the real level of banking services. These services are viewed in terms of their diversity and their quality level of services that they have offered to attract International Journal of Economics, Commerce and Management, United Kingdom Licensed under Creative Common Page 297 customers. The study also highlights the gaps that these banks have on their services versus the contemporary conditions. The purpose of this paper is to confirm the theory that banks should do more for the consumer perception for the quality of services.
... Next, the three co-authors of this article completed the coding (Brown & Lam, 2008;Pan & Zinkhan, 2006). The coders scanned each article, yielding crucial and meaningful categories on which all the studies could be classified. ...
This paper presents a meta-analytical evaluation of the literature on the Urge to Buy (UTB). It seeks to establish the common antecedents of UTB as a construct by a thorough examination of the prior literature. Accordingly, the most significant antecedents of UTB are perceived enjoyment, perceived usefulness, hedonic and utilitarian values, positive and negative affects, scarcity, and impulsive buying tendency. The location of the studies has a moderating influence on the antecedents of UTB. Almost all the factors were more decisive in Eastern countries than Western. The limitations of the current study and the future research agenda have also been mentioned. The study results have both theoretical and practical implications contributing to the marketing research field. The implications of all the studies in the past on the UTB construct have been discussed, and the effect of these studies has been summarized with the meta-analysis technique.
... This value of 0.91 is deemed as "almost perfect" level of agreement (Landis and Koch, 1977). Disagreements were then resolved via discussion (Brown and Lam, 2008;Yu et al., 2021). ...
Purpose
While robots have increasingly threatened frontline employees’ (FLEs) future employment by taking over more mechanical and analytical intelligence tasks, they are still unable to “experience” and “feel” to occupy empathetic intelligence tasks that can be handled better by FLEs. This study, therefore, aims to empirically develop and validate a scale measuring the new so-called empathetic creativity as being creative in practicing and performing empathetically intelligent skills during service encounters.
Design/methodology/approach
This study adopts a multistage design to develop the scale. Phase 1 combines a literature review with text mining from 3,737 service robots-related YouTube comments to generate 16 items capturing this new construct. Phase 2 assesses both face and content validity of those items, while Phase 3 recruits Prolific FLEs sample to evaluate construct validity. Phase 4 checks this construct’s nomological validity using PLS-SEM and Phase 5 experiments dedicated effort (vs natural talent) as an effective approach to foster FLEs’ perceived empathetic creativity.
Findings
The final scale is comprised of 13 refined items that capture three dimensions (social, interactive and emotional) of empathetic creativity. This research provides timely implications to help FLEs in high-contact services stay competitive.
Originality/value
This study introduces the new construct of empathetic creativity, which goes beyond the traditional definition of creativity in services and highlights the importance of empathetic intelligence for FLEs in future employment. This study also develops a multi-item scale to measure this construct, which can be applied to future service management research.
... Furthermore, evidence suggests that the interpersonal outcomes of suppression are more likely to occur through a conscious process of judgment and interpretation of a lack of emotional cues than through an unconscious emotional contagion process (Brown and Lam, 2008;Hennig-Thurau et al., 2006). This conscious interpretation process is captured by the two mediating paths in our proposed model (see Figure 1). ...
Drawing on emotion regulation theory, this study investigates if and how emotion suppression informs relationship viability within new venture teams (NVTs) when such teams face obstacles. In particular, we use a dyadic approach to examine the suppressor’s authenticity and team members’ perceptions of appropriateness as mediators in the link between emotion suppression and relationship viability. A round-robin study with 93 respondents nested in 37 NVTs, which generated 167 observations, provides empirical support for the theoretically derived model by showing that both authenticity and appropriateness fully mediate the relationship between emotion suppression and relationship viability. In particular, the findings show that the negative indirect effect of emotion suppression on relationship viability via authenticity is larger than the positive indirect effect via appropriateness. A follow-up study after two years indicates that relationship viability and emotion suppression significantly predict venture survival. Together, these findings make ample contributions to the literature and provide interesting opportunities for further research.
... The concept of internal marketing originates in the field of services marketing. In the service sector, it was observed that the degree of employee's satisfaction influences their performance in relation to customers (Brown & Lam, 2008). As in the case of services, customer satisfaction is determined mainly by the quality of personnel performance, it became clear that satisfying the needs of employees is essential for a high level of customer satisfaction (Ballantyne, 2000). ...
... Hence, at the time the development of technology is incongruent, it is only the resource of human, which likely plays an imperative role in the growth of all enterprises. Able workers can facilitate customer satisfaction, and loyalty to enterprises (Payne & Webber, 2006;Brown & Lam, 2008). According to Oladipo and Abdalkader (2011), the labor force of an enterprise is essential to its achievement, and employee performance (PE) is reliant mainly on the suitable systems of human resource management (HRM). ...
... Since the beginning of the 21st century, the existence of a relationship between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction has been well-documented [25,66,68,163] in several empirical settings, such as hotels [45], healthcare, retail [46], restaurants [142], and banking industries [54,95], but not in higher education. We note that job satisfaction outcomes require further study in the Information Systems (IS) literature, which has primarily investigated the predictors of job satisfaction [76,78,151]. ...
Should we teach in hybrid mode or fully online? We examine the teaching model's role (hybrid versus fully online) in the service–profit chain in higher education institutions using survey data from 93 faculty members and 366 students from three American universities. We find that faculty members’ satisfaction and the MBA program expectations improve MBA word-of-mouth by enhancing the MBA quality, MBA value, class satisfaction, and MBA loyalty. Additionally, we discover that the hybrid teaching model more strongly reinforces this chain of effects than the fully online model. IT creates the integration of differential value into a hybrid teaching style.
... ere is a strong connection between a leader's behaviour and the organisational climate [3]. e service-climate literature is clear on the influence of the perceptions of employees regarding the managerial practices in their work environment, and the resulting favourable or unfavourable responses of those employees [51]. It has been claimed that employees who work together towards achieving the goals of an organisation, experience cohesiveness that is strengthened by leadership-member relations, team solidarity, and serviceoriented organisational behaviours by their leaders [52]. ...
The leadership of companies influences the organisational climate of companies by creating a cycle of continuous improvement or failing to do so. The same applies to educational leadership in their search for favourable teaching and learning conditions for all learners, especially those of underperforming schools whose academic results are not up to standard. Critical dialogue and new thinking regarding school leadership are mandatory to improve the status quo. It is proposed that the servant leadership paradigm, when practiced by school leadership, may have a significant influence on the school environment. A qualitative approach was utilised to measure the impact of servant school leadership on the organisational climate of private schools in South Africa, with the aim of learning valuable lessons to implement in the public school domain and especially the underperforming school sector. A purposive convenience sampling approach was applied to select participants for three focus group interviews. A theoretical thematic, semantic, and essentialist analytical approach served as the foundation for this study. The focus group interviews confirmed that the participants perceived their school leaderships to implement specific characteristics of servant leadership and organisational climate to enhance a positive school environment for teachers and learners to succeed. The participants also perceived definite links between servant leadership and organisational climate. It is recommended that the servant leadership paradigm and its impact on the organisational climate of underperforming schools be researched and considered for implementation nationally and internationally.
... The process of labor market feminization took place at different rates in different countries. Along with studies focused on employment issues, in the 1980s, researchers began to examine job satisfaction as well as organizational commitment, with the aim of developing strategies to lead organizations to success, because job satisfaction seems to have an impact on the success of the organization (Brown & Lam, 2008), as well as organizational commitment. ...
This paper examines the relationship between job satisfaction, organizational commitment and gender in Kosovo employment
institutions. Despite the positive efforts to change the legislation, in order to increase women’s participation in the labor
market, Kosovo still remains the country with the lowest participation of women in the labor market, comparing to the other
countries in the region. The study of job satisfaction and organizational commitment helps to understand the dynamics that
generate the continuation of women at work and encourage many others to be included in the labor market. This paper uses
the cultural heritage approach to understand the phenomenon. The methodology used to gather the data was quantitative
one. A questionnaire was distributed to 338 employees of 11 employment institutions in Kosovo. The data revealed that more
females than males show high level of job satisfaction and organizational commitment in the institutions where they work.
This confirms the ‘the paradox of the contented female worker’, as explained by Clark (1997). The study also shows that
there exists also a positive correlation between job satisfaction and organizational commitment of employees, both females
and males, in the employment institutions involved in this study.
The South African educational system has challenges regarding learner outcomes of previously disadvantaged schools. New thinking is mandatory, and school leadership needs to play an significant role to improve the status quo. The servant leadership paradigm may be a substantial factor to counter the challenges. A quantitative approach measured the covariation between the servant leadership paradigm and its influence on the organizational climate of private schools to learn implementable lessons. The construct of servant leadership was explored via the Servant Leadership Survey (SLS) of Van Dierendonck and Nuijten. According to Castro and Martins’s Climate Survey Questionnaire (CSQ), the organizational climate was analyzed. A total of 249 respondents, all permanently employed as educators from primary and secondary private schools, completed the survey questionnaires. It was found that private schools’ leadership exhibits the characteristics of the servant leadership practices of empowerment, stewardship, accountability, and humility. It was confirmed that private school leadership displays the organizational climate groupings of organizational image, teamwork, work environment, and leadership as priorities that increase constructive organizational climate in the school setting. Recommendation about the implication of these results to improve the disadvantaged school environment is discussed.
Purpose
As marketization has gained ground in elderly care, satisfaction with care has come to play a crucial role in designing for high-quality care. Inspired by the service-profit chain (SPC) model, the authors aimed to gain a deeper understanding of the intricate interplay between supportive leadership practices, organizational climate, job satisfaction and service quality by predicting satisfaction with care.
Design/methodology/approach
A Swedish sample of frontline elderly care staff ( n = 1,342) participated in a cross-sectional questionnaire study. Mediation analyses were conducted to test the proposed model.
Findings
As predicted, engaging in supportive leadership practices was directly and positively associated with satisfaction with care. In addition, as predicted, this relationship was partially mediated by organizational climate and job satisfaction. Moreover, job satisfaction predicted satisfaction with care with service quality explaining a statistically significant part of this relationship.
Practical implications
Managers in elderly care services may improve satisfaction with care in multiple ways but primarily by showing that they care about the staff and ensuring that they are satisfied with their working conditions. Employee job satisfaction seems to be particularly crucial for satisfaction with care, beyond what can be accounted for by care service quality.
Originality/value
The authors proposed a novel service-outcome model. Adding to the original SPC model, the model in this study suggested and validated previously unexplored relationships including a direct path between leadership practices and satisfaction with service and a multiple-mediator model explaining this relationship. Also, new measures of organizational climate and supportive leadership were developed for which satisfactory reliability estimates were obtained.
Purpose
The detrimental influence of perceived work–family conflict (WFC) on employees' job-related attitudes has been examined in individualistic cultures. However, this relationship needs to be studied in collectivist societies, where the “family” is a salient social institution with family-centric work ethics. This study empirically investigates the role of nurturant task leadership (NTL) behavior in attenuating (1) the negative direct effect of perceived WFC on job satisfaction and (2) the negative indirect effect of perceived WFC on job satisfaction, mediated through affective commitment (AC) on a sample of employees from a public sector bank in India.
Design/methodology/approach
The study adopts a cross-sectional research design, and the data were collected from 244 executives working in the banking sector of India. The direct, indirect and moderated effects were analyzed using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression.
Findings
NTL behavior was found to moderate the negative direct relationships between perceived WFC and job satisfaction as well as the negative indirect relationship between perceived WFC and job satisfaction, mediated through AC.
Research limitations/implications
The study contributes to existing literature on WFC by introducing an important boundary condition in NTL behavior, thus providing impetus to further research in this direction through research designs that allow for causal inference and generalizability.
Practical implications
Findings from this study can provide useful pointers to organizations dealing with employee performance challenges owing to WFC. Results indicate that leaders who exhibit NTL behavior are more likely to attenuate the negative influence of WFC on employee attitudes and performance.
Originality/value
This study is among the first empirical examination of the effectiveness of NTL behavior in mitigating the negative effects of perceived WFC on job satisfaction.
This study stresses and is confined to how employee empowerment affect job satisfaction and how employee satisfaction affects customer satisfaction. The main aim of this study is to find out the relationship between the employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction. It also studies whether employees-customer interaction attracts customers or not. The findings from regression analysis suggest that frontline employee's empowerment is positively related to customer satisfaction; employees' empowerment is positively related to job satisfaction; job satisfaction is positively related to service quality.
It is common to find organizational research seeking to understand the predictors elements to organizational performance. The objective of this research is to analyze the relationships between innovative capabilities, service differentiation and organizational performance. It has been researched theoretical evidence to support organizations that develop innovative element, therefore its innovative capacity, which is mediated differentiation of services improve performance organizacional.A methodology used was the bibliographical study of the variables of organizational innovative capacity, the element the differentiation of services and organizational development control items. From the theoretical studies it has been possible to develop 10 propositions of these relationships. And proposals: i) innovative capabilities have positive relationship with performance; ii) innovative capabilities have positive relationship with Service Differentiation in the Process dimension; iii) innovative capabilities have positive relationship with Service Differentiation in the People dimension; iv) innovative capabilities have positive relationship with Service Differentiation in environments dimension; v) Service Differentiation in the Process dimension has positive relationship with performance. vi) Service Differentiation in the People dimension has positive relationship with performance; vii) Service Differentiation in environments dimension has positive relationship with performance; viii) innovative capabilities have positive relationship with performance-mediated differentiation of services in its people dimension; ix) innovative capabilities have positive relationship with performance-mediated differentiation of services in their processes dimension; and x) innovative capabilities have positive relationship with performance-mediated differentiation of services in its environmental dimension.
The recent preoccupations of companies are quite varied, but most of them have the same objective—the improvement of organizational performance. The service area is a very popular one among individual clients or legal entities, the latter having many more interactions with companies in the IT area following the COVID-19 pandemic. The objective of this paper is to determine the factors that contribute to improving the organizational performance of IT service companies. The study involves exploratory, quantitative research that analyzes the perceptions of employees in the Romanian IT sector regarding the performance of their companies, as well as the key success factors that enable its achievement. The results indicate that organizational culture, organizational innovation level, service quality, and employee skills are some of the most important variables that can influence the organizational performance of Romanian IT service providers, thus contributing to their economic sustainability. Moreover, in this field, entrepreneurs should be more concerned about developing employees’ skills and improving their satisfaction, as they are one of the key resources for a sustainable business in the IT industry.
This research, drawing on dyadic data, is one of the first to assess the significance of employee satisfaction in driving customer satisfaction and service quality within a utilitarian context. Multi-level structural equation modelling is employed to analyse 974 customers directly matched to 95 employees across 15 retail grocery stores. Our key empirical finding is that within a utilitarian context, and using a multi-level approach, employee satisfaction does not have a significant direct effect on either customer satisfaction or customer service quality perceptions. Perceptions of price competitiveness assume a more significant role in both customer satisfaction and service quality perceptions than employee satisfaction. Utilitarian store managers should focus their efforts on appropriate service strategies where employee satisfaction still plays a key role.
Background
Patient satisfaction is a focus for emergency department (ED) and hospital administrators. ED patient satisfaction studies have tended to be single‐site and focused on patient and clinician factors. Inclusion of satisfaction scores in a large, national operations database provided an opportunity to conduct an investigation that included diverse operational factors.
Methods
We performed a retrospective analysis of the 2019 Academy of Academic Administrators of Emergency Medicine/Association of Academic Chairs of Emergency Medicine (AAAEM/AACEM) benchmarking survey to identify associations between operational factors and patient satisfaction. We identified 59 database variables as potential predictors of Press Ganey likelihood to recommend and physician overall scores. Using random forest modeling, we identified the top 8 predictors in the models and described their associations.
Results
43(57.3%) academic departments responding to the AAAEM/AACEM survey reported patient satisfaction scores for 78 EDs. Likelihood to recommend ranged from 30.0 to 93.0 (median 74.8) and was associated with ED length of stay, boarding, use of hallway spaces, hospital annual admissions, faculty base clinical hours, proportion of patients leaving before treatment complete (LBTC) and provider in triage hours per day. Physician overall score ranged from 53.3 to 93.4 (median 81.9) and was associated with faculty base clinical hours, x‐ray utilization, annual ED arrivals, LBTC, use of hallway spaces, arrivals per attending hour, and CT utilization.
Conclusions
ED patient satisfaction was associated with intrinsic and extrinsic factors, some being potentially manageable within the ED but others being relatively fixed or outside the control of ED operations. For likelihood to recommend, patient flow was dominant, with erosion of satisfaction observed with increased boarding and longer LOS. Factors associated with physician overall score were more varied. Use of hallway spaces and base clinical hours greater than 1,500 per year were associated with both lower likelihood to recommend and lower physician overall scores.
Dijital medya çağında işletmeler, özellikle daha kapsamlı yaklaşımlarla
geleneksel pazarlama yaklaşımlarını yeniden gözden geçirerek uygulamaya çalışmalıdır. Nitekim bugün, pazarlama dünyasında eski yaklaşımları, yeni ve daha geniş kapsamda yenilikçi yaklaşımlarla uyumlu hale getirmeye çalışan holistik pazarlamanın uygulanmasına ihtiyaç duyulmuştur. Çünkü holistik pazarlamada her şey önemlidir, entegre ve geniş bir bakış açısının gerekliliği fikri hakimdir (Kim, 2007). Her şeyin önemli olduğu anlayışının hâkim olduğu ve işletme içindeki her bir bireyin gerçek bir ortak anlayışı ihtiyacına atıfta bulunan holistik pazarlama yönelimi, yeniliklere, yeni gerçeklere, tüketicilere, çok daha geniş, daha yüksek bir sesle ve daha tutarlı nasıl yaklaşılacağını yeniden düşünmeyi gerektirmektedir.
Purpose
The study aims to investigate the roles of trust and team cohesiveness as mediating variables to transmit the effect of transformational leadership dimensions on job satisfaction.
Design/methodology/approach
The study employs a quantitative approach with 405 respondents as the samples. The respondents are teachers and staff of schools in East Java, Indonesia. The data are analyzed using partial least square (PLS).
Findings
Trust and team cohesiveness fully mediate the relationship between idealized influences on job satisfaction. Besides, idealized influence, inspirational motivation and individualized consideration directly affect job satisfaction.
Research limitations/implications
The relationship between transformational leadership and employee job satisfaction in educational institutions has been rarely explored. The study contributes to the literature on the role of trust and team cohesiveness in transmitting the effect of transformational leadership dimensions on job satisfaction of school employees.
Practical implications
To increase employee job satisfaction at schools, principals need to be highly concerned about trust in the leader–follower relationship. Therefore, principals are responsible for responding to the followers' needs and aspirations and caring for followers.
Originality/value
The significance of the result findings lies in the detailed model that transmits the direct and indirect effect of the transformational leadership dimensions on job satisfaction.
Purpose
Numerous service organizations involve employees in strengthening customer relationships. While the literature has emphasized the importance of a sustainable market orientation (SMO) for an organization’s image, it has not explored how employees’ behavior in sustainable service organizations influences the reputational effect. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of SMO-aligned employee behavior on customer attitude and behavior, while considering different SMOs and the role of value-based brand choice.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted a 2 (SMO-aligned vs nonaligned) × 3 (social, environmental or economic SMOs) between-subject, scenario-based experiment with 313 participants to test the hypotheses. A moderated mediation analysis was also conducted.
Findings
The results show that SMO-aligned employee behavior has a positive impact on customers’ trust in contrast with SMO-nonaligned behavior independent of the SMO. The relationship between employee behavior and customer word-of-mouth is mediated by trust. Furthermore, the effect on trust is moderated by value-based brand choice.
Originality/value
This study contributes to employee behavior research by examining the impact of SMO-aligned employee behavior on customer outcomes in sustainable service organizations. Adding to previous research on employee behavior, it further considers the impact of value-based brand choice.
This book is only available from the publisher, Routledge. I have a description with a link to the publisher here:
https://paulspector.com/books/job-satisfaction/
This study examines the problem of work family conflict among international and private owned luxury hotels in South-South Nigeria. The study determined the prevalence of work conflict in luxury hotels, the management strategies of hotel management in handling family work conflict confronting the hotel workers, and the effect of management strategies on worker's effectiveness. A judgmental sample of six private owned and four international chain hotels scattered across the South-South geopolitical zone of Nigeria was used for the study. Data for the study was obtained from management and front-line workers of the selected hotels with the aid of structured questionnaire. The study measured the prevalence of work family conflict, management response to work family conflict in luxury hotels, and the effect of management responses on worker's effectiveness. The study revealed that front-line employees of Hospitality industry in Nigeria (private-owned and international chain) are faced with work family, role conflict, alongside the negative effects associated with it and that management response to dealing with the issue helps the employee in managing these effects. The study also revealed that management of international chain hotels in Nigeria have slightly imbibed the culture of their counterpart hotels in developed nations of the world while management of private owned hotels show little or no concern in amelioration these effects even in the midst of its prevalence and these attitude was attributed to lack of institutionalized social support system and poor government policy in regards to employment standards. It was therefore recommended that management of private owned hotels in Nigeria should imbibe strategies and tools used by international chain hotel in ameliorating work family conflict alongside the formulation of strategies peculiar to them and that Nigerian government should enforce laws that check employee welfare in the hospitality industry.
The study assesses the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and organizational performance of the companies listed on Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE). It further investigates the mediating effects of employee satisfaction on the relationship between CSR and OP. The survey data was collected from 246 responses, comprising junior and senior staff, senior level managers who are in charge of the day-to-day running of the companies and they are in the position to provide adequate and sufficient information with regards to the companies. A SmartPLS (version 3.2.3) was used to analyse the data. The findings of the study show that CSR activities significantly and positively influence organizational performance. This influence is found to be pronounced especially when CSR activities are deliberately exercised toward internal stakeholders. A positive relationship was found between CSR and ESAT, while ESAT also influence OP positively.
Purpose – This paper aims to explore the effects of interpersonal conflicts in the social workplace on
various rationalized, knowledge-hiding behaviors in service organizations. This research also examines
employee well-being as a mediator to explain the effects of interpersonal conflicts at work on knowledgehiding behaviors.
Design/methodology/approach – First, relevant literature provided the theoretical basis for the
conceptual model that links the core constructs of this research. A quantitative study collected data from 395
employees of a global consulting firm with a branch located in a developing country. Finally, an analysis of
the structural equation modeling with MPlus 7 software tested the measurement and the structural model.
Findings – The results of this study suggest that interpersonal conflict at work influences knowledgehiding and that employee’s well-being mediates this relationship. In other words, employees strategically
choose what knowledge-hiding behaviors to use – such as evasion or “playing dumb” – to cope with the lack
of well-being caused by high interpersonal conflicts in the workplace.
Originality/value – Although contextual and individual factors may trigger knowledge-hiding behavior
at work, the current literature has overlooked the combined effects of such factors, especially in service
settings. Knowledge hiding in service organizations is a weakness that can lead to significant economic
losses, especially in firms that are intensively knowledge-based. Thus, it is necessary to identify the
antecedents of knowledge-hiding behavior to deter low performance in these organizations.
The authors advance a conceptual model of channel member satisfaction that distinguishes between economic and noneconomic satisfaction. The resulting model then is tested using meta-analysis. Meta-analysis enables the empirical investigation of a model involving several constructs that never have been examined simultaneously within an individual study. More specifically, the authors unify the stream of research on power use—the focus of many satisfaction studies in the 1970s and 1980s—with more recent work on trust and commitment, which usually explores antecedents other than power use. The results indicate that economic satisfaction and noneconomic satisfaction are distinct constructs with differential relationships to various antecedents and consequences. Furthermore, this study demonstrates that satisfaction is both conceptually and empirically separable from the related constructs of trust and commitment.
A three-phase quantitative investigation of relationships involving salesperson job satisfaction was undertaken. First, the strength, valence, and consistency of pairwise relationships were assessed by means of a meta-analysis. Second, methodological characteristics coded as moderator variables were used to account for variability in study effects. Finally, weighted mean correlations resulting from the analysis of pairwise relationships were used to evaluate a causal model of antecedents and consequences of job satisfaction. In general, relationships involving job satisfaction were robust across study contexts. Systematic moderating effects of type of salesforce and operationalization of job satisfaction were found. Several summary conclusions about antecedents and consequences of salesperson job satisfaction are drawn from the analyses.
We develop a framework of service-unit behavior that begins with a unit's leader's service-focused behavior and progresses through intermediate links (service climate and customer-focused organizational citizenship behavior) to customer satisfaction and then unit sales. Data from a sample of 56 supermarket departments provide at least moderate support for our mediational hypotheses. We discuss findings with a particular focus on the relationship between internal organization functioning and external effectiveness in service settings. In addition, several issues related to testing for mediation using quantitative analysis are identified and discussed.
Service quality and customer satisfaction are important concepts to academic researchers studying consumer evaluations and to practitioners as a means of creating competitive advantages and customer loyalty. This article presents two studies that rely on divergent methodologies to examine whether or not quality and satisfaction have distinct antecedent causes, consequential effects, or both (i.e., whether or not they should be considered a single construct, or distinct, separable constructs). We focus on consumers’ understanding and use of the words quality and satisfaction; in both studies, respondents report whether or not they think quality and satisfaction differ, and if so, on what dimensions or under what circumstances. In the first study, we use the qualitative “critical incident” technique to elicit service attributes that are salient to respondents when prompted to consider quality and satisfaction as distinct. We code the responses to these open-ended survey questions to examine whether quality can be teased apart from satisfaction, from the respondents’ (consumers’) perspective. In the second study, to triangulate on the qualitative data, we experimentally manipulated a number of service attributes drawn from both the first study and from the literature to see whether or not they have differential impacts on judgments of quality and satisfaction. We did not presuppose that quality and satisfaction differ—rather, we asked respondents to make a judgment either of quality or of satisfaction, defining the term as they saw fit. We inferred from their judgments
Because customer service employees often represent the sole contact a customer has with a firm, it is important to examine job-related factors that affect customer service employee performance and customer evaluations. In two diverse customer settings, the authors capture matched responses from service employees, supervisors, and customers. The authors use the data to examine the potential chain of effects from customer service employee work-family conflict and family-work conflict, to job stress and job performance, to customer purchase intent (CPI). The results show direct (and indirect) effects of work-family conflict and family-work conflict on service employee customer-directed extra-role performance (CDERP). The results also show direct effects of job stress on service employee in-role performance (IRP) and CDERP and on CPI. Furthermore, the findings show that job stress has a more pronounced effect on IRP than on CDERP and that CDERP has a greater effect on CPI than does IRP. The authors conclude with a discussion of managerial and theoretical implications.
Recent research has documented how exchanges between buyers and sellers are frequently embedded in social relationships. An unresolved question, however, is the extent to which such relationships protect incumbent suppliers from new competitors and their marketing programs. The authors develop a conceptual framework of how relationship and marketing variables influence choice of supplier and test the framework empirically in the context of business-to-business services. The results show that interpersonal relationships between buyers and suppliers serve as a switching barrier but are considerably less important than both firm-level switching costs and marketing variables. Moreover unlike switching costs, interpersonal relationships do not play the frequently mentioned role of a buffer against price and product competition. Finally, the authors show that buyers and suppliers hold systematically different views of the determinants of switching.
A model was developed to describe the roles of organizational obstacles (social and technical) in relation to three types of performance outcomes (customer satisfaction, financial performance, and employee job satisfaction), as well as to various moderators associated with different job types (e.g., customer contact, organizational commitment). In a test of this model, employee perceptions of organizational obstacles were measured in a retail banking environment. For employees in highest contact with customers (i.e., tellers), reports of co-worker obstacles, work environment obstacles, and workbreak scheduling obstacles were associated with lower levels of customer satisfaction. However, there was very little relationship between tellers' perceptions of obstacles and tellers' job satisfaction. For employees in positions associated with more experience and commitment (i.e., account representatives), information timeliness obstacles were linked with higher customer satisfaction, while materials, workspace sharing, and work environment obstacles were linked with lower customer satisfaction. Also for account representatives, the majority of obstacle types negatively affected their job satisfaction. These results are interpreted and discussed and managerial implications are examined.
This study examined whether the psychological climate for service friendliness correlated positively with employee displayed positive emotions, and whether such positive emotional displays influenced customer purchase decision and customer reactions concerning an organization. Data were collected from 290 sales clerks in 156 retail shoe stores in Taiwan, and from 284 customers who were served by one of the sales clerks. Results indicated a positive relationship between psychological climate for service friendliness and employees’ displayed positive emotions. The study also indicated that employees’ positive emotional displays would increase customer willingness to return to the store and pass positive comments to friends.
This article develops a conceptual framework of roles in marketing relationships. Drawing on emerging theory from economic sociology and March's (1994) notion of decision "logics," the authors discuss two prototypical relation- ship roles, namely (1) a "friend," who uses a "logic of appropriatene ss" and follows established rules, and (2) a "businessperson," whose decisions are guided by utility-maxim izing considerations under a "logic of conse- quences." Next, they use extant theories of intertirm governance to suggest that firms' relationship strategies can be used both to create different relationship roles in the first place and to activate them over time. The authors posit that activation can have several different outcomes, including reinforcement of an existing dominant role or actual switching to a new one. Theoretically, the conceptual framework allows for integration of different perspec- tives on interfirm relationships, some of which have provided seemingly inconsistent accounts of firm behavior. From a managerial perspective, the framework identifies specific matches between particular relationship roles on the one hand and firms' governance strategies on the other hand. In general, the framework suggests that an in-depth understanding of roles is a prerequisite for the deployment of relationship management initiatives toward resellers, customers, and suppliers.
The authors advance a conceptual model of channel member satisfaction that distinguishes between economic and noneconomic satisfaction. The resulting model then is tested using meta-analysis, Meta-analysis enables the empirical investigation of a model involving several constructs that never have been examined simultaneously within an individual study. More specifically, the authors unify the stream of research on power use-the focus of many satisfaction studies in the 1970s and 1980s-with more recent work on trust and commitment, which usually explores antecedents other than power use. The results indicate that economic satisfaction and noneconomic satisfaction are distinct constructs with differential relationships to various antecedents and consequences. Furthermore, this study demonstrates that satisfaction is both conceptually and empirically separable from the related constructs of trust and commitment.
Purpose – The purpose is to investigate, the difference between SERVQUAL and SERVPERF's predictive validity of service quality. Design/methodology/approach – Data from 17 studies containing 42 effect sizes of the relationships between SERVQUAL or SERVPERF with overall service quality (OSQ) are meta-analyzed. Findings – Overall, SERVQUAL and SERVPERF are equally valid predictors of OSQ. Adapting the SERVQUAL scale to the measurement context improves its predictive validity; conversely, the predictive validity of SERVPERF is not improved by context adjustments. In addition, measures of services quality gain predictive validity when used in: less individualistic cultures, non-English speaking countries, and industries with an intermediate level of customization (hotels, rental cars, or banks). Research limitations/implications – No study, that were using non-adapted scales were conducted outside of the USA making it impossible to disentangle the impact of scale adaptation vs contextual differences on the moderating effect of language and culture. More comparative studies on the usage of adapted vs non-adapted scales outside the USA are needed before settling this issue meta-analytically. Practical implications – SERVQUAL scales require to be adapted to the study context more so than SERVPERF. Owing to their equivalent predictive validity the choice between SERVQUAL or SERVPERF should be dictated by diagnostic purpose (SERVQUAL) vs a shorter instrument (SERVPERF). Originality/value – Because of the high statistical power of meta-analysis, these findings could be considered as a major step toward ending the debate whether SERVPERF is superior to SERVQUAL as an indicator of OSQ.
A three-phase quantitative investigation of relationships involving salesperson job satisfaction was undertaken. First, the strength, valence, and consistency of pairwise relationships were assessed by means of a meta-analysis. Second, methodological characteristics coded as moderator variables were used to account for variability in study effects. Finally, weighted mean correlations resulting from the analysis of pairwise relationships were used to evaluate a causal model of antecedents and consequences of job satisfaction. In general, relationships involving job satisfaction were robust across study contexts. Systematic moderating effects of type of sales-force and operationalization of job satisfaction were found. Several summary conclusions about antecedents and consequences of salesperson job satisfaction are drawn from the analyses.
A central assumption of meta-analysis is that the sample of studies fairly represents all work done in the field, published and unpublished. However, if studies with “poor” results are less likely to be published, a potential publication bias is present. The authors propose a maximum likelihood approach to estimating publication bias for the situation in which censorship based on effect size may occur. An explicit hypothesis test is provided for testing whether or not censorship is present. The method also simultaneously estimates the proportion of studies censored, the threshold past which censorship is avoided, and the probability of censorship if a potential observation is under the censorship threshold. Two published meta-analyses are examined and some publication bias is found in each, but no publication bias is detected in a meta-analysis of proprietary research data.
The authors develop and test a model of service employee management that examines constructs simultaneously across three interfaces of the service delivery process: manager-employee, employee-role, and employee-customer. The authors examine the attitudinal and behavioral responses of customer-contact employees that can influence customers’ perceptions of service quality, the relationships among these responses, and three formal managerial control mechanisms (empowerment, behavior-based employee evaluation, and management commitment to service quality). The findings indicate that managers who are committed to service quality are more likely to empower their employees and use behavior-based evaluation. However, the use of empowerment has both positive and negative consequences in the management of contact employees. Some of the negative consequences are mitigated by the positive effects of behavior-based employee evaluation. To increase customers’ perceptions of service quality, managers must increase employees’ self-efficacy and job satisfaction, and reduce employees’ role conflict and ambiguity. Implications for the management of customer-contact service employees and directions for further research are discussed.
Relationship marketing (RM) has emerged as one of the dominant mantras in business strategy circles, though RM investigations often yield mixed results. To help managers and researchers improve the effectiveness of their efforts, the authors synthesize RM empirical research in a meta-analytic framework. Although the fundamental premise that RM positively affects performance is well supported, many of the authors’ findings have significant implications for research and practice. Relationship investment has a large, direct effect on seller objective performance, which implies that additional meditated pathways may explain the impact of RM on performance. Objective performance is influenced most by relationship quality (a composite measure of relationship strength) and least by commitment. The results also suggest that RM is more effective when relationships are more critical to customers (e.g., service offerings, channel exchanges, business markets) and when relationships are built with an individual person rather than a selling firm (which partially explains the mixed effects between RM and performance reported in previous studies).
It is no longer news that over the past five years, Sears, Roebuck and Company has radically changed the way it does business and dramatically improved its financial results. But the Sears transformation was more than a change in marketing strategy. It was also a change in the logic and culture of the business. Led by CEO Arthur Martinet, a group of more than 100 top-level Sears executives spent three years rebuilding the company around its customers. In rethinking what Sears was and what it wanted to become, these managers developed a business model of the company - the employee-customer-profit model - and an accompanying measurement system that tracks success from management behavior through employee attitudes to customer satisfaction and financial performance. The basic elements of the model are not difficult to grasp. In retailing, there is a chain of cause and effect running from employees' behavior to customers' behavior to profits, and it is not hard to see that behavior depends primarily on attitude. Still, implementing the model is not easy. One problem is measuring such soft data as customer and employee "satisfaction." Not surprisingly, many companies do not have a realistic grasp of what their customers and employees actually think and do. By means of an ongoing process of data collection, analysis, modeling, and experimentation, Sears does. Moreover, the work of creating the model and the measures has made such demands on managers that it has changed the way they think and behave. And now that cultural change is spreading throughout the company.
The diversity of the service sector makes it difficult to come up with managerially useful generalizations concerning marketing practice in service organizations. This article argues for a focus on specific categories of services and proposes five schemes for classifying services in ways that transcend narrow industry boundaries. In each instance insights are offered into how the nature of the service might affect the marketing task.
The growing number of academic studies on customer satisfaction and the mixed findings they report complicate efforts among managers and academics to identify the antecedents to, and outcomes of, businesses having more-versus less-satisfied customers. These mixed findings and the growing emphasis by managers on having satisfied customers point to the value of empirically synthesizing the evidence on customer satisfaction to assess current knowledge. To this end, the authors conduct a meta-analysis of the reported findings on customer satisfaction. They document that equity and disconfirmation are most strongly related to customer satisfaction on average. They also find that measurement and method factors that characterize the research often moderate relationship strength between satisfaction and its antecedents and outcomes. The authors discuss the implications surrounding these effects and offer several directions for future research.
A representative design for diagnosing effectiveness in retail service organizations is presented and operationalized in a study of the employees and customers from twenty-three bank branches. The design builds on some boundary-spanning theory and on some practical realities which suggest that data should be collected from both employees and customers when diagnosing and evaluating service organizations. Assumptions underlying the use of perception-based diagnoses are also explained. Results revealed some strong relationships between employee perceptions of branch practices and procedures in relation to service and customer perceptions of service practices and quality. Results are discussed with reference to organizational diagnosis and the potential integration of organizational and consumer behavior.
Many theories hypothesize interdependence of observations among individuals within organizations, yet researchers frequently assume complete independence of observations in statistical models applied to their data. The resultant interpretational errors frequently appear in the organizational sciences literature. This paper illustrates the magnitude and direction of bias because of inconsistency of assumptions of interdependence. Both theorists and researchers are encouraged to state their assumptions of interdependence with mathematical models.
Previous work on service performance has focused on either organization- or individual-level analysis. This multilevel study of 257 employees, 44 managers, and 1,993 customers from 25 restaurants demonstrated that both individual- and store-level factors were significantly associated with employee service performance: conscientiousness and extraversion explained within-store variance, and service climate and employee involvement explained between-store variance. Further, employee service performance aggregated to the store level explained between-store variance in customer satisfaction and loyalty.
The authors develop and test a model of service employee management that examines constructs simultaneously across three interfaces of the service delivery process: manager-employee, employee-role, and employee-customer. The authors examine the attitudinal and behavioral responses of customer-contact employees that can influence customers' perceptions of service quality, the relationships among these responses, and three formal managerial control mechanisms (empowerment, behavior-based employee evaluation, and management commitment to service quality). The findings indicate that managers who are committed to service quality are more likely to empower their employees and use behavior-based evaluation. However, the use of empowerment has both positive and negative consequences in the management of contact employees. Some of the negative consequences are mitigated by the positive effects of behavior-based employee evaluation. To increase customers' perceptions of service quality, managers must increase employees' self-efficacy and job satisfaction, and reduce employees' role conflict and ambiguity. Implications for the management of customer-contact service employees and directions for further research are discussed.
This article conceptualizes the emotional labor construct in terms of four dimensions: frequency of appropriate emotional display, attentiveness to required display rules, variety of emotions to be displayed, and emotional dissonance generated by having to express organizationally desired emotions not genuinely felt. Through this framework, the article then presents a series of propositions about the organizational-, job-, and individual-level characteristics that are antecedents of each of these four dimensions. Frequency of emotional display, attentiveness to display rules, variety of emotions to be displayed, and emotional dissonance are hypothesized to lead to greater emotional exhaustion, but only emotional dissonance is hypothesized to lead to lower job satisfaction. Implications for future theory development and empirical research on emotional labor are discussed as well.
A central assumption of meta-analysis is that the sample of studies fairly represents all work done in the field, published and unpublished. However, if studies with "poor" results are less likely to be published, a potential publication bias is present. The authors propose a maximum likelihood approach to estimating publication bias for the situation in which censorship based on effect size may occur. An explicit hypothesis test is provided for testing whether or not censorship is present. The method also simultaneously estimates the proportion of studies censored, the threshold past which censorship is avoided, and the probability of censorship if a potential observation is under the censorship threshold. Two published meta-analyses are examined and some publication bias is found in each, but no publication bias is detected in a meta-analysis of proprietary research data.
Emotions have ubiquitous effects in human affairs. Vivian Gornick, in Fierce Attachments,^ recounts a typ-ical exchange with her mother. Gor-nick always begins these encounters with high hopes. "Somehow," de-spite her best intentions, the conver-sations always spiral downward: Today is promising, tremendously prom-ising I go to meet my mother. I'm flying. Flying! I want to give her some of this shiningness bursting in me, siphon into her my immense happiness at being alive. Just because she is my oldest inti-mate and at this moment I love every-body, even her. "Oh, Ma! What a day I've had," I say. "Tell me," she says. "Do you have the rent this month?" "Ma, listen ..." I say. "That review you wrote for the Times," she says. "Ifs for sure they'll pay you?" "Ma, stop it. Let me tell you what I've been feeling," I say. "Why aren't you wearing something warmer?" she cries. "It's nearly winter." The space inside begins to shimmer. The walls collapse inward. I feel breath-less. Swallow slowly, I say to myself, slowly. To my mother I say, "You do know how to say the right thing at the right time. Ifs remarkable, this gift of yours. It quite takes my breath away." But she doesn't get it. She doesn't loiow I'm being ironic. Nor does she Elaine Hatfield is a Professor of Psychology and Richard L. Rapson is a Professor of History at the Uni-versity of Hawaii. John T. Ca-cioppo is a Professor of Psychology at the Ohio State University. Ad-dress correspondence to Elaine Hatfield, 2430 Campus Rd., Honolulu, HI 96822; BITNET: psych@uhunix; INTERNET: psych@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu. know she's wiping me out. She doesn't know I take her anxiety personally, feel annihilated by her depression. How can she know this? She doesn't even know I'm there. Were I to tell her that it's death to me, her not knowing I'm there, she would stare at me out of her eyes crowd-ing up with puzzled desolation, this young girl of seventy-seven, and she would cry angrily, "You don't under-stand! You have never understood!" (pp. 103-104)
Although it has frequently been argued that the job satisfaction of a company’s employees is an important driver of customer satisfaction, systematic research exploring this link is scarce. The present study investigates this relationship for salespeople in a business-to-business context. The theoretical justification for a positive impact of salespeople’s job satisfaction on customer satisfaction is based on the concept of emotional contagion. The analysis is based on a dyadic data set that involves judgments provided by salespeople and their customers collected across multiple manufacturing and services industries. Results indicate the presence of a positive relationship between salespeople’s job satisfaction and customer satisfaction. Furthermore, the relationship between salespeople’s job satisfaction and customer satisfaction is found to be particularly strong in the case of high frequency of customer interaction, high intensity of customer integration into the value-creating process, and high product/service innovativeness.