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On Duty -- Off Guard: Cultural Norms and Sexual Harassment in Service Organizations
Abstract
This article focuses on sexual harassment, defined as unwanted sexual attention at work. Due to their inherent characteristics, service organizations are a prime breeding ground for such harassment. In spite of this, the problem is rarely in focus. The authors argue that a major reason for this is the particular cultural norms in service organizations: employees are not allowed to perceive them selves as victims of sexual harassment. An explorative study supports this proposition. Implications for management are discussed.
... Broadly defined as unwanted sexual attention in the workplace (Folgerø and Fjeldstad, 1995), sexual harassment is regarded as the most pervasive form of violence against women (Fitzgerald, 2017). While males can also be victims of sexual harassment, there seems to be a consensus that females are the typical targets (Murry et al., 2001;Cheung et al., 2018). ...
... The data was collected using semi-structured interviews. The questions were determined based on an extensive literature review on sexual harassment (Fitzgerald et al., 1988;Folgerø and Fjeldstad, 1995;Gilbert et al., 1998;Rotundo et al., 2001;Yagil, 2008;Theocharous and Philaretou, 2009;Cheung et al., 2018;Madera et al., 2018;Ram, 2018). The interview protocol was divided into two sections. ...
... Although several informants experienced unwanted attention which can be categorized as sexual harassment, they were reluctant to consider these incidents as being threatening or having a significant negative impact on their work. This supports the notion that employees in the tourism and hospitality workplaces may be less sensitive and more resilient to sexual harassment incidents (Folgerø and Fjeldstad, 1995;Giuffre and Williams, 1994). Poulston (2008) suggested that some tourism and hospitality employees are likely to tolerate anti-social behaviour and therefore they tend to consider sexual harassment as part of their job. ...
Drawing on a qualitative study approach involving 19 interviews with professional female tour guides in Turkey, the current investigation delves into sexual harassment and its impacts on the quality of work-life and subjective wellbeing of female tour guides. Despite the wide agreement that sexual harassment is common in tourism and hospitality workplaces, our findings indicate that female tour guides do not perceive sexual harassment as a pervasive phenomenon. The findings also confirm that tourism employees are less sensitive to unwanted sexual attention and thus are more resilient to sexual harassment. Similar to other sectors like hotels, sexual harassment seems to be normalized in tour guiding services. Tour guides tolerate unwanted sexual attention and seem to manage and overcome its potential consequences on their professional and personal life.
... Ett av hovedresultatene i tidligere undersøkelser er at seksuell trakassering ofte er akseptert som en del av yrkes-eller bransjekulturen, og at lite blir gjort for å endre på dette. Flere, både nasjonalt og internasjonalt, har pekt på at seksuell trakassering i helse/omsorg-og hotell og restaurantbransjen er et vedvarende og stort problem (Folgerø og Fjeldstad 1995;Mulinari 2007;Yagil 2008;Hagen og Svalund 2019). Når det gjelder hotell-og restaurantansatte vises det til hvordan klare kjønnsroller, spill på det feminine og normer om at «kunden alltid har rett» og at «dette er en del av jobben», indirekte har bidratt til å oppmuntre til seksuell trakassering (Folgerø og Fjeldstad 1995;Mulinari 2007;Yagil, 2008). ...
... Flere, både nasjonalt og internasjonalt, har pekt på at seksuell trakassering i helse/omsorg-og hotell og restaurantbransjen er et vedvarende og stort problem (Folgerø og Fjeldstad 1995;Mulinari 2007;Yagil 2008;Hagen og Svalund 2019). Når det gjelder hotell-og restaurantansatte vises det til hvordan klare kjønnsroller, spill på det feminine og normer om at «kunden alltid har rett» og at «dette er en del av jobben», indirekte har bidratt til å oppmuntre til seksuell trakassering (Folgerø og Fjeldstad 1995;Mulinari 2007;Yagil, 2008). I helse-og omsorgssektoren er seksuell trakassering av ansatte også et problem som sjelden er i fokus, først og fremst fordi uønsket seksuell oppmerksomhet betraktes som ikke-intensjonelle handlinger fra brukere og pasienter og ses på som en del av jobben. ...
... Mye tafsing bak scenen «på gøy» (scenekunstner). Folgerø og Fjeldstad (1995) peker på utfordringer med at seksuell trakassering generelt er akseptert som en del av jobben i hotell og restaurant, og kan undertrykkes til et nivå der offeret aktivt fornekter at det er et problem. Slike mekanismer kan også vaere en grunn til at hotell-og restaurantansatte i vår undersøkelse ofte ikke anså hendelsen(e) som alvorlig nok til at de har meldt ifra om det som skjedde. ...
Høsten 2017 ble #metoo et synonym for seksuell trakassering opplevd i jobbsammenheng, og den kollektive responsen fra kvinner i ulike yrkesgrupper vitnet om seksuell trakassering som et omfattende problem på norske arbeidsplasser. Denne artikkelen drøfter spørsmål om hvordan seksuell trakassering arter seg i ulike kontekster og hvorfor seksuell trakassering som arbeidsmiljøproblem tilsynelatende fikk lite oppmerksomhet ute på arbeidsplassene i forkant av metoo-kampanjen. Det empiriske materialet er hentet fra ulike spørreundersøkelser i perioden 2016-2018 i fire forskjellige bransjer og yrkesgrupper; helse- og omsorg, hotell- og restaurant, utøvende og skapende scenekunstnere samt leger. Artikkelen viser hvordan utfordringer med seksuell trakassering relatert til jobb varierer for disse gruppene, og hvordan organisatoriske og strukturelle betingelser har betydning for utsatthet. Det er høye terskler for å melde ifra om seksuell trakassering som skjer på jobb. Frykt for konsekvenser for videre jobb- og karrieremuligheter, oppfatninger om at opplevelsene ikke er alvorlige nok, eller at seksuell trakassering er normalt og noe som må aksepteres som en del av bransje- eller yrkeskulturen, er viktige årsaker til at dette fikk lite oppmerksomhet før #metoo.
... Therefore, in workplaces dominated by women (such as in housekeeping or food services), workers may think that their sex-role expectations are part of their job. Hence, in hospitality, women report that management expects them to behave sexually (Folgerø and Fjeldstad, 1995;Gilbert et al., 1998). ...
... After interviewing ten Norwegian hotel students, Folgerø and Fjeldstad (1995) concluded that frontline employees consider sexual behaviour an unavoidable part of their work, but only feel harassed when it interferes with their work. Most feel they need to adopt a different persona at work -one that accommodates sexual behaviours happily. ...
... Management's high expectations of customer satisfaction can explicitly condone difficult customer behaviours, particularly in settings that offer both alcohol and anonymity (Worsfold and McCann, 2000;Pritchard and Morgan, 2006;Poulston, 2008a;Karatepe et al., 2009) such as many bars and nightclubs. Sadaraka et al.'s (2015) study extended Folgerø and Fjeldstad's (1995) work by showing that female dancers in the Cook Islands gradually changed their attire to become more sexually provocative, to fit in with the norms of the dancing group. This study demonstrated that peers are a greater influence than management on labour sexualisation, and that some labour will naturally self-sexualise unless management intervenes. ...
Purpose
This qualitative study examines employee responses to sexual behaviour in hospitality workplaces, to determine their roles and responsibilities in harassment prevention.
Design/methodology/approach
Female workers in restaurants and bars were recruited using the snowball technique, and data collected through 18 interviews. An interpretivist approach was used to guide the data collection and analysis.
Findings
The study found that harassment coping strategies developed with age and experience rather than through training, and those who dressed and behaved provocatively attracted more unwanted sexual attention.
Practical implications
Recommendations focus on the role of managers in moderating employee behaviour and providing training in assertiveness.
Originality/value
Although this study locates the responsibility for stopping harassment with management, it takes an unusual and potentially unpalatable approach by acknowledging the role of victims in stopping unwanted sexual advances.
... Thereafter, harassers use harassment as a way of exerting power and reducing the authority of the victim. At the same time, subordinates tend to accept this behavior due to the power differential and fear of losing career prospects (Folgerø & Fjeldstad, 1995;Hemming, 1985;Uggen & Blackstone, 2004 Furthermore, sexual harassment is associated with a negative overall mood (job dissatisfaction), psychosomatic health issues, diminished self-esteem, and cognitive distraction from work, which together lead to a deterioration of employee and, therefore, organizational performance (Barling et al., 1996). ...
... Lin (2020) argues that organizations and their executives operate in a changing socioeconomic environment in which awareness of misconduct by executives is increasing. Attitudes towards executive sexual abuse of subordinates, long deemed acceptable due to differences in power (Folgerø & Fjeldstad, 1995;Hemming, 1985;Uggen & Blackstone, 2004) and tolerance of such conduct (Reilly et al., 1992), changed drastically in the wake of #MeToo (Gill & Orgad, 2018). This dynamic, together with the increasing importance of executives (Neely et al., 2020), has shifted the focus from the role of the organization to the role of the executive in regard to misconduct. ...
This doctoral thesis deals with the topic of organizational misconduct and covers the three salient research streams in this area by addressing its performance outcomes, antecedents, and preventive measures. Specifically, it is concerned with the question of how different forms of misconduct are reflected in the stock performance of related organizations, thereby, covering the three pillars of corporate sustainability environmental, social, and governance (ESG). Furthermore, it aims to conceptualize how individual cognitive biases may lead to misconduct, therefore, potentially representing an antecedent and how existing management control systems can be enhanced to effectively address specific forms of misconduct, respectively.
To these ends, I first review the research stream of stock price reactions to environmental pollution events in terms of the underlying research samples, methodological specifications, and theoretical underpinnings. Based on the findings of the systematic literature review (SLR), I perform three stock-based event studies of the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal (Dieselgate), workplace sexual harassment (#MeToo accusations), and the 2003 blackout in the US to cove the three ESG dimensions, respectively. In line with the SLR, my event studies reveal substantial stock losses to firms involved in misconduct that are eventually even accompanied by a spillover effect to uninvolved bystanders.
Then, I review the extant literature conceptually to develop a framework outlining how moral licensing as an individual cognitive bias might lead to a self-attribution of corporate sustainability, a consecutive accumulation of moral credit, and a later exchange of this credit by engaging in misconduct afterward.
Finally, I assess existing workplace sexual harassment management controls, such as awareness training and grievance procedures critically in another conceptual analysis. Based on the shortcomings stemming from management controls’ focus on compliance and negligence of moral duties, I introduce five specific nudges firms should consider to enhance their existing management controls and eventually prevent occurrences of workplace sexual harassment.
Based on the six distinct articles within this doctoral thesis, I outline its limitations and point at directions for future research. These mainly address providing further evidence on the long-term performance effects of organizational misconduct, enriching our knowledge on further cognitive biases eventually leading to misconduct, and conceptualizing nudging beyond the use-case of workplace sexual harassment.
... Boundary spanners often spend significant time outside their organizations or work in close proximity to external stakeholders, such as customers or clients. These employees and their organizations depend on third parties for sales, commissions, tips, and performance evaluations (Folgerø & Fjeldstad, 1995;Good & Cooper, 2016;Guerrier & Adib, 2000;Hughes & Tadic, 1998). Thus, third party relationships are significant because boundary spanners depend on them for professional success and personal income, while organizations depend on them to meet their bottom line. ...
... As a result, boundary spanners may have little to no formal authority or recourse in the relationship (Spekman, 1979). Boundary spanners are obligated to look, act, and talk in a certain way (Folgerø & Fjeldstad, 1995) and are "expected to enact deference and respect to customers" (Good & Cooper, 2016, p. 452). The working conditions and social norms of these environments create opportunities for third parties to engage in sexually harassing behaviors and discourages boundary spanners from reporting or filing complaints with their organizations (Hughes & Tadic, 1998). ...
Research suggests powerful resource dependencies are present in the public and nonprofit sectors. The individuals operating at the nexus between organizations and resource providers, and who mitigate dependencies, are referred to as boundary spanners. Research suggests that there may be both positive and negative personal repercussions for boundary spanners, but research has not sufficiently examined these unintended consequences through a gender lens. Bringing together research on resource dependence and sexual harassment, this study explores sexual harassment as an unintended consequence for boundary spanners of resource dependence mitigation strategies. Drawing on a feminist methodology and purposive sampling, we engaged in interviews with 36 professional fundraisers, a quintessential boundary spanning role, to examine the problem of sexual harassment by donors. These experiences leave fundraisers feeling harassed by donors and exploited by employers that pressure them to do “whatever it takes” to obtain donations. We contribute to research on resource dependence by surfacing sexual harassment and exploitation as unintended consequences for boundary spanners of strategies to mitigate organizational resource dependence. Our findings assist in reconsidering the assumptions that underly resource dependence theory and related research.
... bodily attributes seem to connect them to (or disconnect them from) certain spaces within the hospitality work environment, this is also to an extent a determining factor as to whom is exposed to what kind of hazard, including various forms of harassment and threats. ZAMPOUKOS So far, very few empirical studies have been carried out, and surprisingly few in a Nordic context (although see Folgerø & Fjeldstad, 1995;Mulinari, 2007;Bråten & Sletvold Øistad, 2018), given the tradition in these countries ...
... While occupational injuries caused by machinery, chemicals and inadequate ergonomics have been covered in previous studies, health risks due to organizational and social aspects have largely been ignored. In fact, several studies indicate that organizationally sanctioned strategies and interventions for the purpose of preventing harassment and violence and threats of violence in hospitality are either completely lacking or underdeveloped (Folgerø & Fjeldstad, 1995;Kensbock et al., 2015;Ram, 2015;Yagil, 2008). I should stress that customer harassment, in particular, is far less likely to be covered by policies, than is co-worker or supervisor harassment (Handy, 2006;Kensbock et al., 2015). ...
This paper critically examines the hospitable body and how it is put to work, how certain bodies are selected and become associated with certain occupations and spaces of work, and how the hospitable body is produced, transformed, and commodified in accordance with prevailing modes of production. Drawing on examples primarily obtained from the Nordic countries, I review current research on hospitality workers, while also manifesting how employers portray and, at times, exploit the hospitable body. This is followed by a presentation of a research agenda for the continued study of the hospitable body at work, addressing the need for in‐depth, context‐sensitive studies on worker strategies to counteract harassment. I conclude by suggesting that the working body can be theorized as concurrently being relational and “in the making,” and as a bounded territory in need of protection against the hazards of flexible work regimes, stress, harassment, and precariousness.
... Earlier research has documented the nature of customer-perpetrated sexual harassment in a variety of contexts. Studies have examined the attitudes and experiences of hospitality employees in China , New Zealand (Poulston, 2008), the UK (Guerrier and Adib, 2000) and Sweden (Folgero and Fjeldstad, 1995), students working in retail and hospitality in Australia (Good and Cooper, 2014), as well as sales staff in Taiwan (Liu-Ming, 2014), bank tellers and shop assistants in New Zealand (Handy, 2006), retail workers in Canada (Hughes and Tadic, 1998), clerical employees in professional services and retail employees in the US (Gettman and Gelfand, 2007), doctors in Australia (Bratuskins et al., 2013) and hotel room attendants in the UK (Guerrier and Adib, 2000) and in Australia (Kensbock et al., 2015). ...
... While this sampling limits the generalizability of the empirical results, the findings are presented to highlight particular features of each participant's story as an illustrative example of a type of response to customer-perpetrated sexual harassment, rather than as representative of all experiences in this sector. Furthermore, this sampling strategy has been used in previous studies of sexual harassment from customers, owing to the difficulty in accessing participants from organizations because of the sensitivities and legal implications of sexual harassment (Folgero and Fjeldstad, 1995;Guerrier and Adib, 2000;Poulston, 2008). Volunteer and snowball sampling was used to recruit interviewees, as these methods are particularly suitable for research of 'sensitive' topics such as responses to customer-perpetrated sexual harassment, where it is difficult to identify a relevant population (Biernacki and Waldorf, 1981, p. 141). ...
This article analyses how employees in the service sector respond to sexual harassment from customers and attempts to explain why this is so. There are only a small number of previous studies examining the issue of customer-perpetrated sexual harassment. Those that have been conducted have detailed the nature and prevalence of sexual harassment from customers, but this research lags behind employee experience and some emerging policy responses to this issue. The extant literature, whilst growing, remains largely limited to documenting the phenomenon. In this article, we attempt to create a deeper analysis of customer-perpetrated harassment by conducting a new review of the literature to develop propositions about how employees respond to it and the factors that influence their responses. These propositions are analysed in relation to a qualitative pilot study with 15 interviewees who had experienced sexual harassment from customers to understand how they reacted and why. The article shows how the social norms and precarious working conditions of the service sector constrain employees from seeking formal redress, leading to the enactment of informal coping strategies and temporary contestations of the situation. This research is important for building our understanding of the influence of workplace context for framing employee responses to customer sexual harassment.
... In fact, feminist theory suggests a core objective of sexual harassment has been to illustrate to women that they are not wanted in certain workplaces and that they are not respected as members of particular work groups (O'Hare & O'Donohue, 1998;Reskin & Padavic 1994). In line with this assumption, qualitative research findings affirm that the sex-ratio of an organization may actually be a barrier to labeling certain behaviors as sexual harassment (Collinson & Collinson 1996;Dougherty & Smythe 2004;Folgero & Fjeldstad 1995;Welsh, 1999). For instance, women who are employed in typically masculine work cultures have been found to avoid formally defining their experiences as sexual harassment in order to be "part of the team," to be considered competent workers, or because of other perceived risks to their career (Collinson & Collinson 1996;Peirce et al. 1997;Welsh 1999;Williams 1997). ...
... For instance, women who are employed in typically masculine work cultures have been found to avoid formally defining their experiences as sexual harassment in order to be "part of the team," to be considered competent workers, or because of other perceived risks to their career (Collinson & Collinson 1996;Peirce et al. 1997;Welsh 1999;Williams 1997). Thus, work cultures that are permissive towards degrading and sexual behaviors have been found to institutionalize such behavior as a normal component of work, therefore those behaviors are not seen as harassment (Folgero & Fjeldstad 1995;Williams 1997;Welsh 1999). ...
It has been more than 25 years since the Equal Employment Opportunity Council first published guidelines on sexual harassment. In response, many companies developed policies and procedures for dealing with harassment in their workplaces. The impact of sexual harassment policies on changing workplace culture has been met with mixed findings. The current study investigates the environmental differences or organizational cultures of companies holding formal sexual harassment policies using organizational level data (2002 National Organization Survey). Logistic regressions compared organizations with and without formal complaints on organizational structure, worker power, and interpersonal climate variables. Findings indicated the importance of negative interpersonal climate variables (threatening, bullying, and incivility) in differentiating companies who experience formal complaints of sexual harassment from those that do not.
... Even worse, women who endorse a traditional view of women's roles in society perceive these roles to be less subjective to harassment (Folgero and Fjeldstad 1995). According to Folgero and Fjeldstad (1995), subjective perceptions of sexual harassment occur only one-fifth to one-tenth as often as do reports of objectively defined sexual harassment experiences. ...
... Even worse, women who endorse a traditional view of women's roles in society perceive these roles to be less subjective to harassment (Folgero and Fjeldstad 1995). According to Folgero and Fjeldstad (1995), subjective perceptions of sexual harassment occur only one-fifth to one-tenth as often as do reports of objectively defined sexual harassment experiences. Gruber and Smith (1995) also reported that women generally give fairly nonassertive responses to their harassers. ...
This article examines the reasons why women students may hesitate to report sexual harassment. The research draws on the notion of ‘self-construal’. Self-construal is a form of self-identification in social relationships, which in this case relates, in particular, to gender within cultural environments in Korea. For the purposes of this research, a survey was conducted with 298 Korean college students from 7 to 14 March 2006. The results showed that different types of self-construal had different influences on Korean college students' and their reporting of sexual harassment, whereas gender did not. Grounded in the theoretical framework of self-construal, people with independent self-construal were found to express their uncomfortable feelings and to report to the university counseling center, whereas people with interdependent self-construal did not. Furthermore, we found that women were more likely than men to directly express their opinions and report sexual harassment to the university counseling center. Men are also harassed by women colleagues or students but are often more reluctant than women to recognize their experiences as ‘sexual harassment’ because of the stereotype that men are the perpetrators of this behavior, not its victims, and because they fear ‘loss of face.’ It is necessary to engage not just with femininity but also with masculinity and the relationship between these constructs because they are both temporally and geographically contingent.
... gender and sexuality) of both the employees and the nature of service, which involves close relationships between employees and customers (Poulston 2008). As Folgerø and Fjeldstad (1995) noted, the inherent characteristics of service create a prime breeding ground for sexual harassment, often by customers. ...
This article considers the intersection of sexual harassment and internal hegemonic masculinity in assessing the experiences of men working in the gay tourism industry in Spain. It reports data from 36 interviews with managers and employers in a range of organizations primarily catering for gay, male customers. Consideration of the experiences of men working in the gay tourism industry allows for an understanding of how they navigate the near-constant sexual harassment they experience from customers and how these experiences can be located within contemporary debates about masculinity. The article introduces the concept of ‘submissive masculinity’ to explain how the sexual harassment suffered by the men working in this context is normalized and accepted, despite being unwanted, contributing to the vulnerability and subordination of men experiencing sexual harassment from other men.
... Lin (2020) argues that organizations and their executives operate in a changing socioeconomic environment in which awareness of misconduct by executives is increasing. Attitudes toward executive sexual abuse of subordinates, long deemed acceptable due to differences in power (Folgerø & Fjeldstad, 1995;Hemming, 1985;Uggen & Blackstone, 2004) and tolerance of such conduct (Reilly et al., 1992), changed drastically in the wake of #MeToo (Gill & Orgad, 2018). This dynamic, together with the increasing importance of executives (Neely et al., 2020), has shifted the focus on misconduct from the role of the organization to the role of the executive. ...
In this study, we examine how sexual harassment accusations against executives affect the stock returns of the affiliated organization. Taking a reputation cost perspective, we identify 98 sexual harassment accusations during 2016-2019, of which 25 directly target organizational executives. We employ an event study methodology to detect abnormal stock reactions for the affiliated organization. The results indicate that #MeToo accusations substantially harmed the stock returns of the organization despite the accusation relating to an individual's misconduct. We discover significant results only for executives who are employed at the parent organization. Therefore, we first provide evidence that misconduct by individuals matters for organizations. We demonstrate that executive misconduct becomes particularly relevant when the executive assumes a leading position at the parent organization. This finding has important implications for future research and practitioners.
... Previous research has shown how service workplaces often demand performances of heterosexuality and femininity that increase worker vulnerability to customer abuse and aggression (Folgerø and Fjeldstad, 1995;Forseth, 2005;Warhurst and Nickson, 2009). In this study, workers were pressured by customers and managers to conform not only to femininity and heterosexuality, but also to cisnormativity-a phenomenon that has adverse consequences for many LGBT workers, particularly those who identify as transgender. ...
This study examines the relation between customer abuse and aggression, the gender and sexual expression of workers, and labour control in low-wage services. In-depth interviews with 30 lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) ¹ low-wage service sector workers reveal how customer abuse and aggression works in consort with management strategies to reproduce cis- and heteronormativity. Customer abuse and aggression disciplined worker expressions of non-normative gender and sexual identities, leading to concealment and self-policing. Management was complicit in this dynamic, placing profitability and customer satisfaction over the safety of LGBT workers, only intervening in instances of customer abuse and aggression when it had a limited economic impact. It is posited that customer abuse and aggression is not only a response to unmet expectations emanating from the labour process but is also a mechanism of labour control that disciplines worker behaviour and aesthetics, directly and indirectly, by influencing management prerogatives.
... As such, findings disclose that personal service professionals are highly exposed to unwanted behavior like SH. Fitness facilities are of no exception; these represent service-oriented workplaces, in which fitness instructors offer help and support to paying customers. Within any such service-oriented workplace, customers' satisfaction is highly prioritized, which may put the employee in a challenging situation with regard to offending verbal or physical behavior and where they feel that they "just have to deal with it" (26). ...
Introduction: This paper explores frequency of experiences of sexual harassment (SH) among fitness instructors, outlines the typical perpetrator, and explores associated mental health symptoms.
Design: Cross-sectional survey.
Materials and Methods: A total of 270 Norwegian fitness instructors, recruited in social media, responded to an electronic questionnaire in 2019/2020 on experiences of body appearance pressure, SH, and mental health symptoms. Outcomes included in this publication are experiences of SH, and symptoms of mental health issues based on the Hopkins symptom checklist, SCL-10; Beck Depression Inventory, BDI-1a; and Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire, EDE-q.
Results: The frequencies of SH experiences were 30% among 211 women and 22% among 59 men, respectively, with customers being the most frequent source of such approaches and personal trainers (PTs) more often reporting such experiences compared to group instructors (GIs) and to those operating as both PT and GI. Women having experienced SH had significantly higher scores in symptoms of depression, anxiety, and eating disorders compared to women with no such experience.
Conclusion: The high frequency of SH experiences among fitness instructors, with customers emerging as perpetrators and typically in the context of personal training, necessitates increased awareness of SH in the fitness industry. To reduce the occurrence of SH, the fitness centers need to communicate countermeasures with high level of compliance.
... It is safe to say that the sensitivity as well as the complexity of sexual harassment as a construct may explain the grey area between its normalization and the established discussion around its detrimental impacts. For instance, in their qualitative enquires, Folgerø and Fjeldstad (1995), and noted that informants initially denied having experienced sexual harassment while, eventually, reporting incidents that constituted objectively defined sexual harassment. ...
Drawing on the Conservation of Resources Theory (COR), and a gender perspective, this study proposes and tests a conceptual model postulating relationships between sexual harassment, burnout, perceived social and organizational support, psychological well-being, and job satisfaction. A survey of Turkish female tour guides resulted in 221 valid questionnaires. The results reveal that female tour guides’ sexual harassment experience has a negative impact on their job satisfaction and psychological well-being. Unlike perceived social support, perceived organizational support plays a significant and negative role in triggering sexual harassment. The findings also confirm the mediating effects of burnout on the relationship between sexual harassment and job satisfaction as well as the relationship between sexual harassment and psychological well-being. The study contributes to gender equality and sustainability research and offers several practical implications for stakeholders in the travel industry and public policy.
... 459). Others reveal the growing problem of customer sexual harassment in the service sector where social norms and precarious working conditions have constrained employees from seeking formal redress for decades (Folgerø and Fjeldstad 1995;Good and Cooper 2016). Meanwhile, the substantial cost of sexual harassment to employers is documented relating to: lost productivity, including absenteeism, low job satisfaction and commitment, and employment withdrawal; high staff turnover; negative impact on workplace culture; costs associated with complaints, litigation and compensation; reputational damage affecting the goodwill and confidence of customers, clients, investors, and future employees (McDonald and Charlesworth 2019; AHRC 2020). ...
This paper extends Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) scholarship to focus on issues of sexual harassment and sexual violence. Despite a significant body of work on gender and CSR from a variety of feminist perspectives, long-standing evidence of sexual harassment and sexual violence in business, particularly in global value chains, and the rise of the #MeToo movement, there has been little scholarship focused specifically on these issues in the context of CSR. Our conceptual paper addresses this gap in the literature through two key contributions. First, we extend the theoretical base of CSR scholarship by drawing upon and explicating radical feminist theory, a resource that has been underutilized in the field to date. This theoretical perspective is well placed to offer insights around the issues of sexual harassment and sexual violence, and to explain the centrality of these concerns to the gender equality agenda in business and in CSR. Second, building upon insights from radical feminism, and from research on CSR and human rights, we explicate a business and human rights approach to sexual harassment, sexual violence and CSR. We point to ways in which this approach might be more effective in addressing these issues than previously adopted strategies and suggest directions for future research arising from our analysis.
... Whilst this sampling strategy limits the generalizability of the study results, it has been employed in previous studies of sexual harassment initiated by customers, due to the pragmatic constraints in recruiting participants caused by the sensitivity and legal implications of the topic (i.e. sexual harassment) (Folgero & Fjeldstad, 1995;Good & Cooper, 2016;Guerrier & Adib, 2000;Poulston, 2008). All participants directly reported to the General Manager in a typical hierarchical hotel organizational structure. ...
This research addresses calls for organizational perspectives of guest-initiated sexual harassment of employees; in this case, hotel room attendants. Workers, such as room attendants, working in jobs with high customer interaction, are particularly liable to sexual harassment. This exploratory study investigates the perspectives of personnel from hotel executive management as to how they understand and manage guest-initiated sexual harassment. To ascertain the level of management awareness of this issue, in-depth interviews were conducted with nine Directors of Human Resources (DHR) and two Executive Housekeeper Managers (ExHk) from nine five-star hotels in Brisbane, Australia. The outcome of our grounded theory analysis identified distinct areas within the praxis of DHRs’ and ExHks’ hotel operations given the results revealed hotel management had little knowledge of any sexual harassment by guests and therefore implemented few preventative strategies. From an epistemological perspective of socialist feminism, this research expands the field of knowledge related to room attendant employment, with implications for employer strategy and employee welfare in hotels.
... When the workplace does not have policies in place to prevent customer sexual harassment, or when it penalizes workers who are victims of customer sexual harassment, the workers are compelled to accept such behavior as a given, and to cope with it using relatively passive strategies (Beggan, 2019;Kensbock et al., 2015). More often than not, such workplaces foster a reputation for prioritizing customer satisfaction, thereby creating a workplace environment that actually encourages customer sexual harassment, and compels its workers to silence such incidents (Adkins, 1995;Folgero & Fjeldstad, 1995;Hughes & Tadic, 1998;Lu-Ming, 2013). ...
... In subsequent years, sociologists sought similar evidence of demoralization and discovered (verbal, violent and sexual) harassment in a variety of hospitality work in the service sector (Adkins, 1995;Folgero and Fjeldstad, 1995;Giuffre and Williams, 1994;Hall, 1993;Leidner, 1993;Scott, 1998;Sosteric, 1996). Of these, Hall (1993), like Hochschild, found a sexual element had become a part of the job. ...
What are the solid achievements of the sociology of economic behaviour? What have been the main failures and omissions? How will the subject develop?
In this assured and timely volume, the author demonstrates how the sociology of economic behaviour was hijacked by the economic sociology which grew out of Parsons' interpretation of Weber. This development meant that the moral considerations of classical sociology only received attention as means to economic ends. Economic sociology is based on insupportable assumptions about the power of economic rationality which also obscures the political nature of economic behaviour.
The book seeks to revitalize the classical approach and introduces students to the essential ideas in the field. It also shows researchers and graduate students how to make use of concepts like demoralization, cheap labour, dignity at work and a fair day's pay to develop critiques of current economic arrangements.
... In feminine cultures, like in Norway, women have reported significantly fewer incidents of unwanted sexual behavior than women from masculine cultures, such as the United States (cited in Vartia & Hyyti, 2002). Folgero and Fjeldstad (1995) examined cultural norms and sexual harassment in service organizations, and the authors argue that a major reason for this is the particular cultural norms in service organizations: Employees are not allowed to perceive themselves as victims of sexual harassment. In view of the general morality of the Turkish society, it is based on the belief that a woman can be accused of talking about sexual harassment or hesitating to complain (Bekata, 2000). ...
The purpose of the study was to examine differences in sexual harassment attitudes between male and female labor force in health care organizations. A total of 571 employees working in various health care organizations in Turkey participated in the study. Sexual harassment was measured using 22 items and three-factor structure with constructs “Provocative Behavior,” “Normal Flirtations,” and “Trivial Matter” developed by Turgut. The data were collected using percentage, frequency, mean, standard deviation, independent sample t tests, and multivariate analysis of variance and covariance (MANOVA and MANCOVA). The results of the study revealed that a significant gender difference exists in sexual harassment attitudes with respect to “Provocative Behavior” and “Normal Flirtations” factors, while “Trivial Matter” factor was not statistically significant at the probability level of .05 as part of the sexual harassment scale. After controlling for variables such as age, marital status, monthly income level, education level, profession, institution, length of working time in the organization, and length of time in the health care sector; it was seen that most gender differences remained significant.
... Gabriel 1995;) that fantasy, a concept that scarcely features in the work of Hochschild and her successors, is of vital importance for an understanding of emotion. This is especially relevant to service interactions, which may depart from rationalizing and controlling scripts -such interactions may entail flirtation (Hall 1993;Guerrier/Adib 2000), harassment (Folgero/ Fjeldstad 1995), emotional blackmail (Rosenthal et al. 2001) or toxic exchanges (Stein 2007). The emotional dynamics at the interface of the service worker and the customer can be unpredictable and uncontainable. ...
The rise of contemporary consumerism has forced a radical revaluation of a wide range of organizational phenomena. In the field of organizational studies there has been a broad recognition of the emergence of a triangle (Leidner 1991) involving the worker, the manager and the customer, whose endlessly mutating dynamics form the basis of a wide range of organizational processes. Politics, identity, structure, culture and so forth can no longer be viewed from a perspective of the old-fashioned tug-of-war between workers and bosses. Instead they must be viewed through a ‘lens’ that acknowledges the triadic nature of contemporary work and organization. Triads, as Simmel (1950) recognized, are more unstable than dyads, involving shifting alliances and conflicts in which the third party can be the stakes or the beneficiary. The entry of the consumer as an important figure into the world of organizations has therefore radically reshaped the nature of contemporary work, the more so as different parties of the triad are frequently found to swap masks and adopt each other’s positions. Just like the worker, the manager is an employee of the organization. The manager becomes a worker in her dealings with her superiors and she becomes a customer in her relations with different departments within the same organization.
... Emotions, I shall argue in this chapter flow from inner reality, much as they are channelled and controlled by outer reality. This is especially relevant to service interactions which may not follow rationalizing and controlling scripts -such interactions may entail flirtation (Guerrier & Adib, 2000;Hall, 1993), harassment (Folgero & Fjeldstad, 1995;Guerrier et al., 2000), emotional blackmail (Rosenthal, Peccei, & Hill, 2001) or toxic exchanges (Stein, 2007). In this chapter, I will probe deeper into the emotional dynamics at the interface of the service worker and the customer to argue that they retain aspects that are unmanaged and unmanageable. ...
... This is in conflict with typical recommendations regarding dealing with harassers, which suggest a firm, negative stance should be taken (Butler and Chung-Yan, 2011). However, in the service sector context, confronting guests over their behaviour is considered bad customer relations (Folgerø and Fjeldstad, 1995) and indeed in one study 'women experienced increasingly negative consequences of sexual harassment as their responses became more assertive' (Quinn, 2000(Quinn, , p. 1173. Power differentiation may explain why victims of sexual harassment -even serious harassment -are more likely to ignore or joke about sexual harassment than report it (Welsh, 2000). ...
Given the gendered power relations and the isolated nature of women hotel room attendants' working environments, guest-initiated sexual harassment experienced by room attendants is a significant, under-investigated problem. This study of women attendants' experiences of sexual harassment was conducted in 5-star hotels located on the Gold Coast — a notable tourism destination — of Queensland, Australia. Adopting a socialist–feminist critical theory epistemological perspective, the study used a qualitative constructivist grounded theory methodology. The research reveals the pervasiveness of sexual harassment experienced by women hotel room attendants. In particular, this study illuminates the varied forms, meanings and consequences of sexual harassment in a particular organizational context. In focusing on the interacting effects of the gendered nature of the hotel workplace and the hotel workplace culture, the near-complete ‘normalization’ of sexual harassment within the hotels is revealed. This outcome is a source of considerable concern, with implications for the industry, for employment relations institutions and for public policy.
... Research on the adolescent workplace suggests that these settings contain more sexualized interactions than those where most workers are adults (e.g., Reiter 1991). Indeed, adolescent workers are most typically found in service-oriented industries such as retail and restaurants (CHSICL 1998;Mortimer 2003), where bullying (Hodson, Roscigno, and Lopez 2006;Williams 2004) and sexual behaviors such as flirting and other sexualized interactions are more common than in other workplaces (Folgero and Fjeldstad 1995;Giuffre and Williams 1994;Hall 1993;LaPointe 1992). Of course, not all of these interactions are unwanted, and adolescents' high rates of job satisfaction (Mortimer 2003) may reflect this. ...
Analyzing interview data from 33 women and men, we examine how perceptions of sexual harassment are linked to age, experience, and historical context. Participants described workplace experiences from adolescence into their late twenties. Three themes emerged. First, as adolescents, respondents perceived some of the sexualized interactions they experienced at work as fun. Second, while participants did not define some of their early experiences as sexual harassment at the time, they do so today. Finally, participants suggested that prior work experiences changed their ideas about workplace interactions and themselves as workers. In sum, we find age is a fundamental dimension of power shaping individuals’ perceptions of sexualized interactions at work.
Purpose
This paper investigates gender disparities, daily repercussions, and organizational implications related to customer sexual harassment (CSH) of service workers.
Design/methodology/approach
This study employed an experience sampling method across 10 days involving 71 call center employees in South Korea.
Findings
Women encountered significantly more instances of daily CSH, which eroded their daily job satisfaction and work engagement. Perceived organizational support and effective customer-service training mitigated the within-person relationship between CSH and job satisfaction, though not work engagement.
Practical implications
Female service employees are more susceptible to daily CSH, likely due to gender-role spillover. They require more robust organizational support and effective customer-service training to buffer the detrimental impacts of CSH on their daily job satisfaction.
Originality/value
In an attempt to understand sexual harassment as a daily experience, this research highlights gender differences in exposure to sexual harassment in workplaces no longer dominated by men and emphasizes the role of organizational resources in alleviating the adverse effects of daily CSH on service employees' well-being.
Sexual harassment by guests is part of the vocational culture in many workplaces within the hospitality industry. In this study, we investigate vocational students' descriptions of sexual harassment by guests in the hospitality industry and how these instances can be understood in terms of objectification. The empirical material consists of focus group interviews with upper secondary school students who are training to work in the hospitality industry. The students describe four categories of sexual harassment: appearance comments, private and intrusive questions, leering, and physical contact. In the descriptions, men are sexually harassing female students or employees. The types of objectification in the descriptions are reduction to appearance, reduction to body, instrumental approach, denial of autonomy, denial of bodily integrity, and denial of subjectivity. Regardless of the type of objectification involved, a dilemma arises for the girls who have been taught that being courteous to guests is part of the professional role, while the guests are treating them as sexual objects.
Workplace sexual harassment, particularly in hospitality, is a significant issue with many implications. For decades, assessing its scope and impact has drawn the attention of scholars, but some gaps still exist. Based on Rational Choice Theory, this paper explored employee conformance behavior to sexual harassment in relation to organization strategic commitment and employee wellbeing in the global south context. A total of 712 completed questionnaires were collected from Nigeria and Ghana. WarpPLS version 8.0 partial least squares structural equation structural modeling was employed to assess the research model. Results revealed that hotel workers’ behaviors toward awareness and management of sexual harassment are nonlinear and complex. Conformance behavior, despite conceived by employees as an economic coping strategy, proved to be a temporary measure and is disadvantageous to wellbeing. An important managerial implication of this study is the need for education about what sexual harassment is and how it impacts employees’ wellbeing.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to study how individuals assess responsibility during an uncontrollable event requiring collective action, using crises affecting service workers as contexts. Specifically, the authors examine what parties consumers hold responsible for ensuring service worker welfare following an uncontrollable event and determine what factors make customers more open to accepting responsibility for ensuring worker welfare themselves.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors surveyed a nationally representative sample of US consumers regarding their attitudes toward protecting service workers during COVID-19 and used regression analysis to identify factors that predict attributions of responsibility to customers. The authors also conducted an experiment (using a new crisis context) to determine whether certain key factors impact customer perceptions of their own responsibility for helping employees during an uncontrollable event.
Findings
The survey results show US consumers hold firms most responsible for worker welfare, followed by customers and, finally, government. When examining factors that drive attributions of responsibility for customers, perceptions of how sincere firms are in their efforts to help employees predict higher responsibility attributions, and experimental results confirm that higher perceived firm sincerity increases consumers’ own sense of responsibility toward workers.
Social implications
This research identifies factors that affect consumer support for efforts to help service employees and collective action problems more generally.
Originality/value
This research highlights an under-studied crisis context – uncontrollable events that require collective action – and shows how consumers make assessments about their own responsibility (in addition to the responsibility of the service firm) in these contexts.
This article explores the sexualized nature of the gay tourism industry and examines how ‘pink dollar’ organizations tacitly encourage incidences of sexual harassment from customers. Drawing on qualitative data from two popular gay tourism destinations, the article shows the embeddedness of sex, as a selling point, in the industry which creates blurred lines between service, sexuality, and sex. This consequently leads to sexual harassment by customers which is accepted and to which workers consent. Consent is driven by the hyper‐sexualization of the workplace and the power imbalance within the service triangle and the interaction with the customer and the precarious nature of the sector. Mirroring Burawoy’s (1979) idea of employees consenting (giving in) to organizational norms, we contribute to theory by suggesting that the power imbalance constructed within the service triangle gives high interactive power to the customer to harass workers without evident consequences for their misbehavior, whilst the latter consent and accept this as part of the job, due to the limited support from management.
Background:
Approximately 50% of women in all workplaces experience sexual harassment. Women who work in male-dominated occupations may be more susceptible to sexual harassment than those who work in non-male-dominated occupations. Research on factors contributing to workplace sexual harassment in male-dominated occupations is limited. This paper reviews the known antecedents that put female workers at risk of sexual harassment in select male-dominated occupations and to identify gaps in the literature and opportunities for future occupational health nursing research.
Methods:
A search was conducted using PubMed, CINAHL, PsycINFO, and Web of Science. Included articles addressed sexual harassment of female workers in male-dominated occupations such as law enforcement, firefighting, truck driving, and construction.
Results:
The search yielded 25 relevant research articles. Antecedents to sexual harassment in the workplace included lower rank, shorter tenure, physicality of the job, job insecurity, negative relationships with peers and/or supervisors, treating women as outsiders, exaggerated gender differences, unequal gender ratios, and promotions based on gender. Common antecedents to sexual harassment in the workplace identified in the literature include organizational culture and gender composition.
Conclusion/application to practice:
Workplace sexual harassment of women is a problem in male-dominated occupations. Research is needed to better understand the organizational antecedents of sexual harassment in male-dominated occupations within community settings to prevent workplace sexual harassment.
This study examines the impact of internal and customer sexual harassment on job-related outcomes using a sample of 348 female frontline employees in the context of Macao casinos. The results showed that internal sexual harassment led to lower job satisfaction, as well as higher turnover intention through its impact on job satisfaction. Besides, internal sexual harassment had a significant negative impact on female frontline employees exceeding that accounted for by traditional job stressor. Surprisingly, sexual harassment committed by customers exhibited no significant impact on both female employees’ job satisfaction and turnover intention. Implications are discussed.
This study examines the perspectives of female servers on their own gender roles and the commodification of their beauty and physical attractiveness during service encounters in restaurants. Previous studies on this subject have been solely focused on the recipient end, that is, consumers. This study gathers insights from the experiences and opinions of servers themselves. The data for this study were collected using semi-structured interviews with twenty female servers working as food and beverage attendants in various restaurants in Macao, China. The findings show that the ways female servers construct their own perceived gender roles are highly influenced by a continuous process of reinforcing stereotypes associated with the traditional gender roles of women. This study also details the measures and practices restaurants in Macao employ to commodify beauty and physical attractiveness of female servers. Of particular note is the finding that, despite recognizing how they were being stereotyped, servers showed no objection to such practices. Nonetheless, the study discusses how such practices devalue contributions women make in the tourism and hospitality industry in general and the restaurant sector in particular whilst suggesting measures that help redress this issue.
Purpose
Drawing on self-determination theory (SDT), this study aims to understand the adverse effects of customer mistreatment on employee performance and well-being by thwarting the satisfaction of employees' basic psychological needs. It also examines how these negative effects may be mitigated by empowerment human resource management (HRM) practices.
Design/methodology/approach
Two studies were conducted using survey data collected in China. In Study 1, cross-sectional data from 321 telemarketing employees were analyzed to examine how customer mistreatment reduces the satisfaction of employees' basic psychological needs, harming job performance and job satisfaction. In Study 2, multiwave, multisource data were collected from 149 property agents and their supervisors to replicate the findings of Study 1 and further test empowerment HRM as a moderator of the relationship between customer mistreatment and satisfaction of needs.
Findings
The results from both studies show that customer mistreatment leads to low job performance and job satisfaction via reduced satisfaction of employees' needs for autonomy and competence but not relatedness. Moreover, the negative effect on the satisfaction of employees' needs for autonomy and competence was buffered when organizations had high empowerment HRM practices in place.
Originality/value
This study provides new insights on customer mistreatment by understanding its effects from a motivational perspective, which has not been considered in prior research. It also explores how HRM practices can help satisfy employee needs in adverse work environments induced by customer mistreatment.
One core concern of workplace sexual harassment is the low rate of reporting, which arguably adds to its suppression and consequent individualization of harassment. The recent #MeToo movements across the globe have been focal points for women to report incidents of sexual harassment. I examined what it has meant for women in India to speak about their experiences of sexual harassment in broadcast media news interviews during the #MeToo movement. Discursive psychological examination showed that interviewers and interviewees (women who were reporting) attended to and managed issues with the perceived legitimacy of reporting sexual harassment. Interviewees had to account for their reporting in the context of the #MeToo movement while managing not to be seen as being swept up by it. Women treated these concerns as gendered phenomena rather than merely interpersonal in justifying their reporting and the #MeToo movement. These findings are discussed in relation to research on silencing of women's voices in reporting, the role of media, and broadly addressing sexism and sexual harassment at the workplace.
Third party sexual harassment is often experienced by frontline library workers and is perpetuated by the very patrons they endeavour to support. This paper reports on the results of an environmental scan designed to delineate the interdisciplinary scope of third-party sexual harassment, to describe methods and methodologies used to understand this issue from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, and to inform future research in Library and Information Studies on this understudied, but critically important topic.
This paper focuses on establishing a conceptual grounding for the value of dignity in tourism employment for achieving decent work as part of the sustainable development agenda. Dignity is widely acknowledged as a key driver for ‘good’ work, but little conceptual grounding on the value of dignity in tourism employment has been established. This paper will contribute to the theoretical debate on sustainable tourism by providing a critical review of frameworks for decent work, workplace dignity (or its absence), and understandings of identity. We will explore how the context and conditions of tourism employment are conducive (or not) for offering dignified and sustainable employment. This paper makes two original contributions to knowledge. First, it introduces a psychosocial understanding of dignity in tourism employment, reflecting its deeply rooted individual, organisational, societal and policy aspects, and recognising the actors involved. Second, the critical importance of dignity in tourism employment for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is discussed, with future research directions identified.
Sexual harassment is a prominent issue in the workplace; it presents a particular challenge with regard to this sensitive area in the Asian context due to the Asian cultural value. Tour leaders are one of the main components of the tourism industry workforce and are expensive to train in terms of both time/experience accumulation and financial investment. The potential risk of sexual harassment in the hospitality and tourism workplace remains unknown. The purpose of this study was to investigate tour leaders’ experiences of sexual harassment at work and their awareness of the organizational polices/regulations relating to sexual harassment in the workplace. A survey was conducted on the tour leaders in Taiwan and results of the study suggested that gender sexual harassment and seductive harassment behaviour were found to occur more frequently than sexual bribery, sexual coercion and sexual assault. Asian tours leaders tend to adopt extremely passive coping strategies in dealing with sexual harassment incidents. More than half of the tour leaders in the current study were ‘unsure’ whether their affiliated travel agencies had a sexual harassment policy.
Organizations have long been portrayed as rational, unemotional and neutral entities. However, recent research has shown the significance of violence, emotions and gender in and around organizations. For instance, Hearn and Parkin (1995) demonstrated the power and paradox of ‘organization sexuality’ — the interconnection between gender, power and sexuality and its pervasive influence in supposedly agendered, asexual rational worlds. Organizations, however, are not only sexualized and gendered. Emotions, though often not formally acknowledged, are ever-present in organizations (Flam 1990; 1993; 2000; Fineman 1993; 2000; 2007; Gabriel 1993; 1995). Academic, policy and workplace resistance literature has pointed to a frequent structural co-occurrence of violence, gender relations and emotions in and around organizations (Kondo 1990; Jermier et al. 1994; O’Toole/Schiffman 1997; Hearn 1998; 2003; Heise et al. 2002; WHO 2002; Ferguson et al. 2004).
This article examines how employees respond to sexual harassment from customers in the workplace. Employing a qualitative method to facilitate a rich understanding, this study uses exploratory interviews with university students working in retail and hospitality in Australia to examine their experiences of customer-perpetrated harassment, the constraints they face in exercising ‘employee voice’, factors that structure and perpetuate ‘employee silence’, and the actions that employees take in this situation. Preliminary findings indicate that the employees face difficulty responding to customer-perpetrated sexual harassment due to the constraints of contextual factors, including working conditions, social norms, and the nature of sexual harassment as a workplace problem. While silence is the norm, some employees use informal voice, which has a limited impact because of the power differentials between employees and managers. Other employees use informal coping strategies, which this article coins as ‘buffering’. This research is important for understanding the experience of vulnerable employees and for providing insight into potential barriers to eliminate sexual harassment from customers in the workplace.
Purpose
– Prior research showed that sexual harassment by customers is a widespread and serious problem for service workers. However, some of the service workers may be unwilling to report this problem to their managers because customers are important for them and for the interests of the organization. Moreover, reporting customer sexual harassment could be embarrassing and may prompt retaliation against those service workers. The purpose of this paper is to focus on salespeople’s intention to report customer sexual harassment to their immediate managers, and how the whistle-blowing intention is affected by the salespeople’s perception of anti-harassment policy, manager integrity and risks of blowing the whistle.
Design/methodology/approach
– To test the relationships among the variables, the data acquisition procedure yielded the responses of 251 full-time life insurance salespeople in Taiwan.
Findings
– The findings showed that salesperson perception of anti-harassment policy and manager integrity were positively associated with the salespeople’s whistle-blowing intention. Gender, age and personal experience of being sexually harassed by customers also related to the whistle-blowing intention.
Originality/value
– Customer sexual harassment has seldom been discussed in the relevant literature. The potential impacts of manager integrity on the prevention of customer sexual harassment in service work have also been less mentioned.
Imagine stepping into a retail store with a shopping list in your hand: apples, tomatoes,
shampoo, washing powder. The very moment you step into the store, the busy scene lures all
your senses with its chatter of other customers, softly playing background music, aromas of
fresh vegetables, and scents of detergents. Most of all, the rich scene vivifies your sight with
different visual cues consisting of various colours, textures, sizes, and shapes. This
multifarious environment presents several challenges for the customer, but offers great
potential for both the retail and brand owners. This chapter takes the approach that the
visual appearance of brand packaging acts as an important cue to guide the customers’
brand choices in the store. However, the brand packaging not only serves as the “voice” of
the brand at the point of brand choice but also as an experiential component of the service
environment. The empirical study investigates how consumers react to different types of food
packages.
Service marketers are confronted with two conflicting goals when designing service delivery systems, efficiency and personalization. The relative importance of each factor is determined by the nature of the specific service to be rendered, and by participants’ expectations about degree of personalization. A study was conducted to test two assertions: (1) service personalization is a multidimensional construct and (2) all forms of personalization do not necessarily result in greater consumer satisfaction with the service offering. Three types of personalization strategies were proposed and operationalized in a simulated banking setting. Evaluations of service encounters that differed in the degree and type of personalization employed indicate that personalization is not a unitary phenomenon and must be approached carefully in the context of service design.
This article proposes that the dyadic interaction between a service provider and a customer is an important determinant of the customer's global satisfaction with the service. Based on role theory, a theoretical framework is presented which abstracts some of the critical components of service encounters across industries.
Interactions between 1,319 sales clerks and customers were observed. Clerk emotional behavior (Rafaeli & Sutton, 1987), clerk sex, wearing a smock and a name tag, the presence of other clerks or other customers, and customer sex were coded. As predicted, female clerks displayed positive emotions more frequently than male clerks, suggesting that sex role socialization may generalize to behavior at work. Male clients, however, received more positive emotional expressions than female clients, suggesting that individuals of both genders attribute higher status to men. Clerks were more likely to display positive emotions when wearing a uniform, suggesting that an organizational identifier such as a smock or name tag may increase an employee's self-awareness. Consistent with Sutton & Rafaeli (1987), clerks were less likely to display positive emotions if a line of customers or a coworker was present. No relationship was observed between work shift (time of day) and the display of positive emotions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
textlessptextgreaterThe attainment of quality in products and services has become a pivotal concern of the 1980s. While quality in tangible goods has been described and measured by marketers, quality in services is largely undefined and unresearched. The authors attempt to rectify this situation by reporting the insights obtained in an extensive exploratory investigation of quality in four service businesses and by developing a model of service quality. Propositions and recommendations to stimulate future research about service quality are offered.
Contrary to currently popular notions of organizational culture, we claim that the existence of local organizational cultures that are distinct from more generally shared background cultures occurs relatively infrequently at the level of the whole organization. We also argue that, with respect to organizational performance, particular properties of local organizational culture are more important than others and that local organizational culture will be more critical to performance in one range of organizations than in others. We conclude by applying our point of view to the problem of changing organizational cultures and argue that they are more adaptive than is currently thought.
The service encounter frequently is the service from the customer's point of view. Using the critical incident method, the authors collected 700 incidents from customers of airlines, hotels, and restaurants. The incidents were categorized to isolate the particular events and related behaviors of contact employees that cause customers to distinguish very satisfactory service encounters from very dissatisfactory ones. Key implications for managers and researchers are highlighted.
For consumers, evaluation of a service firm often depends on evaluation of the "service encounter" or the period of time when the customer interacts directly with the firm. Knowledge of the factors that influence customer evaluations in service encounters is therefore critical, particularly at a time when general perceptions of service quality are declining. The author presents a model for understanding service encounter evaluation that synthesizes consumer satisfaction, services marketing, and attribution theories. A portion of the model is tested experimentally to assess the effects of physical surroundings and employee responses (explanations and offers to compensate) on attributions and satisfaction in a service failure context.
Sex-role spillover is the carryover of gender-based roles into the work setting. It is exacerbated by having a highly skewed ratio of the sexes at work. The sex roles associated with the majority sex become incorporated into the work roles. In male-dominated jobs, activity, rationality, and aggressiveness are emphasized, whereas nurturance and passivity are associated with “women's work. “ The implications of sex-role spillover for sexual behavior at work was investigated through analysis of a telephone survey of working adults in Los Angeles County in 1980. Sex-role spillover affects people in traditional work by having their sex role and work role merged together, and affects people in nontraditional work by the fact that they are a visible minority and their sex does not correspond to the sex roles normally associated with their jobs. In the case of sexual behavior at work, the fallout of sex role spillover is more visibly negative for women than for men. Very few men work in nontraditional or integrated jobs. Women in traditional jobs who work a great deal with men face the problem of being seen by the men as sex objects. Women in nontraditional jobs face the problems of being visible role deviants and attract sexual overtures. Sex role spillover is not a major problem in integrated jobs because the sex ratios are fairly balanced and, hence, neither male nor female sex roles are emphasized. Therefore, there is little sexual harassment in sex-integrated jobs.
R E C E N T SCHO L A R S H I P on African American, Latina, Asian American, and Native American women reveals the complex interaction of race and gender oppression in their lives. These studies expose the inadequacy of additive models that treat gender and race as separate and discrete systems of hierarchy (Collins 1986; King 1988; Brown 1989). In an additive model, white women are viewed solely in terms of gender, while women of color are thought to be "doubly" subordinated by the cumulative effects of gender plus race. Yet achieving a more adequate framework, one that captures the interlocking, interactive nature of these systems, has been extraordinarily difficult. Historically, race and gender have developed as separate topics of inquiry, each with its own literature and concepts. Thus features of social life considered central in understanding one system have been overlooked in analyses of the other. One domain that has been explored extensively in analyses of gender but ignored in studies of race is social reproduction. The term social reproduction is used by feminist scholars to refer to the array of activities and relationships involved in maintaining people both on a daily basis and intergenerationally. Reproductive labor includes activities such as purchasing household goods, preparing and serving food, laundering and repairing clothing, maintaining furnishings and appliances, socializing children, providing care and emotional support for adults, and maintaining kin and community ties. Work on this project was made possible by a Title F leave from the State University of New York at Binghamton and a visiting scholar appointment at the Murray Research Center at Radcliffe College. Discussions with Elsa Barkley Brown, Gary Glenn, Carole Turbin, and Barrie Thorne contributed immeasurably to the ideas developed here. My thanks to Joyce Chinen for directing me to archival materials in Hawaii. I am also grateful to members of the Women and Work Group and to Norma Alarcon, Gary Dymski, Antonia Glenn, Margaret Guilette, Terence Hopkins, Eileen McDonagh, JoAnne Preston, Mary Ryan, and four anonymous Signs reviewers for their suggestions.
The purpose of this research was to develop measures of concepts related to retail bank customers' perceptions of retail bank services delivery systems. The results of the research indicate four potentially important aspects of the retail bank services delivery system are (1) general bank personal service, (2) teller personal service, (3) reactton capacity , and (4) location convenience. The research results support the hypotheses that retail bank customers' perceptions of these issues may be related to customer satisfaction and intentions to do business with the bank in the future, intentions to purchase additional products and services, and intentions to give the bank a larger percentage of the customer's business.
With recent court decisions and new legislation, more employees have gained the right to sue and the limits to awards have been removed
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