Examining human resource practice outcomes and service innovation

This study sought to examine the relationship between human resource practice outcomes and service innovation. It also examines the moderating role of knowledge sharing in the relationship between workplace friendship and service innovation, as well as the mediating role of knowledge sharing in the relationship between job satisfaction and service innovation. The study employed survey research design. The respondents were selected from across the service industry in Ghana using convenience sampling technique. Items measuring the constructs were adapted from extant literature. Confirmatory factor analysis was performed to ascertain the validity of the measurement model. Hierarchical regression was used to analyse the data. The results show that knowledge sharing, job satisfaction, workplace friendship, and employee commitment predict service innovation. However, the interaction of workplace friendship and knowledge sharing has no effect on service innovation. Similarly, the moderation of employee commitment and job satisfaction did not make any contribution to service innovation. The findings imply that service firms must create a friendly working environment, ensuring that employees are satisfied in order to promote service innovation. It also implies that service firms must promote social activities that encourage knowledge sharing, but these social activities must relate to employees’ job.     

The 11 Questions Every Donor Asks and the Answers All Donors Crave: How You Can Inspire Someone to Give Generously,by H. McKinnon

Organizational learning and customer orientation have been a focus of research for a number of years in both marketing and management literature. Customer learning orientation is conceptualized as three important components: management customer orientation, customer feedback, and employee learning orientation. By drawing from both marketing and organizational research theories, the authors propose a model of customer learning orientation in a public sector organizational setting. Customer learning orientation is hypothesized to have a significant effect on employee attitudes of role ambiguity and self-efficacy, which in turn affects job outcomes of job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behaviors. Using a sample of 438 employees of a public sector organization, the authors test the model through a structural equation modeling technique. The results provide general support for the model. Implications for managers of public sector organizations and future research are discussed.     

顾客参与对员工工作满意的影响研究——基于角色理论视角

顾客参与会导致顾客满意,这是被许多学者证实的事实。然而,顾客参与是否也有利于员工工作满意呢?梳理相关文献发现,有关顾客参与与员工工作满意关系的研究并不多,而且结论也不一致。因此,文章基于角色理论视角,引入角色压力、角色导向和角色替代三个变量,系统研究了顾客参与对员工工作满意的影响。文章最后讨论了研究的理论贡献和管理贡献,并指出了未来研究的方向。     

Workplace Guanxi: Its Dispositional Antecedents and Mediating Role in the Affectivity–Job Satisfaction Relationship

This paper examines dispositional sources of workplace guanxi and the mediating role of workplace guanxi on the affectivity and job satisfaction relationship. Data were collected from 808 respondents in multiple industries in a city in China’s northeast. The study found that both positive affectivity and negative affectivity have an effect on supervisor–subordinate guanxi and co-worker guanxi, which supports the proposition that workplace guanxi has a dispositional source. Supervisor–subordinate guanxi has a positive relationship with job satisfaction, although co-worker guanxi is not significantly related to job satisfaction. The research also found a mediating role of supervisor–subordinate guanxi on the affectivity and job satisfaction relationship, which suggests that supervisor–subordinate guanxi can extend the influence of affectivity to job satisfaction. Taken together, these results suggest that in a high power distance country such as China, supervisor–subordinate guanxi plays a more important role than co-worker guanxi in influencing job satisfaction. Theoretically, this study suggests the as yet unexplored possibility of dispositional antecedents of workplace guanxi and the role of workplace guanxi on the relationship between dispositions and workplace attitudes such as job satisfaction.     

The consequences of customer-oriented constructive deviance in luxury-hotel restaurants

Prior research has illustrated the antecedents of customer-oriented constructive deviance. However, research on their consequences has been limited. To clarify the relationship between customer-oriented constructive deviance and its outcome, the present study is based on affective event theory and posits that customer-oriented constructive deviance predicts customer gratitude and employee guilt, which in turn lead to customer and employee satisfaction and loyalty, respectively. This research also investigates how service and ethical climates moderate these relationships. Based on a dataset comprising 223 matched employee–customer pairs collected from luxury hotel restaurants, we found that customer-oriented constructive deviance is positively related to customer loyalty, but negatively related to employee loyalty. Furthermore, service and ethical climates are found to have disparate impacts on these relationships. Our findings call attention to a potential risk that managers should be aware of when they manage customer-oriented constructive deviance to achieve greater customer service.     

Hostile Attribution Bias and Negative Reciprocity Beliefs Exacerbate Incivility’s Effects on Interpersonal Deviance

The purpose of this study was to examine the moderating roles of hostile attribution bias and negative reciprocity beliefs in the relationship between workplace incivility, as perceived by employees, and their interpersonal deviance. Data were collected using a three-wave survey research design. Participants included 233 employees from a large manufacturing company in China. Hierarchical regression analyses were used to test the hypothesized relationships. Our study revealed that hostile attribution bias and negative reciprocity beliefs strengthened the positive relationship between workplace incivility and interpersonal deviance. This relationship was the most positive when both hostile attribution bias and negative reciprocity beliefs were high. The findings provided evidence that directing employees to depress hostile attribution bias and negative reciprocity beliefs may attenuate the effects of workplace incivility on interpersonal deviance. Implications for theory, research, and management practice are discussed.     

The Effects of Employee Attitudes on Workplace Charitable Donations

ABSTRACT

The objectives of this paper are to examine the effects of employee attitudes toward the employer on workplace monetary donations at two levels: (1) to see if there is a significant difference between the attitudes of employees who make workplace contributions and those who do not; and (2) to examine whether awareness of employer charitable contributions moderate the relationship between employee attitudes and donating behavior. Employee attitudes include organizational commitment and job satisfaction. The research questions are examined in the context of workplace contributions made to a regional branch of United Way. The results indicate that organizational commitment scores exhibited by employees who made workplace contributions, and who were aware that their employer was also making corporate donations were significantly higher than the commitment for employees who did not make workplace contributions. No significant relationships were found for job satisfaction.     

Customer deviance in retailing: Managers’ emotional support and employees’ affective wellbeing

Retail employees are increasingly under pressure as they are confronted with the dark side of customer behaviour: Customer deviance (NCD). Consequently, retailers face difficulties retaining employees in the job leading to workforce shortage in the industry as more and more retail workers leave their jobs. While some academic research displays the impact of NCD in retail, it leaves its effects on employees, their intentions to leave the job, including the mitigating factor of managerial support structures unexplored. Applying the job demands-resources model, this research fills this gap by investigating NCD in store-based retail, by identifying a series of employees' responses in correspondence with such behaviours and by revealing various support factors as moderators of NCD's effects on employees. Structural equation modelling of data obtained from surveying 108 retail employees in stores confirms the mediation of emotional exhaustion, affective ill-being and job (dis-)satisfaction, in the context of employees facing NCD and their leaving intention. The research raises awareness for emotional care in the form of managerial strategies targeting emotions, the supervisor's role and trust-enhancing mechanisms in retail care management, in order to attenuate NCD's negative effects on retail employees.     

A Meta-Analysis of Relationships Linking Employee Satisfaction to Customer Responses

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.     

Creating Satisfied Employees Through Workplace Spirituality: A Study of the Private Insurance Sector in Punjab (India)

Spirituality in the workplace is gaining recognition and value among researchers, academicians, and business professionals. The aim of this paper is to examine the impact of spirituality in the workplace on job satisfaction by measuring four dimensions of spirituality in the workplace: meaningful work, sense of community, organizational values, and compassion. The impact of each dimension on job satisfaction is hypothesized. A cross-sectional survey was used to collect data from 100 payroll employees in private insurance companies in Punjab (India). A correlation analysis showed a positive relationship between all the dimensions of spirituality in the workplace and job satisfaction. A regression analysis revealed that although all the dimensions of spirituality in the workplace are important, organizational values and a sense of community are the most important in terms of the job satisfaction level of employees. This work will help insurance companies to better understand the concept of spirituality in the workplace and its importance. Insurance companies can improve their functioning by encouraging employee spirituality in the workplace.     

The Role of Empathetic Concern and Communication on Job Tension and Job Satisfaction of Customer Service Employees

The authors examine a model of empathetic behavior introduced in the social and clinical psychology literature to determine whether empathy contributes significantly to the job satisfaction or job tension of customer service employees. Both job satisfaction and job tension were found to be influenced by the level of .empathetic concern employees had towards customers, the amount of emotional contagion they experienced, and the degree of communicative responsiveness expressed. Results suggest that management should hire empathetic individuals, develop empathetic skills among their employees, and empower them to act accordingly. Findings have applicability to all service related organizations and businesses.     

Moderating Affect of Workplace Spirituality on the Relationship of Job Overload and Job Satisfaction

With the increase in market competition and dynamic work environment, work overload seems to have become a common issue suffered by almost every employee. Overload usually results in not only poor health conditions but also mental circumstances. These problems then become a threat to the organizations in the form of poor performance and lack of ability to reach standards. Workplace spirituality is one way to deal with stressful overload conditions. This research deals with the study of moderating affects of workplace spirituality on job overload and employee’s satisfaction relationship. Having large piles of work in given targeted time results in employees becoming stressed out from their work as well as their organization. The motive of their job becomes to achieve targets and diminish the creativity within the employees. Workplace spirituality basic dimensions mentioned in this research help one achieve these targets and help employees cope with the symptoms caused by work overload. The research includes three variables, workplace spirituality, job overload, and job satisfaction. The samples of 76 respondents were asked to fill the questionnaire on all the three variables. The final results show interestingly different results then, as conceptualized according to theory. Workplace spirituality also showed to have quite an impact on job satisfaction.     

It's not me,it's you: Testing a moderated mediation model of subordinate deviance and abusive supervision through the self‐regulatory perspective

Synthesizing self‐regulatory theories, we provide new insights into the antecedents of abusive supervision. We, from the perspective of supervisor's self‐regulatory resources depletion or impairment, introduce supervisor hindrance stress as an underlying mechanism of the subordinate deviance–abusive supervision relationship: this mediated relationship will be intensified at the level of high subordinate job performance. In addition, we develop a complex contingency model and propose a three‐way interaction (i.e., subordinate deviance, job performance, supervisor outcome dependence) to obtain the complete understanding of the subordinate deviance–abusive supervision relationship facilitated through the supervisors’ hindrance stress. To test our moderated moderated mediation model, we gathered time‐lagged and multisource data from a large food service company located in southern China. We collected data at two different points (i.e., Time 1 and Time 2) from supervisors and their direct reports (N = 298 responses from 68 supervisors and 298 direct reports), and findings provide support for the hypothesized moderated moderated mediation model of our study. We highlight the implications of our study for theory, research, and practice.     

The Role of Ethical Ideology in Workplace Deviance

Ethical ideology is predicted to play a role in the occurrence of workplace deviance. Forsyths (1980) Ethics Position Questionnaire measures two dimensions of ethical ideology: idealism and relativism. It is hypothesized that idealism will be negatively correlated with employee deviance while relativism will be positively related. Further, it is predicted that idealism and relativism will interact in such a way that there will only be a relationship between idealism and deviance when relativism is higher. Results supported the hypothesized correlations and idealism and relativism interacted to predict organizational deviance. Idealism was a significant predictor of interpersonal deviance, but no interaction was found.Christine (Chris) A. Henle, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of Management at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Her research interests include counterproductive employee behaviors, employment law, and organizational justice. Her current research focuses on cyberloafing at work, religious discrimination in employment, and the role of supervisor and coworker norms in predicting counterproductive work behaviors. She has provided consulting services in the areas of job analysis, recruiting, selection, and performance management.Robert A. Giacalone, Ph.D. (State Univeristy of New York-Albany) is Professor of Human Resource Management at the Fox School of Business and Management, Temple University, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Dr. Giacalone is coeditor of five books, co-author of two books and has authored over 90 articles on ethics, employee sabotage, impression management and exit interviewing, appearing in journals such as Human Relations, Business and Society Review, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of the Organizational Behavior, and the Journal of Social Psychology. His current research focuses on the impact of materialism/postmaterialism and workplace spirituality on business ethics.Carole L. Jurkiewicz, Ph.D. is the John W. Dupuy Endowed Professor and the Womens Hospital Distinguished Professor of Healthcare Ethics at Louisiana State University. Her publications include a wide array of scholarly articles, books, and the general press. She maintains an active consulting practice in the areas of organizational psychology, ethics, and leadership.     

Individual Differences Among Service Employees

SUMMARY

To do an excellent job of managing external relationships, service firms must be prepared to do an excellent job of managing internal relationships. This effort begins with recruiting, selecting, and retaining employees who are likely to serve customers well. While service firms strive to match the knowledge, ability, and skills of potential employees to the requirements of the job, most do not have the time or the resources to implement elaborate recruitment and selection systems. This is especially true among services where relatively high turnover levels mandate that recruitment and selection processes be fast and inexpensive. To meet this challenge, managers often focus on a set of easily identifiable individual characteristics, such as experience, job tenure, age, or education that can be assessed during the time of an interview or scan of a job application. This study examines the effect of these characteristics on the attitudes and responses of service employees that are critical for the effective delivery of quality service (job satisfaction, self-efficacy, role stress, organizational commitment). The results indicate that satisfied and committed service employees tend to be older, better educated, and possess a great deal of service experience. These employees also appear to be better able to handle the stress associated with service positions. These characteristics are atypical of the service industry, where employees tend to be younger, possess relatively little experience in any one industry, and are less educated. Implications for managing the recruitment, selection, and retention of service employees are offered, as are directions for future research.     

The Impact of Moral Stress Compared to Other Stressors on Employee Fatigue, Job Satisfaction, and Turnover: An Empirical Investigation

Moral stress is an increasingly significant concept in business ethics and the workplace environment. This study compares the impact of moral stress with other job stressors on three important employee variables??fatigue, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions??by utilizing survey data from 305 customer-contact employees of a financial institution??s call center. Statistical analysis on the interaction of moral stress and the three employee variables was performed while controlling for other types of job stress as well as demographic variables. The results reveal that even after including the control variables in the statistical models, moral stress remains a statistically significant predictor of increased employee fatigue, decreased job satisfaction, and increased turnover intentions. Implications for future research and for organizations are discussed.     

The Antecedents of Prosocial Service Behaviours: An Empirical Investigation

Frontline employee attitudes and behaviours during service encounters influence customers' perceptions of service quality. For this reason, the identification of variables that influence service behaviours is important. Much remains unknown about the factors affecting service behaviours in service settings. This study investigates service employees' attitudinal (job satisfaction and organisational commitment) and behavioural (prosocial service behaviours) responses to management strategies (internal communication, professional development and empowerment). One hundred and eighty-eight service employees contributed data, which were analysed using a structural modelling methodology. The authors found that management strategies influence service behaviours directly but the mediating role of job attitudes is not supported.     

The influence of customer-to-customer interactions and role typology on customer reaction

The service encounter is an important topic in service management. Although researchers have argued that customer-to-customer interactions may affect customers' evaluation of the service experience in service encounter contexts, the impact of customer-to-customer interaction on customer reaction has not been sufficiently studied. Consequently, the objective of this research is to investigate the relationship between customer-to-customer interactions, role typology and customer reaction. This research adopted questionnaires to investigate tourists traveling to foreign areas and concluded that the perception of customer-to-customer interaction incidents could be extracted into six factors. ‘Protocol and sociability incidents’ have a significant positive impact on customer satisfaction; ‘malcontent incidents’ have a negative impact; ‘crude incidents’ and ‘malcontent incidents’ have significant negative impact on customer loyalty; and finally, the customer's role typology moderates the relationship between ‘protocol and sociability incidents’ and customer satisfaction.     

Constructive deviance as a driver for performance in retail

A growing body of research is concerned with deviance in the workplace. While much research has explored negative forms of deviance, we examine constructive deviance: behaviour that deviates from salient norms and benefits the reference group. We empirically explore manifestations, determinants and performance outcomes of constructive deviance in standardised work processes. We do this through a mixed-methods study in bakery trading departments of an Australian retailer. We illustrate that constructive deviance occurs in these settings and show that some manifestations of constructive deviance improve organisational performance and pave the way for applying constructive deviance as a strategic tool in retail.     

Auditors gone wild: The “other” problem in public accounting

Following the scandals involving Enron, WorldCom, and Qwest Communications, the accounting profession has spent the past several years trying to get back on track. While Sarbanes-Oxley may improve the decision-making of audit professionals, and help prevent future large-scale catastrophes that hurt stockholders and bring down firms, there is another problem in public accounting that few consider and nobody has proposed to solve: deviant workplace behavior. Previous research describes deviant workplace behavior as the voluntary behavior of organizational members that violates significant organizational norms and, in so doing, threatens the well being of the organization and/or its members. Building from recent work in various business literatures, this is the first research since the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley to examine workplace deviance at Big 4 accounting firms. Taking a cross-disciplinary, collaborative approach, the authors endeavor to explain why workplace deviance has infiltrated accounting firms and how it is undermining their effectiveness and derailing their long-term prospects for success. After describing its genesis and effects, the authors prescribe several managerial strategies for preventing deviance and minimizing its effects on a firm.