An investigation of team information processing in service teams: Exploring the link between teams and customers

In an effort to satisfy the needs of increasingly knowledgeable and demanding customers, many organizations are implementing teams in customer contact positions. Unfortunately, stifled information flows and poor communication often impede their effectiveness. To help managers build more effective teams, the authors develop and test a model of team information processing that includes both antecedents (information acquisition, team norms, team size, and team longevity) and outcomes (customer satisfaction with service). Data collected from 61 health care teams, as well as from 1,598 patients served by these teams, are used to investigate the hypothesized relationships between variables. Partial support for the model is provided. Based on these findings, implications for researchers and practitioners are offered. Current knowledge is the life blood of knowledge work, and the ability to transfer it is a key differentiating characteristic between effective and ineffective knowledge work teams.-Fisher and Fisher (1998:174) Dawn R. Deeter-Schmelz (deeter-s@ohio.edu) (Ph.D., University of South Florida) is an associate professor of marketing at Ohio University. Her research interests include customer contact teams, business-to-business electronic commerce, sales management, and scale development. She has published in theJournal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, Industrial Marketing Management, theJournal of Marketing Education, theJournal of Marketing Theory and Practice, and theJournal of Business Logistics, among others. Rosemary P. Ramsey (rosemary.ramsey@wright.edu) (Ph.D., University of Cincinnati) is associate dean in the Raj Sain College of Business at Wright State University. Her research interests include relationship management and measurement. Prior to pursuing her doctorate, she held marketing and sales positions for NCR Corporation. She has published in theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, theJournal of Retailing, theJournal of Business Research, theJournal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, and theJournal of Marketing Education, among others.     

Resource development is key to non-profit success

Developing a non-profit's resources produces a successful fund raising program, maintains this foundation program director. Found at the tip of every non-profit's fingers, they include volunteer services, innovative campaigns and good proposal writing. An aggressive implementation of these resources is in order if a non-profit desires to effectively address its long and short term goals.     

The Polanyi-Stanfield Contribution: Reembedded Globalization

This essay describes and interprets J. Ron Stanfield’s analysis of Karl Polanyi. Stanfield has helped to clarify Polanyi’s “double-movement” thesis by arguing that the double movement of self-regulating market forces and the protective response is essentially about freedom versus security. These insights provide an analysis that takes Polanyi into the twenty-first century by developing a theory of “reembedded globalization.” This is not something that Polanyi experienced before his death in 1964. Corporate globalization and the escalation of free-market rhetoric have led to a new round of disembedding since the 1970s, and this is evident by both the top-down, corporate globalization of privatization, deregulation, and marketization, as well as, by the challenges to it from the “movement of movements” coalescing around the World Social Forum. The most conspicuous evidence of this neo-protective response and its challenge to corporate-driven market forces is that between the security needs of the world’s globalization victims and the freedom of transnational corporations to make profits anywhere and in any way throughout the world. Understanding the clash in this way suggests that for humanity to save itself, it must struggle to reembed globalization and put security ahead of unbridled freedom. Reembedding globalization requires asserting democratic security ahead of the economic freedom of big business.     

The econometric approach to business-cycle analysis reconsidered

The research performed and reported in this article represents an econometric analysis of the model generated by John Blatt (1978). A major point made by Blatt was that the standard statistical procedures used by economists would have led to egregious errors in inference; namely, estimating a stable linear relationship in a world generated by an unstable nonlinear model. The main point of this paper is that the use of specification error tests pioneered by one of the authors leads to immediate and overwhelming rejection of the incorrect model. That empirical economists must learn to test their models before attempting to make inferences is the major policy conclusion.     

Some effects of accounting expertise and information load: An empirical study

Effects of accounting expertise and information load upon predictions made from accounting reports were explored in a laboratory setting. Both greater expertise and lower information load (where achieved by increasing the processing time available) were associated with the placement of wider confidence intervals around predictions by subjects. These two variables also had systematic (though generally not statistically significant) effects upon the dispersion of predictions made by the subjects (auditors and students).     

Are consumers with disabilities receiving the services they need?

People with disabilities in the U.S. command a buying power of $220 billion. This study combines service quality theory and disability orientation theory to focus on perceived service quality for this segment, with attribution theory providing a connecting framework. The results show that there is much room for improvement. A survey among people with disabilities reveals that retailers are rated lower on accessibility than on traditional service quality dimensions. Furthermore, feelings of disability pride and social activism (mediated by a sense of exclusion) significantly affect ratings of accessibility. Service “intangibles” such as assurance and empathy have the greatest positive effect on service quality ratings, which in turn significantly affect purchase intention (mediated by customer satisfaction). Implications and research issues are discussed.