Role stressors and customer-oriented boundary-spanning behaviors in service organizations

The authors investigate three types of customer-oriented boundary-spanning behaviors (COBSBs) a frontline service employee may perform that are associated with linking a service organization to its potential or actual customers: external representation, internal influence, and service delivery. The authors propose and test a withdrawal model to explain the negative effects of role conflict and role ambiguity on COBSBs across a sample of 220 lower-level, nonprofessional service providers of a major retail bank and a sample of 90 higher-level, professional service providers from the business credit division of an international financial services corporation. The results demonstrate that (1) indirect paths through job satisfaction and organizational commitment entirely account for the negative effects of the role stressors on COBSBs, (2) the indirect negative effects of the role stressors are stronger on external representation and internal influence behaviors, and (3) role conflict also has a significant positive direct relationship with internal influence behaviors. Lance A. Bettencourt (lbettenc@indiana.edu) (Ph.D., Arizona State University) is an assistant professor of marketing in the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. His research has appeared in a variety of journals, including theJournal of Applied Psychology, theJournal of Retailing, California Management Review, theJournal of Consumer Research, Marketing Letters, andPsychology & Marketing. His areas of research interest include service quality implementation, organizational citizenship behaviors, and customer contributions to service delivery effectiveness. Stephen W. Brown (stephen.brown@asu.edu) (Ph.D., Arizona State University) holds the Edward M. Carson Chair in Services Marketing, is professor of marketing, and director of the Center for Services Leadership, W. P. Carey School of Business, at Arizona State University. His research has appeared in a variety of journals, including theJournal of Marketing, theJournal of Marketing Research, theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, theJournal of Retailing, theJournal of Applied Psychology, Sloan Management Review, andCalifornia Management Review. His areas of research interest include service delivery and recovery, strategic service relationship management, service quality and loyalty, and growing services revenue in product-based businesses. He is the former president of the American Marketing Association and coauthor or coeditor of 20 books on marketing and related topics.     

The customer-centered innovation map

We all know that people "hire" products and services to get a job done. Surgeons hire scalpels to dissect soft tissue. Janitors hire soap dispensers and paper towels to remove grime from their hands. To find ways to innovate, it's critical to deconstruct the job the customer is trying to get done from beginning to end, to gain a complete view of all the points at which a customer might desire more help from a product or service. A methodology called job mapping helps companies analyze the biggest drawbacks of the products and services customers currently use and discover opportunities for innovation. It involves breaking down the task the customer wants to accomplish into the eight universal steps of a job: (1) defining the objectives, (2) locating the necessary inputs, (3) preparing the physical environment, (4) confirming that everything is ready, (5) executing the task, (6) monitoring its progress, (7) making modifications as necessary, and (8) concluding the job. Job mapping differs substantively from process mapping in that the goal is to identify what customers are trying to get done at every step, not what they are doing currently. For example, when an anesthesiologist checks a monitor during a surgical procedure, the action taken is just a means to the end. Detecting a change in patient vital signs is the job the doctor is trying to get done. Within each of the discrete steps lie multiple opportunities for making the job simpler, easier, or faster. By mapping out every step of the job and locating those opportunities, companies can discover new ways to differentiate their offerings.     

Real Options, International Entry Mode Choice and Performance

abstract    Recent scholarship suggests that combining insights from real option theory with transaction cost economics may improve decision-making models. In response to this suggestion we develop and test a model of international entry mode choice that draws from both perspectives. Examining samples of Dutch and Greek firms entering Central and Eastern European markets, we found that adding real option variables to a transaction cost model significantly improved its explanatory power. Additionally, firms that used the combined real option/transaction cost predicted choices had significantly higher levels of subsidiary performance satisfaction than firms that did not. Our results suggest that effective managerial decision-making may involve more than mere transaction cost minimization considerations; real option value creation insights also appear to influence the success of decision outcomes.     

Analysis of the export Constraint on Canadian Wheat In 1977/78

The analysis suggests that Canadian wheat exports in 1977/78 were reduced by an amount between 0.7 and 1.7 million metric tons because of a constraint due to transportation and handling problems. Estimates are made of the effect of this export constraint on domestic utilization, supply and the off-Board price. Estimates are also made of the effects on these variables of three possible Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) strategies for handling the export constraint. The strategies involve the use of delivery quotas and the initial payment as instruments of the CWB.
L'analyse suggère que les exportations canadienes de blé ont été réduites en 1977/78 d'un montant compris entre 0.7 et 1.7 millions de tonnes. Ces réductions sont dûes a l'effet d'une contrainte posée par des problèmes de transport et de maniement. L'impact de cette contrainte sur les exportations a étéégalement estimé sur la demande domestique, sur I'offre et sur le prix hors-Commission. Les effets sur ces mêmes variables ont été aussi quantifies en utilisant trois strategies possibles de la Commission Canadienne du Blé (CCB). Ces stratégies invoquent l'utilisation par la CCB de différents niveaux de quotas de livraison et de paiement initial.     

The Role of Systematic International Market Selection on Small Firms' Export Performance

This article hypothesizes that, on average, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that use a systematic methodology in selecting foreign target markets (what we call systematic market selection) perform better than SMEs using an ad hoc international market selection methodology. Using a sample of Greek exporting firms, we found that systematic international market selection is a significant determinant of export performance, even when controlling for decision-maker and firm-specific characteristics previous studies found to be related to export success. Implications for managers, trade promotion agencies, and future research are discussed.     

Do option markets substitute for stock markets? Evidence from trading on anticipated tender offer announcements

Using a sample of cash tender offers occurring between 1993 and 2002, we find evidence that the options market has become the preferred venue for traders attempting to profit on anticipated announcements. Options offer advantages relative to stocks. Traders gain leverage by trading in options and multiple options contracts on an individual stock. The results of our study indicate that a substitution effect does exist. Abnormal volume in the option market replaces abnormal volume in the stock market prior to cash tender offer announcements, and this abnormal option volume precedes abnormal stock volume for targets with or without traded options.     

Teaching Innovative Accounting Topics: Student Reaction to a Course in Social Accounting

Accounting students experience degree programmes with a fairly ‘traditional’ range of topics that are taught with an emphasis on technique and learning the ‘status quo’. To the extent that a topic may challenge this pattern by emphasizing new concepts, questioning existing concepts, being more concerned with what accounting ‘might be’ rather than current practice, or some combination of these, some topics may be considered ‘innovative’ additions to the curriculum. Social accounting is an innovative accounting topic that has attracted considerable attention in the literature. This paper reports on an implementation dilemma encountered in a course on social accounting resulting from a clash between preferred student learning attributes and those embodied in social accounting. The use of action oriented teaching strategies to counteract this dilemma is identified. Similar problems and solutions may be applicable for other innovative accounting topics.     

Practical general equilibrium estimation of resource pulls under trade liberalization

This paper discusses the application of a model similar to the one developed in Leif Johansen's Multi-sectoral study of economic growth (1964) to the problem of determining general equilibrium responses of the economy to changes in commercial policy. This method amounts essentially to specifying a log-linear approximation to the general equilibrium solution for the economy, and solving the resulting linear equations for changes in endogenous variables as functions of exogenous variable changes. For a 35-sector model of the Chilean economy with labor as the only variable factor of production (to avoid the problem of overdetermination of many commodity price and output shifts when only two factors are considered in constant returns production functions), it is found that (i) the specification of the way in which intermediate inputs enter the production function is numerically important in determining output responses to tariff changes, detracting from the credibility of fixed coefficient effective rate of protection calculations if variable intermediate input coefficients are the rule (as appears likely empirically); (ii) exchange rate elasticities with respect to individual tariff changes are fairly large, so that the usual partial equilibrium assumption of exchange rate insensitivity to ‘small’ tariff revisions is not valid; (iii) employment effects of different tariff revisions are highly variable and in some cases substantial.     

Exchange rate indeterminacy in portfolio balance, Mundell-Fleming and uncovered interest rate parity models

With full stock/flow accounting respected, the two-country openeconomy portfolio balance model has just two independent equationsfor asset market clearing. It can determine home and foreigninterest rates but not the exchange rate. If asset market equilibriavary smoothly over time, the balance of payments equation inthe Mundell–Fleming model is not independent and cannotset the exchange rate either. The familiar fixed reserves/‘floatingrate’ vs endogenous reserves/‘fixed rate’dichotomy does not exist, and ‘fundamentals-based’econometric models of the exchange rate are bound to fail. Analternative is a two-country IS/LM model with exchange ratedynamics added. Its dynamic properties under uncovered interestrate parity are briefly explored.