Age as double‐edged sword among victims of customer mistreatment: A self‐esteem threat perspective

Service workers are expected to maintain high‐quality service delivery despite customer mistreatment—the poor‐quality treatment of service workers by customers—which can be demeaning and threatening to self‐esteem. Although service work is increasingly delivered by middle‐aged and older workers, very little is known about how employees across the age range navigate abuse from customers on the job. Does advancing age help or hinder service performance in reaction to customer mistreatment? Drawing on strength and vulnerability integration theory, we proposed that age paradoxically both helps and hinders performance after customer mistreatment, albeit at different stages. We tested our proposed model in a two‐sample field investigation of service workers and their supervisors using a time‐lagged, dyadic design. Results showed that age heightens the experience of self‐esteem threat but, nevertheless, dampens reactions to self‐esteem threat, leading to divergent effects on performance at different stages. Implications for age and service work, as well as aging and the sense of self, are discussed.     

Interpretive structural modeling of quality factors in both medical and hospitality services in the medical tourism industry

This study aims to theoretically integrate quality factors of both medical and hospitality services in medical tourism. Medical tourism comprises both medicine and tourism. Although the core product in medical tourism is medical treatment, attractive hospitality and travel options are also essential. Despite the dual nature of medical tourism, the two aspects of this concept have not been integrated in a unique framework. This study attempts to fill this gap using interpretive structural modeling (ISM). According to ISM, although factors of medical services and hospitality services are independent from each other, these factors have vital impacts on perceived value, satisfaction, and loyalty.     

高新技术企业培育中知识产权服务的协同创新机制研究

高新技术企业培育中的知识产权服务是多要素的协同创新,对服务供给主体、服务内容、服务对象三大关键要素进行精准识别,认为应该在知识产权的供需之间、服务主体之间、公共服务和内部管理之间合作协同,传导为高新技术企业培育和成长的创新机制,以广州市的实践为样本,需进一步在供需协同的全链条服务、主体协同上政府对的资源撬动、内外协同的知识产权贯标上形成创新机制,有效发挥知识产权对现代化经济体系建设推动作用。     

Effects of individual resources and team-member exchange on service quality

While workplace resources are generally viewed as positively affecting performance, some studies indicate that not all resources increase performance. This study addresses the controversial disparate effects of workplace resources on performance by exploring functionally classified workplace resources in self-managing service teams and their relative impacts on team service quality. Considering membership dynamics and consequences between members, a field experiment was conducted in a cafeteria, with data collected through a working diary for workplace resources and a customer survey to evaluate service quality. Results suggest that efficacy-resources in self-managing teams should be controlled with caution as they may adversely affect team service quality. Supporting the person–situation interactionism perspective, workplace resources interact dynamically with individual employees and with situations. Esteem-resources were found to increase team service quality, while team-member exchange not only improved team service quality but also moderated the impact of esteem-resources on team service quality.     

Street-level new public governances in integrated services-as-a-system

The paper explores the emergence of street-level public service integration in eight cities, in five countries using a new framework: services-as-a-system to explore new public governances in health and social care integration. Data is analysed from eight cities in six countries (Australia, Canada, The Netherlands, Spain, UK, and USA) gathered in over 100 semi-structured interviews with key agents. We show that whilst culture and context shape the form and processes of governances there are underlying processual drivers of new public governances, in particular where users are involved in the co-design and co-production of integrated services.     

Developing smart service concepts: morphological analysis using a Novelty-Quality map

Among many techniques for generating new service ideas, morphological analysis has been used due to the advantage of decomposing the system into dimensions and shapes and bringing creative results in the process of recombining them. However, with the rise of smart service systems, the determination of dimensions and shapes has become a critical problem, particularly as both their structure and components become complex. This research focuses on a data-driven approach by incorporating mobile app service documents to increase objectivity and diversity in the construction of a morphology matrix. To this end, firstly, the novelty-quality map is developed to identify innovative data based on quantitative indicators. Secondly, morphological analysis is employed along with experts’ judgment in order to generate new smart service concepts. Finally, the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed approach are shown based on a comparative analysis with conventional approaches and real services through a case study of smart home.     

Understanding hospital quality: the case of cumulative and balanced quality

A more precise way to conceptualize and operationalize hospital quality is needed to increase hospitals’ productivity. This paper investigates how hospitals’ conformance quality (CQ) and experiential quality (EQ), in terms of their combined magnitude (i.e. their interaction) and relative balance (i.e. the absolute difference between them) impact hospital productivity. First, we explore the impact of both the ‘combined dimension of quality’ and ‘balance dimension of quality’ on hospital productivity. Second, we investigate quality dominance to analyze its impact on productivity when CQ is greater than EQ, and vice versa. Secondary data (January 2015 to December 2015) were collected from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and American Hospital Directory (AHD) for US acute care hospitals. The results provide strong empirical support for the benefit of minimizing the gap between the two types of quality. In addition, the results suggest that considering quality dominance (experiential vs. conformance) might be useful in shedding light on the inherent tension that exists when firms are forced to allocate resources to provide different types of quality simultaneously.     

粮食与经济重心迁移路径及空间耦合关系分析*——以湖北省粮食主产县为例

[目的]我国的粮食安全问题一直备受关注,作为粮食安全重要保障的粮食主产区近年来却面临着粮食生产与经济发展协调性、可持续性下降的困扰。文章以湖北省46个粮食主产县为研究区,对其粮食生产与经济发展的耦合协调状况进行研究,以期为地方政府粮食安全政策制定提供参考。[方法]以研究区粮食产量、地区生产总值、行政区划图层为数据源,构建重心模型和空间耦合模型,对粮食主产县2006—2015年间粮食重心和经济重心迁移路径、粮食生产与经济发展耦合协调状况进行分析。[结果](1)研究期间粮食主产县的粮食重心和经济重心整体上皆向西北方向转移,经济重心始终位于粮食重心东南部,经济重心的移动幅度大于粮食重心,但经济重心的移动方向更稳定。研究区北部的粮食生产地位高于南部,南部的经济地位则高于北部,粮食生产的稳定性相对低于经济发展。(2)两重心整体上虽均向西北方向转移,但具体移动方向存在较大差异,两者空间重叠性整体下降,变动一致性减弱,空间耦合性变差。(3)粮食生产与经济发展空间一致性地域分异特征明显,相较于2006年,2015年粮食经济整体协调性进一步减弱,粮食生产与经济发展日趋分散。[结论]建立重心模型和空间耦合模型对粮食生产与经济发展耦合协调状况进行研究是有效可行的,为推动粮食生产与经济发展协调稳步发展决策提供一定的参考。     

我国物流业转型升级研究综述

中国经济已经到了只有转型升级才能持续健康发展的关键阶段,产业转型升级在国家政策文件和研究文献中出现的词频较高。文章以我国物流业为研究对象,从现有涉及到物流业转型升级方面的文献挖掘有效信息,梳理我国物流业转型升级研究的历史脉络,从供应链与价值链、产业集群、现代科学技术应用和产业联动四个视角对现有的物流业转型升级文献进行了总结和归纳,并从物流业转型升级的动力研究、阶段性划分研究和演进规律研究三个方面指出了现有文献的研究不足和以后可能的研究方向。其中,供应链与价值链视角侧重于物流企业的纵向角度,产业集群视角侧重于物流企业的横向角度。文章对于物流企业战略设计、政府政策的制定和理论研究具有一定的参考作用。     

Hook vs. hope: How to enhance customer engagement through gamification

Many digital service providers have adopted gamification to promote customer engagement. Critical questions, however, remain about the most effective way to enhance customer engagement and increase sales by applying gamification. With a research design that combines qualitative and quantitative methods, including the use of objective sales data from a large field study and replication of the findings across different contexts, this study explores how gamification fosters customer engagement. Both field study results and a simulation study reveal gamification principles (i.e., social interaction, sense of control, goals, progress tracking, rewards, and prompts) that promote hope and consequently increase customer engagement and digital sales. Furthermore, we find that hope is more strongly associated with customer engagement than the psychological condition of compulsion, which even exerts a negative impact. This research thus explores how gamification creates value for customers and provides actionable insights for managers to foster hope through gamification as opposed to get customers hooked.