Training in service – importing and imparting customer service culture as an interactive process

Customer service culture initiatives have received renewed academic attention. Recent surveys of employee responses have highlighted the importance of training. However, its precise nature and how messages and various responses are mediated through an interactive and dynamic process have been largely neglected. In addition, employees' experience of customer service as consumers and of its contradictions has yet to be fully explored in accounting for employee responses. In an effort to develop existing knowledge and models of customer service culture, these issues are addressed by drawing on observational research. Four training programmes are examined in varied contexts, including a UK call centre and a Malaysian bank. They reveal a dynamic whereby trainers' anticipation of employee attitudes such as cynicism and the immediate reactions and dialogue of trainees help shape both the service message and subsequent responses.     

Who is fit to serve? Person–job/organization fit,emotional labor,and customer service performance

This study investigates person–job (P–J) fit and person–organization (P–O) fit perceptions and relates these perceptions to employees' emotional labor and customer service performance. Data from a two‐point, time‐lagged study of 263 employees and 690 customers reveal that both P–J and P–O fit relate positively to deep acting and negatively to surface acting, in accordance with an emotional labor perspective. In addition, P–J and P–O fit are jointly associated with emotional labor, such that the positive link between P–J fit and deep acting is stronger, and the negative link between P–J fit and surface acting is weaker when P–O fit is high. Emotional labor partially mediates the interactive effects of P–J and P–O fit on service interaction quality and customer satisfaction; service interaction quality relates positively to customer satisfaction. These findings have multiple theoretical and practical implications.     

Does participatory budgeting improve decentralized public service delivery? Experimental evidence from rural Russia

We present findings of the first experimental evaluation of the participatory budgeting (PB) model carried out in rural Russia within the context of a major decentralization reform. The reform aimed (among other things) to increase citizens’ participation in budgetary decision making and to strengthen public oversight over budget implementation in rural settlements. The experiment provided randomly allocated training and technical assistance to the settlement population and local authorities helping to introduce PB practices into the budgetary cycle. We document that training alone was not successful to ensure an effective implementation of PB. By contrast, training coupled with on-the-ground technical assistance generated full implementation of the PB cycle. Overall, we find that the implementation of PB increased citizen’s engagement in public decision making and raised local tax revenue collection. However, we find larger effects when the PB model was implemented in settlements with more years of prior experience with political and administrative decentralization. Among these settlements, we find that PB not only increased citizen’s participation and tax revenue collection, but also that preferences for public services between authorities and citizens were better aligned, local administrations allocated larger fractions of public budgets to services identified as top priorities by citizens, and citizens were more satisfied with public services. Our findings highlight: (1) the importance of context specific on-the-ground technical assistance to ensure effective implementation of participatory models; and (2) the relevance of taking the historical and institutional context into account when planning and sequencing meaningful participatory decentralization reforms.     

Is the customer always right?

This article begins with a brief review of the early days of production and inventory control (where it started), describes the present state of the art (what it is like today), and ends with a forecast of what the future looks like (where it is going). Recognizing the importance of the customer today, it focuses on the changes in supplier-customer relations in the past as well as those to come.     

Too much inventory? How do you know?

How much inventory does a company need to support its business goals? Companies must consider what effect their inventory investment decisions have on the strategic direction of their business. Too often, a company's investment decisions are carried out not by the company's strategists, but by individuals who are unaware of the strategic direction of the business.     

Engaged and committed? The relationship between work engagement and commitment in professional service firms

Our study explores the relationship between employee engagement and foci-commitment of employees in professional service firms (PSFs). PSFs compete on the basis of their ability to encourage their employees to generate exceptional knowledge-based services and products, acting within and beyond the organizational boundaries. In order to achieve these outputs, the PSFs need to ensure that their professionals are engaged and committed. Drawing on 375 surveys from the employees of a global PSF, we compare two models to test the relationship between work engagement and multi-foci commitment: the organization, the client, the team and the profession. We first explore an overall positive effect of work engagement on commitment to all four foci. We then compare the overall impact to the independent effects of work engagement dimensions on four commitment foci. Our findings suggest that work engagement with three dimensions is a better-fitting model in the PSFs context.     

What is Climate Change Policy Now Trying to Achieve?

Almost all advocates of international climate change policy hope and expect that the Climate Change Conference to be held in Paris in November–December 2015 will reach an agreement to reduce global anthropomorphic greenhouse gas emissions. Yet more than 25 years of international climate change policy has failed to reach such an agreement; emissions, far from having been reduced, have greatly increased. In the author's view, no such agreement will be reached in Paris. Anticipating this, Lord Stern, a highly influential figure in international climate change policy, has restated the case for continuing with this policy while relinquishing the objective of reaching such an agreement, though it had previously been claimed that this was essential to ‘save the world’. Advocating the continuation of climate change policy while disavowing a formerly acknowledged condition of its success seems to represent a further stage in the abandonment of rationality in climate change policy formulation.     

Do salaries improve worker performance?

We establish the effects of salaries on worker performance by exploiting a natural experiment in which some workers in a particular occupation (football referees) switch from short-term contracts to salaried contracts. Worker performance improves among those who move onto salaried contracts relative to those who do not. The finding is robust to the introduction of worker fixed effects indicating that it is not driven by better workers being awarded salary contracts. Nor is it sensitive to workers sorting into or out of the profession. Improved performance could arise from the additional effort workers exert due to career concerns, the higher income associated with career contracts (an efficiency wage effect) or improvements in worker quality arising from off-the-job training which accompanies the salaried contracts.     

Do investments in intangible customer assets affect firm value?

This paper develops a simple model of investment by service firms in intangible customer assets, and tests whether the model identifies some critical drivers of firms’ stock returns. Similar to firms with significant research and development (R&D) expenditures, we argue that firms in fast-growing service industries with few tangible assets can increase firm value by investing in customer acquisition and service (A&S) expenditure. Using a unique hand-collected data set, we show that per-customer changes in firms’ revenues, customer acquisition costs, and customer service costs help to explain their abnormal stock returns.     

Do environmental,social, and governance activities improve corporate financial performance?

This study investigated the relationship between corporate efficiency and corporate sustainability to determine whether firms concerned about environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues can also be efficient and profitable. We applied data envelopment analysis to estimate corporate efficiency and investigated the nonlinear relationship between corporate efficiency and ESG disclosure. Evidence shows that corporate transparency regarding ESG information has a positive association with corporate efficiency at the moderate disclosure level, rather than at the high or low disclosure level. Governance information disclosure has the strongest positive linkage with corporate efficiency, followed by social and environmental information disclosure. Moreover, we explored the relationship between particular ESG activities and corporate financial performance (CFP), including corporate efficiency, return on assets, and market value. We found that most of the ESG activities reveal a nonnegative relationship with CFP. These findings may provide evidence about voluntary corporate social responsibility strategy choices for enhancing corporate sustainability.     

A slow burning flame? Organisational change and industrial relations in the fire service

The process of organisational change in the public sector has led to a restructuring of the employment relationship in a context of budgetary constraints, the introduction of performance indicators and the development of new management strategies. The pace of change has been uneven and mediated by service cultures that have been resistant to innovation. Our case study of a metropolitan fire brigade explores these issues and suggests that financially driven organisational change has a major impact on industrial relations and that trade union organisation rooted in workplace culture can provide a significant challenge to restructuring.     

Does more calculus improve student learning in intermediate micro- and macroeconomic theory?

Using a selection bias correction model with ordered probit, we estimate how a second semester of calculus affects students' grades in intermediate economic theory. Selection bias correction is needed because similar aptitudes and interests often lead students to enroll and do well in both mathematics and economics. A sample of students enrolled in 49 classes of intermediate micro and 41 classes of intermediate macro is used to estimate the model. The results show a predicted payoff from a second semester of calculus of about one whole letter grade in intermediate micro, but no payoff in intermediate macro. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Does e-HRM lead to better HRM service?

Electronic Human Resource Management (e-HRM) is often assumed to increase HRM service quality. This paper empirically examines the relationship between e-HRM and HRM service quality and addresses two calls from recent e-HRM studies, namely to highlight (i) the importance of the interplay between technological and organizational aspects and (ii) the finding that improved HRM service quality is a consequence of e-HRM implementation. We argue that the key drivers of HRM service quality are the strengths both of HRM and of e-HRM. The relationship may be mediated by the frequency of e-HRM usage. In addition, building on Adaptive Structuration Theory, the degree to which mediation occurs may differ within regimes of high and low e-HRM appropriation. We use moderated mediation analysis on a sample of 140 employees of an administration unit to shed light on the drivers of HRM service quality. While we identify strong positive direct effects of HRM strength and of e-HRM strength, we fail to uncover either mediation or contingent mediation effects. The study contributes to e-HRM research by identifying the main antecedent of HRM service quality as HRM strength.     

How different is professional service operations management?

This paper presents detailed analysis of the operational and operations management characteristics of a professional service firm, a legal partnership. An in-depth study of customer interactions, service customization, process throughput and variability, professional employee behavior and managerial interventions provided the basis for confirmatory and exploratory research. The results suggested a number of refinements to existing conceptualizations of the professional service type operation and indicated areas where professional service operations management should be viewed as highly distinctive. First, professional–client exchange is variably asymmetrical – with significant implications for service package and process design. Second, professional service operations comprise a substantial number of less variable and faster throughput processes – creating a significant opportunity for commoditization. Third, professional status and corresponding organisational structures (e.g. the partnership model) need to be explicitly recognised in any typology – these factors introduce distinctive trade-offs when seeking greater efficiency and effectiveness.     

Do good institutions improve fiscal transparency?

We study the role of institutional quality on the fiscal transparency of a country. We show that such a link does exist even when controlling for endogeneity. Our findings are robust to changes in specification and a host of transparency sub-measures. An advantage of our study is that we use new data on fiscal transparency for a cross-section of 82 countries, which are based on in-depth reports based on a standardized methodology and protocol. Furthermore, the fiscal measures were obtained with the collaboration of government authorities, which makes them particularly reliable.     

The relationship between newcomers’ emotional labor and service performance: the moderating roles of service training and mentoring functions

Abstract

Retaining newcomers and enhancing their service performance are critical issues for the human resource management and hospitality management fields. However, newcomers have just begun to learn the organizational display rules and often encounter more emotional problems than veteran employees. Thus, how organizations help the newcomers to manage their emotions in order to deliver better service is an important issue. Based on the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model, this study explores the relationship between newcomers’ emotional labor and service performance, and examines whether human resource practices such as service training and mentoring functions can moderate this association. We collected data from hospitality newcomers and their supervisors from 34 hotels. A total of 244 valid paired questionnaires were collected during two different time phases. The results of hierarchical regression analysis show that newcomers’ deep acting positively relates to service performance and service training can enhance this relationship. In addition, mentoring functions also differentially moderate the relationships between the two emotional labor strategies and service performance.     

Does ownership matter for service delivery value? an examination of citizens’ service satisfaction

Governments across the world outsource service delivery to external agents, but does ownership matter for service delivery value? Though theory points to clear ownership differences on effectiveness, there remains limited empirical evidence of the impact of ownership on citizens’ satisfaction. Focusing on local authorities in England, we draw on secondary data (2007 and 2009) to examine if ownership type matters. The findings indicate that ownership – public, non-profit, private – confers no direct benefits for citizens’ satisfaction suggesting that the outsourcing decision should not rely on unfounded assumptions about performance differentials between ownership types. The implications for public management are explored.     

What is the joint effect of employee satisfaction and customer orientation on the organizational culture in metalworking manufacturing?

It is a known fact that culture is an important element for the organizations. In this context, a research has been carried out in which the main subject is about to investigate the organizational culture depending on the factors of employee satisfaction and customer orientation in metalworking manufacturing firms. To perform the study, we constructed an original model and conducted research with 578 employees of metalworking organizations. After the data analysis, we determined that organizational culture has positive-significant correlation with employee satisfaction and customer orientation (at the 0.000 level). Additionally, the total explained variance of organizational culture – depending on employee satisfaction and customer orientation – has come out as a satisfying value (0.53). According to the results of our research, we are able to conclude that employee satisfaction and customer orientation has a mid-level effect on creating a substantial organizational culture.     

Can educational expansion improve income inequality? Evidences from the CHNS 1997 and 2006 data

Rapid education expansion and rising income inequality are two striking phenomena occurring in China during the transitional period. Using the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) data collected in 1997 and 2006, this paper studies how education affects individual earnings during the transitional process. We find that education accounts for only a small fraction of the personal earnings and income gap between different groups. We analyze the underlying mechanism of the impact of education on earning. More educated people tend to enter state-owned sectors, have a low probability of changing jobs in the labor market and work less time; all of these will have a pronounced impact on earning and income inequality. Quantile regression analysis shows that the low-income group's education return rate is lower, which helps little in narrowing the income gap. We decompose the earning gap into four factors: population effect, price effect, labor choice effect and unobservable effect. In explaining the earning gap in China, the price effect is more important than the population effect. The labor choice effect is also significant. We conclude that increasing educational expenditure with no complementary measures such as reforming the education system and establishing a competitive labor market helps less in reducing income inequality.