Causes and consequences of managerial failure in rapidly changing organizations

To survive in today's ultra-competitive business environment, organizations must better understand the factors that cause managers to fail to achieve desired results. To that end, focus group data was collected from 1040 managers from over 100 different U.S. manufacturing and service organizations experiencing large scale organizational change in order to help identify the primary causes of managerial failure. This article discusses the 15 primary causes of managerial failure identified in the study, along with their perceived consequences to managerial and organizational performance. Ultimately, it is hoped that this will provide a guide for improving the effectiveness of both individual managers and the organizations they serve.     

Service sabotage: The dark side of service dynamics

While many aspects of services research assume that employees are largely compliant to management prescribed service standards, a number of recent studies have highlighted the deliberate sabotage by service workers as a key issue. We contend that service sabotage is important not simply because of the pervasiveness of such behaviors, but also because of the impact that such acts can have on firm growth and profitability. Consequently, we seek to achieve three inter-linked objectives in this article. First, we highlight how service saboteurs harm customers’ service experiences and negatively affect the performance of the firm. Second, in order to assist managers in recognizing these behaviors, we identify the most common types of service saboteurs and forms of sabotage. Specifically, we classify and describe four main types of service saboteurs: Thrill Seekers, Apathetics, Customer Revengers, and Money Grabbers. Finally, and most importantly, we provide a series of suggestions regarding how managers might effectively address service sabotage in their firms. These include gathering information and exploiting existing data to establish the extent and nature of sabotage, recruiting the right quality of service staff, training and rewarding employees, enriching and empowering employees, developing a service culture, and initiating better monitoring systems and procedures.     

Brand protection across the enterprise: Toward a total-business solution

Though counterfeit products pose a large and growing problem, brand owners may not always respond effectively. Corrective efforts may be scattered or reactive, with some brand owners not even recognizing the problem. Previous research has indicated a total-business solution, involving virtually all functions of the enterprise, can help address the problem in a more systematic and effective way. To better identify what a total-business solution might look like, we asked a sample of 42 respondents—33 brand-protection practitioners and nine other respondents with academic, service, or other perspectives—to identify all functions and tactics that might be associated with brand-protection efforts. Altogether, respondents identified 38 functions associated with 757 unique tactics among more than 1,300 total tactics. Using these data, we assessed the depth and breadth of each function. We also identified multiple functions that can together support a total-business solution, and our results can help managers engage these functions to protect their brands. Future work may gauge the extent to which firms actually incorporate these functions as well as how managers consider the value, breadth, and depth of each function in relation to their organizations.     

Using fuzzy analytic hierarchy process to evaluate service performance of a travel intermediary

This study applies a fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to evaluate service performance of a foreign travel intermediary (destination tour operator, DTO) through the host travel agency's vision. Service performance is a composite of various attributes, including many intangible attributes difficult to measure. Therefore, the present research adopts an AHP method and further integrates a fuzzy set theory into the service performance measurement to overcome the problem. This work collected evaluation criteria from 36 senior travel managers’ opinions, using the critical incident technique, and 56 general managers from different travel agencies to weight and rank the overall criteria by applying fuzzy AHP. Research results could help DTOs increase service performance and quality, and provide Asian travel agencies with objective standards to evaluate the most suitable business cooperators.     

Revisiting customers' perception of service quality in fast food restaurants

This research is an extension to previous work in fast food restaurant marketing. The population of this research consists of actual fast food restaurant customers. Following the literature, data are analyzed using Confirmatory Factor Analysis, Structural Equation Modeling, and Path Analysis. Findings of this work identify factors impacting customer satisfaction, as well as dimensions of service quality and their rankings in the fast food restaurant context. Results indicate that there is no direct way of increasing behavioral intentions through improving service quality for fast food restaurants. Rather, behavioral intentions can be improved through customer satisfaction as an intermediary. Further, this work finds evidence that customer satisfaction can be improved through service quality, food quality, and price-value ratio, which in turn would pave an indirect path toward improvement in behavioral intentions in this industry. Results of this research shed light on prioritizing managers’ focus and resource allocation for customer satisfaction and different dimensions of service quality and can be used by fast food restaurant managers to set guidelines and strategies in providing better service to their customers.     

Reasons for implementing certified quality systems and impact on performance: an analysis of the hotel industry

Certifying quality systems has become standard practice in a wide range of companies the world over. However, studies on these systems' underlying motivations and these motivations' effects on performance have focused primarily on industrial firms, leaving the service sector largely unexplored in this regard. In this article structural equation modelling is used to analyse the reasons that underlie certification and the effects of these motivations on performance parameters within the hotel industry. The findings in this study show certain significant differences from the academic findings for industrial companies. The conclusions may help managers of hotel companies to better incorporate quality as a strategic, proactive tool with which to confront changing or adverse economic circumstances.     

Store Manager–Store Performance Relationship: A Research Note

Despite the critical role that store managers play in linking top management teams and service/retail employees, as well as in fulfilling corporate strategy within chain store environments, service management research infrequently addresses the factors that may promote store managers’ effective exchange relationships within the firm and subsequent effects on store operations and profitability. This study focuses on how store managers’ performance orientation, trust of a regional manager’s capabilities, and organizational commitment affect a manager’s relationships relative to regional managers and frontline employees. The direct effect of store managers’ relationship capacity on store performance is also examined. The results, based on survey data from managers of stores of a retail and service chain and company financial reports, generally support the suggested hypotheses. Specifically, a store manager’s relationship with his/her supervisor has a strong influence on how the manager views the supervisor’s leadership support and leadership style, which ultimately influence store performance (primary goods/service sales and store profits).     

论“服务是管理的社会本质和自然本质”

对管理本质进行研究有助于从根本上正确认识和理解管理,从而更好地指导人们的管理实践。在中西方不同文化背景下,很多管理实践者、学者都不同程度地涉猎了管理的基本性质和基本规律,但大多数研究成果都是管理本质表面现象的阐述,并没有指出管理的真正本质。如果从社会属性和自然属性(一般属性)的角度看,管理具有的双重服务本质:社会服务本质和自然服务本质,即服务是管理的本质。服务是管理本质论具有丰富的理论内涵,可以从管理存在的本质要求、统治阶级管理意志的体现、现代公共管理首要职能、现代企业管理最基本的经营管理理念、管理者与被管理者之间的"双向服务"关系等方面论证管理的社会服务本质,从"服务"与管理主体、管理客体、管理职能、管理目标之间的关系等方面论证管理的自然服务本质。     

Identifying Performance Measures of Small Ventures—The Case of the Tourism Industry

Drawing on the goal theory to effectiveness, the current research study attempts to identify performance measures of small ventures by focusing on the tourism industry and by doing so develops a conceptual model of small-venture performance in a service industry within its unique conditions. After reviewing theory and research on small venture performance measures in general and in service industries in particular, we propose that performance measures of small tourism ventures constitute a combination of short- and long-term measures. Furthermore, both types of measures include both objective and subjective dimensions. The findings, based on a cluster sample of 305 small tourism venture owner–managers that were interviewed face to face, generally supported the research proposition. The study emphasizes the importance of mapping the venture's achievements, allocating resources, and developing managerial skills to improve its performance and ability to survive in the long run.     

Interpersonal service quality,self-service technology (SST) service quality,and retail patronage

The main purpose of this study is to examine how two components of interactive service quality (interpersonal service quality and self-service technology service quality) are related to retail patronage. This study also aims to identify the moderating effects of individual characteristics. The results indicate that two components of interactive quality are greatly related to retail patronage intentions. The moderating effects of technology anxiety, need for interaction, and age are also partially supported. To increase retail patronage, it is very important to focus on improving self-service technology service quality as well as interpersonal service quality. The results from this study also provide retail managers with a detailed understanding of how individual characteristics influence retail patronage intentions.     

Service Quality of Advertising and Promotions Agencies in South Africa

Service quality is important to firms that use advertising and communication agencies and these agencies in turn need to make sure that their service quality is what clients expect. The purpose of this research is to assess perceptions of the service quality offered by agencies in South Africa and to identify the most important service attributes of the agency offerings. Agencies were also divided into three types: mass communication agencies, or above the line agencies (ATL), sales promotion agencies, or below the line agencies (BTL), and integrated marketing communication agencies, or full service agencies (FS). A total of 105 responses were received and results were reported for each agency type and in total. The results show some serious differences between what clients are looking for and agency strategies. These are discussed in detail. Recommendations are made which will help agencies in the development of strategic partnerships with clients.     

Big social data and customer decision making in vegetarian restaurants: A combined machine learning method

Customers increasingly use various social media to share their opinion about restaurants service quality. Big data collected from social media provides a data platform to improve the service quality of restaurants through customers' online reviews, where online reviews are a trustworthy and reliable source that helps consumers to evaluate food quality. Developing methods for effective evaluation of customer-generated reviews of restaurant services is important. This study develops a new method through effective learning techniques for customer segmentation and their preferences prediction in vegetarian friendly restaurants. The method is developed through text mining (Latent Dirichlet Allocation), cluster analysis (Self Organizing Map) and predictive learning technique (Classification and Regression Trees) to reveal the customer’ satisfaction levels from the service quality in vegetarian friendly restaurants. Based on the obtained results of our experiments on the data vegetarian friendly restaurants in Bangkok, the models constructed by Classification and Regression Trees were able to give an accurate prediction of customers' preferences on the basis of restaurants' quality factors. The results showed that customers’ online reviews analysis can be an effective way for customers segmentation to predict their preferences and help the restaurant managers to set priority instructions for service quality improvements.     

Identifying the determinants of online retail patronage: A perceived-risk perspective

The literature has examined the determinants of retail patronage from various perspectives, however, its online counterpart has received less attention. This study adapts a perceived-risk perspective to identify the antecedents of online retailers’ service quality and subsequent online patronage behavior. In addition, the contextual role of security concerns is also examined. Data were collected from online shoppers, and PLS-SEM was used for analysis. The results indicate that product quality, price transparency, and website convenience are positively associated with service quality. In addition, security concerns negatively moderate the relationship between service quality and online retail patronage. Implications for research and managers are discussed.     

Exploring job crafting: Diagnosing and responding to the ways employees adjust their jobs

Recent research has developed an in-depth understanding of how workers change their jobs on their own to improve their performance and well-being, a process called job crafting. This research suggests that managers, coworkers, and organizations need a better understanding of how to manage job crafting to capitalize on its benefits and reduce costs. This article will help organizations diagnose the occurrence of job crafting, recognize the differences between goal-oriented approaches to job crafting as opposed to withdrawal-oriented avoidance job crafting, and identify the seven specific types of job crafting: work role expansion, social expansion, work role reduction, work organization, adoption, metacognition, and withdrawal. We conclude with recommendations for managers, coworkers, and organizations on how to diagnose and manage job crafting.     

A model and measure for quality service user involvement in health research

In the UK, researchers across the health professions are increasingly being encouraged by policymakers and research commissioners to ‘involve’ service users in research. A recent review shows there is some evidence that involving patients, carers, relatives, social or community groups directly and actively as part of the research process can improve the conduct of research studies and the impact of the findings. Yet, little is known about how involvement is played out within research studies and there is a need for more critical and consistent assessment of what constitutes quality involvement. The overall purpose of this paper is to support learning about quality service user involvement in health care research. The aim is to provide service users and researchers with a structured and consistent way to reflect and report on their experiences. A range of philosophical and social theories of power and empowerment were reviewed and synthesized to create a model of quality involvement. The analysis encompassed both service user factors (what a person feels able to do, whether they feel their potential is being fulfilled and their sense of being valued) alongside research factors (research relationships, ways of doing research, research structures). A model is presented (Quality Involvement Framework), which contributes theoretically informed perspectives about the meaning and assessment of quality service user involvement in research. The model is developed as a practical measure (a Quality Involvement Questionnaire) for researchers and service users to be more reflective about the constraints and possibilities of involvement. The tools presented here could help research teams to examine personal factors and the research contexts that influence the nature and quality of service user involvement in research. They may also help to identify reoccurring issues about quality which could inform future policy, practice and research.     

Evaluating a hotel GM's performance

A computer model that matches similar hotels will allow a chain to compare the performance of one general manager to that of another. Doing so will help identify the most efficient operations while providing benchmarks for less-efficient managers to attain.     

Analysing the effect of environmental factors on service performance

The aim of this paper is to analyse the effect of some environmental variables when analysing efficiency in a service process. For the first time in the grocery retail industry, this paper considers two different approaches employed in the efficiency measurement literature to analyse the influence of environmental factors, and compares the results obtained with a model that does not include the environmental factors. The methodology is based on the estimation of a stochastic parametric function. The results obtained highlight the importance of considering environmental variables when evaluating efficiency in retailing. As a consequence, managers should be aware that differences in performance could be due to more or less favourable environmental conditions. It is important for service assessment programmes to provide precise enough measures for managers to draw the correct conclusion when evaluating their firms' performance.     

基于KANO模型的网络零售商服务质量评价

以KANO模型为基础,建立网络零售商服务质量评价体系,通过定量分析不同层次的顾客需求,找出顾客和网络零售商的接触点,识别使顾客满意的至关重要的因素,如必须质量、期望质量、魅力质量,提升网络零售商的服务质量和经营业绩。网络零售商只有保持必须质量,提升期望质量,增加魅力质量,才会在激烈的竞争不断的发展和壮大。     

BEYOND EXPECTATIONS: AN EXAMINATION OF LOGISTICS OUTSOURCING GOAL ACHIEVEMENT AND GOAL EXCEEDANCE

As a growing number of managers consider the decision to outsource logistics activities, it is becoming increasingly critical to understand drivers of success in this area. Using survey data from 549 managers, this research examines the influence of three relationship engagement factors (communication, cooperation, and proactive improvement) on the perceived logistics outsourcing performance achieved by service providers. In particular, logistics outsourcing performance is characterized as consisting of two distinct dimensions: 1) goal achievement, and 2) goal exceedance, which management should consider, respectively, when evaluating their logistics service providers (LSPs).