The impact of staff empowerment and communication style on customer evaluations: The special case of service failure

Empowering front-line staff to deal with service failures has been proposed as a method of recovering from service breakdown and ensuring greater customer satisfaction. However, no empirical study has investigated consumer responses to empowerment strategies. This research investigates the effect on customer satisfaction and service quality of two employee characteristics: the degree to which the employee is empowered (full, limited, and none), and the employee's communication style (accommodative–informal and personal, and underaccommodative–formal and impersonal). These employee characteristics are studied within the context of service failures. Subjects were shown videotaped service scenarios, and asked to complete satisfaction and service quality ratings. Results revealed that the fully empowered employee produced more customer satisfaction than the other conditions, but only when the service provider used an accommodating style of communication. Fully empowered and nonempowered employees were not judged differently when an underaccommodating style of communication was adopted. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

The Stakeholder Approach: A Sustainability Perspective

This article considers the stakeholder approach (SHA) to organisational management through the lens of what it means for humans to live sustainably on the Earth (that is, for there to be a sustainable world). In particular, the article considers if the SHA, as it is presented in mainstream academic and management literature, is supportive of corporate practices that advance the achievement of a sustainable world. The analysis shows the SHA to have significant failings in this regard when viewed against key sustainable world criteria, with issues of concern evident from the normative core of the SHA through to is practical application in the management setting.     

The Primordial Stakeholder: Advancing the Conceptual Consideration of Stakeholder Status for the Natural Environment

This article furthers the argument for a stakeholder theory that integrates into managerial decision-making the relationship between business organizations and the natural environment. The authors review the literature on stakeholder theory and the debate over whom or what should count as a stakeholder. The authors also critique and expand the stakeholder identification and salience model developed by Mitchell and Wood (1997) by reconceptualizing the stakeholder attributes of power, legitimacy, and urgency, as well as by developing a fourth stakeholder attribute: proximity. In this way, the authors provide a stronger basis for arguing for the salience of the natural environment as the primary and primordial stakeholder of the firm.     

The ethics of empowerment

Driven by competitive pressure, organizations are empowering employees to use their judgment, creativity, and ideas in pursuit of enhanced organizational performance and both employee and shareholder satisfaction. This empowerment offers both benefits and potential harm. This article explores the benefits and harm associated with role, reward, process and governance empowerment and makes recommendations for minimizing the harm while maximizing the benefits.Jeffrey Gandz is a Professor and the Director of the MBA Program, at the Western Business School, teaching courses in Organizational Behavior, Human Resource Management, and Industrial Relations in both degree and executive programs. His current research is focused on the achievement of organizational effectiveness through the matching of organizational strategies, cultures, and individual values. Frederick Bird is a Professor of Comparative Ethics at Concordia University in Montréal, where he directs the Ph.D. in Religion and teaches in the Religion and Management Departments and in the Executive MBA. He is the co-authors with Jeffrey Gandz of Good Management: Business Ethics in Action (Prentice-Hall) and the author of Good Conversations: A Practical Role for Ethics in Business (Boston College) and numerous articles. He is currently directing a research project with Manny Velasquez and Jeffrey Gandz studying how corporation manage moral issues.     

Sustainable consumer empowerment through critical consumer education: a typology of consumer education approaches

It has always been assumed that consumer education serves the purpose of empowering people in their consumer role. This paper reviews the conventional understanding of consumer education and empowerment and then suggests an alternate approach. The argument is made for consumer education that helps people find their inner power and social potential to challenge the status quo, to change the system from a holistic perspective. Consumer empowerment of this type is totally self‐sustaining. Once learned, it cannot be unlearned. This form of sustainable consumer empowerment is the preferred direction for the future of consumer education.     

Empirical investigation of the domain knowledge and team advertising creativity typology: The case of Nescafe coffee

This study proposes and tests a typology of domain knowledge and team creativity by empirically assessing the effects of varying levels of domain knowledge on the creative outcomes of the team members. Two separate studies were conducted to address this inquiry. Study one aimed at determining the level of domain knowledge of each team member in the teams. Eleven groups comprising of thirty-three business students designed eleven advertisements for the products of their own choices. Utilizing the situation judgment test and the grade earned in the advertising course, four teams were formed comprising two balanced and two imbalanced domain knowledge teams. To test the hypotheses of the study, these teams were asked to develop a print advertisement for Nescafe for the summer season (Study Two). Upon creativity assessment of the final ads by twenty-six independent creative personnel in a total of seven advertising agencies in Pakistan, the results revealed that a balanced team with low domain knowledge outperformed the other balanced team with high domain knowledge. Further, unexpectedly, one of the imbalanced domain knowledge teams also outperformed the balanced high domain knowledge team. The study in the light of extant literature presents worthwhile implications for academia and practitioners.     

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.     

The Stakeholder Model: The Influence of the Ownership and Governance Structures

This paper addresses the possibilities to introduce the stakeholder model in the firm, especially the possibility to give property or decision rights to stakeholders. This paper argues that it is not practical to give full property rights to more than one group of stakeholders. Decision rights to employees and creditors are already in place in some countries, but the possibility to introduce them more generally to other stakeholder groups depends very much on the governance and ownership structure of the firm and the legal environment. The future of the stakeholder model in a globalised economy is also analysed.Eva Jansson is currently associate professor of managerial economics at the Universitat Autònoma of Barcelona. She holds a BA in statistics from the University of Stockholm and graduated in economics from Universitat of Barcelona. She holds a Ph.D. from Universitat Autònoma of Barcelona. Her research interests have been in fiscal policy, regulations of service sectors and recently topics in corporate governance. Special interest has been given to international comparison of ownership structures, changes in ownership structure of Spanish firms and to the evolution of ownership structures of privatized Spanish firms. Recent works include topics on the stakeholder model.     

The Future of Stakeholder Management Theory: A Temporal Perspective

We propose adding a temporal dimension to stakeholder management theory, and assess the implications thereof for firm-level competitive advantage. We argue that a firm’s competitive advantage fundamentally depends on its capacity for stakeholder management related, transformational adaptation over time. Our new temporal stakeholder management approach builds upon insights from both the resource-based view (RBV) in strategic management and institutional theory. Stakeholder agendas and their relative salience to the firm evolve over time, a phenomenon well understood in the literature, and requiring what we call level 1 adaptation. However, the dominant direction of stakeholder pressures can also change, namely, from supporting resource heterogeneity at the firm level to fostering industry homogeneity, and vice versa. When dominant stakeholder pressures shift from supporting heterogeneity towards stimulating homogeneity in industry, the firm must engage in level 2 or transformational adaptation. Stakeholders typically provide valuable resources to the firm in an early stage. Without these resources, which foster heterogeneity (in line with RBV thinking), the firm would not exist. At a later stage, stakeholders also contribute to inter-firm homogeneity via isomorphism pressures (in line with institutional theory thinking). Adding a temporal dimension to stakeholder management theory has far reaching implications for this theory’s practical relevance to senior level management in business.     

Stakeholder Theory and Managerial Decision-Making: Constraints and Implications of Balancing Stakeholder Interests

Stakeholder theory is widely recognized as a management theory, yet very little research has considered its implications for individual managerial decision-making. In the two studies reported here, we used stakeholder theory to examine managerial decisions about balancing stakeholder interests. Results of Study 1 suggest that indivisible resources and unequal levels of stakeholder saliency constrain managers’ efforts to balance stakeholder interests. Resource divisibility also influenced whether managers used a within-decision or an across-decision approach to balance stakeholder interests. In Study 2 we examined instrumental and normative implications of these two approaches. We conclude by considering the contributions of this research.     

Brand engagement in self-concept and consumer engagement in social media: The role of the source

This three-group between-subjects experimental research investigates the extent to which consumer engagement with a social media branded post is directly affected by individuals’ tendency to incorporate brands as part of their self-concept (BESC) and whether this relationship is moderated by individuals’ exposure to three different post source types. Participants were exposed to one of three Instagram social media posts of a luxury brand, where the only manipulated factor was the type of source. Findings show that there is a positive relationship between BESC and post engagement. The study also shows that content source plays a moderating role in the relationship between BESC and post engagement, such that individuals with high BESC will engage significantly more with content posted by other users, compared with branded sources (brand, influencer).     

FsQCA versus regression: The context of customer engagement

The purpose of this study is to address the strengths and weaknesses of the Fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) method by contrasting it with traditional multiple regression analysis. To achieve our objective, we utilize the context of customer engagement and explore how both methodological approaches can explain the factors that lead customers to engage with brands/firms. We test the association between customer engagement and its antecedents by using both methods, fsQCA and multiple regression analysis (MRA), and compare the findings. MRA results show a significant relationship between customer engagement and perceived interactivity, perceived identification, perceived value, and brand involvement, a negative relationship with perceived fairness, while the relationship with customer satisfaction and perceived value is not statistically significant. On the other hand, fsQCA revealed eight different combinations of these antecedents that lead to high levels of customer engagement. Although multiple regression analysis (MRA) certainly has its own merit, our findings indicate that this methodological approach does not capture the complexities extant in real life. This method's strength of providing generalizable results is also its weakness as relationships cannot always be generalized as shown in our study. As such, at a minimum, fsQCA should be used as a complementary approach when authors employ MRA. We suggest ‘at a minimum’ because fsQCA possesses sufficient explanatory power to be employed by itself to offer a rich perspective on the relationships of interest. We also make several noteworthy contributions to the customer engagement and service marketing literatures.     

Challenges and opportunities of new retail horizons in emerging markets: The case of a rising coffee culture in China

Economic growth and a rising middle class consumer base make emerging markets an attractive prospect for many international businesses. Changing patterns of retail in these countries present opportunities for business expansion that many are keen to capitalize on, but also present challenges for reaching their ambitions. This article examines the growth of the coffee shop industry in China—considering its key dynamics and drivers—in order to address questions about successful retail expansion in emerging markets. We aim to explore how changing consumer cultures have contributed to a rapidly growing industry and what strategies businesses have used to enter the market and maintain growth, as well as considerations for potential retail success in the future.     

Stakeholder Perceptions of Offshoring and Outsourcing: The Role of Embedded Issues

We contribute to the study of offshoring and outsourcing by examining how stakeholders’ ethical evaluations of these decisions are influenced by both their roles and the issues embedded within the decisions. Although offshoring and outsourcing have been studied from a transactional perspective, the moral issues embedded within these decisions can profoundly affect how the organization is perceived by outside stakeholders. First, we contend that investors use different moral paradigms compared with consumer stakeholders, as a result the stakeholder role an individual occupies significantly influences their ethical evaluation of offshoring and outsourcing decisions. Next, we examine whether embedded issues of product quality and information security increase the moral intensity of offshoring and outsourcing decisions, thereby negatively influencing ethical evaluations. Using vignettes, we find that respon- dents viewed either offshoring or outsourcing less favorably than relocation. Surprisingly, respondents viewed offshoring with data security risks more negatively than offshore outsourcing with quality risks, suggesting that the issue of information security has a greater moral intensity than the issue of product or service quality for both consumer and investor stakeholders. Thus, we show that that embedded issues play a significant role in stakeholders’ ethical judgments of business decisions, such as offshoring and outsourcing.     

The Confines of Stakeholder Management: Evidence from the Dutch Manufacturing Sector

Stakeholder theory is a pertinent example of a framework that has been stretched over many conceptual contexts and that has been applied to a wide variety of empirical phenomena. A pressing issue involves the scope of application of stakeholder theory, however, because it is not a comprehensive ethical scheme or problem-solving algorithm. We begin our search for the boundaries of stakeholder management by identifying a presently under-acknowledged yet major underlying assumption, notably that the approach is rooted in voluntary action and association. Building on this presumption, we argue that firm – stakeholder relationships are best to be understood in contractualist terms; i.e. as voluntary arrangements between two or more parties seeking mutual benefit. This assertion subsequently allows us to identify three boundary conditions applying to stakeholder theory: (1) the parties should be sufficiently autonomous; (2) their interests need to be alignable; and (3) they should be capableof living up to their commitments. We substantiate these criteria with evidence from a collective case study of buyer – supplier relationships in the Dutch manufacturing sector, demonstrating that the stakeholder management model fails when these boundary criteria are violated.     

企业开放式创新中的利益相关者管理

<正>在竞争、信息与资本日益全球化的今天,企业仅仅依靠内部的资源进行高成本的创新,已经不可能应对来自供应商、消费者、竞争者等群体日益增大的压力。企业必须能够吸收更广阔范围的创新资源,加快创新步伐,更好地抓住稍纵即逝的市场机会。"开放式创新"正是在这种背景下产生的,其核心理念就在于不再区分创新是来自于企