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.     

Building the bottom line by developing the frontline: Career development for service employees

Service firms must remember that the way they treat their employees is exactly how those employees will, in turn, treat customers. As such, taking good care of frontline personnel should be a top management concern. One way that service employees can be shown they are valued members of the organization entails the implementation of thoughtful and organized career development programs, initiatives which help increase employees’ job satisfaction and feelings of empowerment in their customer-facing roles. Before they can become enthusiastic about meeting the needs of their customers, employees have to feel that their own needs are being met within the organization. In this regard, firm investment in frontline employee career development programs will be money well spent: they are capable of reducing employee turnover and increasing customer satisfaction, loyalty, and profitability. This article provides a conceptual model of career development which should prove useful to service managers in evaluating their own career development efforts. Also presented herein is a framework for tying together many disparate areas of career development that have heretofore been handled separately in the services literature.     

Just the Right Amount of Ethics Inspires Creativity: A Cross-Level Investigation of Ethical Leadership,Intrinsic Motivation,and Employee Creativity

Based on ideology-infused psychological contract theory and cognitive evaluation theory, this study investigated the curvilinear relationship between ethical leadership and employee creativity. A curvilinear mediation model was proposed to explain the impact of ethical leadership on creativity, using employee intrinsic motivation as the mediator. Applying a two wave sampling design that consist 258 employees and their leaders, we found that employee creativity improved as ethical leadership increased from low to moderate levels. However, the employee creativity improvement was attenuated when ethical leadership increased from moderate to high levels. Furthermore, the study also revealed that employee intrinsic motivation partially mediated this curvilinear relationship. The theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.     

家庭经济地位与生育行为:宏观环境的调节效应

使用2005年全国1%人口抽样调查数据研究家庭经济地位对中国妇女违反政策生育行为的影响。考虑到社会情境对个体行为的重要影响作用,本研究构建多层模型分析不同省级社会环境下家庭收入对违反政策生育行为的影响。家庭经济因素对个体生育行为的影响会随着省级社会环境的不同而呈现出巨大差异。在女性在农业部门就业比例高的地区,收入呈负向影响;女性在农业部门就业比例低的地区,收入呈正向影响。这说明社会环境对个体行为的影响机制是复杂的。研究结果对生育政策调整具有一定的启示意义。     

Associations Between Organizational/Individual Factors and the Intentions of Employees

Abstract

This study of a university school foodservice operation examines whether a positive or negative association exists between the individual and organizational factors and the intentions to stay or leave the current job for foodservice employees or internal customers. The individual factors include job status, service length, age, education level, and job position. The organizational factors include several job characteristics, intrinsic motivation, formalization, participative decision-making and psychological stress. Job characteristics indicated a significant positive impact on university retention across the job characteristics of autonomy, feedback, dealing with others, and variety. The organizational factors of perceived formalization and participative decision-making also had a significant positive impact on university employee retention. The organizational factors of intrinsic motivation, task identity, and friendship opportunities did not have a statistically significant positive or negative impact on university employee retention yet had the directions of relationship that was expected. Finally, psychological stress had a negative impact on university employee retention. The article ends with suggestions for future research and limitations of the current study.     

Employees and the Operation of Accountability

This article examines a social accounting cycle in a Danish savings bank with specific focus on how employees interacted with the cycle. The case study is based on archival material and observations of employee engagement sessions that were a significant part of the cycle. The article exposes the ways in which the cycle can be understood as an initiative that prompts different forms of accountability. The cycle had the potential to bring different forms of accountability together, but the cycle also faced challenges that threatened its relevance from an employee perspective. These challenges might have implications for the way we perceive social accounting and the role of employees.     

Management and Legal Issues Regarding Electronic Surveillance of Employees in the Workplace

Since the attack on the World Trade Center in New York, and on the Pentagon in the United States, concerns over security issues have been at an all-time high in this country. Both state and federal governments continue to discuss legislation on these issues amid much controversy. One key concern of both employers and employees is the extent that employers, espousing a “need to know” mentality, continue to expand their capability and implementation of surveillance of employees in the workplace. With the technology typically growing faster than the speed of legislation, protective or permissive, the management and legal issues involved in electronic monitoring of employee communications in the workplace, are and well should be on the agenda for discussion of every management and legal team in American business today. Companies have a legitimate right to protect their trade secrets from disclosure by disgruntled employees. Similarly, companies also have a duty to protect their good names and reputations from unauthorized employee communications with outside parties, and even other employees, that may damage them. It is also a prime duty of management to ensure, in their direction of their workforces, that the employees execute their responsibilities by working full time on their stated objectives. In this regard, any management that fails to oversee its workforce to ensure that employees are not expending valuable company time, for which they are being compensated, on personal business, including unauthorized communications, is remiss in its responsibilities to its shareholders. The company may see a reduction of the price of its shares in the marketplace if it does not protect the economic interests of its shareholders.     

中国与印度服务业比较:竞争力及其影响因素

近年来,中国和印度成为亚洲经济发展备受瞩目的国家,两国在服务业领域的竞争成为关注的焦点。本文从产业结构、服务贸易总量与结构、服务贸易竞争力指数三方面考察了中印两国服务业竞争力的现状,并借助波特的"钻石体系"理论,对中印两国的要素条件、需求条件、相关支持产业及对外开放等因素进行了分析,得出虽然印度在目前取得了服务业的竞争优势,但是中国在今后的发展中更具潜力的结论和启示。     

员工职业成长的影响因素及对策探析——基于组织和员工双向视角

本文首先对职业成长的内涵进行了界定,其次探讨了影响员工职业成长的个人因素和情境因素,最后从组织和个人的视角提出了促进员工职业成长的对策,主要包括加强职业生涯管理、增强人力资本、培养积极的心理资本和扩展广泛的社会资本等,对促进员工的职业成长具有一定的借鉴意义。     

The Effects of Humor on Ad Processing: Mediating Role of Brand Familiarity

The effect of humorous advertisement on memory and attitude has been an important topic among advertising scholars. However, scholars have used fake brands to test the effects of humor. Since the possibility for consumers to be exposed to the commercial for a completely new brand is very low, using a fake brand to test humor effects is not realistic. Hence, this study examined the role of brand familiarity on the effects of humor on memory and attitude by using existing brands in a laboratory experiment. This study suggests a different structural model for familiar and unfamiliar brands based on the previous studies in consumer behavior. Results revealed different effects of humorous advertisements for the familiar or unfamiliar brands. The structural model proposed for this study revealed a mediating role of brand familiarity on humor effects. Humorous ads worked better for the unfamiliar brands. For the familiar brands, the effects were mediated by the subjects’ brand familiarity and prior brand attitude.     

A Model of Sponsorship Effects on the Sponsor's Employees

Drawing from the corporate sponsorship literature, a model is developed that seeks to explain how externally directed corporate sponsorship can influence the behavior of the sponsor's employees. External sponsorship conveys a signal that can impact on employees’ perceptions of their employer. The model seeks to explain the processes and types of possible impacts. Although the model requires confirmation, its conceptualization raises additional avenues to assess the benefits of corporate sponsorship.     

Religiosity and Moral Identity: The Mediating Role of Self-Control

The ethics literature has identified moral motivation as a factor in ethical decision-making. Furthermore, moral identity has been identified as a source of moral motivation. In the current study, we examine religiosity as an antecedent to moral identity and examine the mediating role of self-control in this relationship. We find that intrinsic and extrinsic dimensions of religiosity have different direct and indirect effects on the internalization and symbolization dimensions of moral identity. Specifically, intrinsic religiosity plays a role in counterbalancing the negative impact of extrinsic religiosity on the internalization of moral identity. Further, intrinsic religiosity also counterbalances the negative and indirect impact of extrinsic religiosity on symbolization of moral identity via self-control. Lastly, self-control does not play a mediating role in the impact of religiosity on the internalization dimension of moral identity. We conclude that this study presents important findings that advance our understanding of the antecedents of moral identity, and that these results may have implications for the understanding of ethical decision-making.     

新就业职工的居住现状与住房保障政策优化思路--基于武汉市新就业职工的调查研究

基于武汉市的实地调查资料发现,新就业职工面临安居困境,其原因在于：房价与房租持续飙升;收入水平低且增长缓慢;住房保障政策存在缺位与错位;现有非正规的住房解决方案面临争议;廉价居所不断流失。解决新就业职工居住困难需要在公租房持续放量的同时,优化项目选址和设计方案,切实降低居住成本;有效利用市场存量房源,加强市场调控,增加小面积廉价商品租屋供给,着力提高新就业职工付租能力;谨慎推进城中村改造,明确城中村改造应予担负的住房保障义务;通过政府扶助、社会合力、分流引导,多渠道化解新就业职工的生计难题。     

Religiosity and Voluntary Simplicity: The Mediating Role of Spiritual Well-Being

Although there has been considerable theoretical support outlining a positive relationship between religiosity and voluntary simplicity, there is limited empirical evidence validating this relationship. This study examines the relationships among religious orientations (Allport and Ross in J Pers Soc Psychol 5(4):432–443, 1967) and voluntary simplicity in a sample of Australian consumers. The results demonstrate that intrinsic religiosity is positively related to voluntary simplicity; however, there is no relationship between extrinsic religiosity and voluntary simplicity. Furthermore, this research investigates the processes through which intrinsic religiosity affects voluntary simplicity. The relationship between intrinsic religiosity and voluntary simplicity is sequentially mediated by communal/personal well-being and environmental well-being. The findings not only identify a prosocial role of intrinsic religiosity in motivating voluntary simplicity, but also indicate that secular pursuits that enhance communal/personal well-being and environmental well-being may also motivate voluntary simplicity.     

Creativity in the opportunity identification process and the moderating effect of diversity of information

We employ two study designs for a more detailed examination of creativity in the opportunity identification process. We employ a correlational field study to test the hypothesis that divergent thinking affects venture growth through business idea generation. We use an experimental design to test the hypothesis that diversity of information moderates the effect of divergent thinking on business idea generation. Analyses based on 98 business owners across both study designs supported our hypotheses. Combining the findings from both designs points to boundary conditions of theories suggesting constraining information; this may weaken the indirect effect of divergent thinking on venture growth.     

Social Responsibility and the Olympic Games: The Mediating Role of Consumer Attributions

Current literature suggests that corporate social responsibility (CSR) can affect consumers’ attitudes towards an organization and is regarded as a driver for reputation-building and fostering sustained consumer patronage. Although prior research has addressed the direct influence of CSR on consumer responses, this research examined the mediating influence of consumer’s perceived organizational motives within an NGO setting. Given the heightened public attention surrounding the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, data were collected from consumers of the Games to assess their perceptions of the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) socially responsible initiatives. We hypothesized that consumers of the Games were likely to cognitively elaborate on CSR messages by way of three specific attribution effects derived from the literature. The results show that, contingent on CSR awareness, consumers responded positively to social efforts judged to be values-driven and stakeholder-driven; and a negative response was seen for efforts judged to be strategic. These attribution effects influenced various types of patronage and perceived organizational reputation.     

Corporate Ethical Values and Altruism: The Mediating Role of Career Satisfaction

This study explores the ability of career satisfaction to mediate the relationship between corporate ethical values and altruism. Using a sample of individuals employed in a four-campus, regional health science center, it was determined that individual career satisfaction fully mediated the positive relationship between perceptions of corporate ethical values and self-reported altruism. The findings imply that companies dedicating attention to positive corporate ethical values can enhance employee attitudes and altruistic behaviors, especially when individuals experience a high degree of career satisfaction.     

Ethical Culture and Employee Outcomes: The Mediating Role of Person-Organization Fit

We build on limited research concerning the mediation processes associated with the relationship between ethical culture and employee outcomes. A multidimensional measure of ethical culture was examined for its relationship to overall Person-Organization (P–O) fit and employee response, using a sample of 436 employees from social economy and commercial banks in Spain. In line with previous research involving unidimensional measures, ethical culture was found to relate positively to employee job satisfaction, affective commitment, and intention to stay. New to the literature, ethical culture was also found to be associated positively with employee willingness to recommend the organization to others. These effects were observed even when perceptions of P–O fit were controlled. Importantly, ethical culture was also positively related to overall P–O fit, which in turn, partially mediated the relationship between ethical culture and employee outcomes. Our findings add to studies that focus on the importance of the degree of ethical congruence between the individual employee and the organization. They suggest that ethical culture, with its expected impact on virtuousness and emotional well-being, will positively influence outcomes independently of the degree to which there is a match between employee and organizational values.