The negative effects of travel friction among road warrior salespeople

Dubbed as road warriors in the popular press, there is a select group of business traveling dealmakers that take at least four trips by commercial airline and stay in hotels at least thirty-five nights in a given year. These high value employees have often been subjected to cost-focused travel policies potentially to the detriment of their well-being. From a theoretical viewpoint, the boundaries of the existing sales literature are expanded to show how this unique group of salespeople, road warriors, face stressors and how these relate to major sales focused outcomes (job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and turnover intentions). Further, this study adds an additional construct, travel friction, into the literature, yielding support for the importance of developing our understanding of this construct. Travel friction is found as a significant antecedent to both work-family conflict and emotional exhaustion. Moreover, through emotional exhaustion both travel friction and work-family conflict ultimately manifest in reduced job satisfaction, diminished organizational commitment, and increased attrition risk. The lack of business travel in the short-term due to the global pandemic offers corporate travel managers a unique opportunity to pause and recalibrate their travel policies to focus more on traveler well-being. Practical suggestions from travel experts that can potentially help to mitigate travel friction among road warriors are offered.     

A diary study of work consequences for hotel employees victimized by supervisor from a demand-resource perspective on employee emotions

How would perceiving oneself as a victim of abusive supervisor behavior affect one’s work attitudes? This study examines the mediating role of emotional change on the detrimental work outcomes caused by hotel employees’ perceived victim identity. It further investigates how emotional exhaustion moderates the relationship between perceived victim identity and two outcome variables, daily job satisfaction and work engagement. The research hypotheses were tested by a multi-level analysis (cf., hierarchical linear modeling) using a sample of 128 hotel employees in China who took surveys twice per day over 14 consecutive days. The findings show that emotional change significantly mediates the negative effect of hotel employees’ perceived victim identity on their work attitudes, and emotional exhaustion moderates this effect such that higher exhaustion exacerbates the negative relationship. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings for hospitality researchers and practitioners are discussed.     

Emotional contagion triggered by online consumer reviews: Evidence from a neuroscience study

People tend to align with the emotional state of the person that is talking to them (the observed). Similarly, while processing information consumers can also experience this emotional contagion. Emotional contagion can activate in those who process information (the observer) similar responses in the autonomic nervous system and the neural responses as in those who create such information (the observed), triggering a certain level of arousal. Neuroscience enables researchers to study emotional contagion by monitoring the activation of neural structures and physiological responses. This study draws on the theory of arousal to investigate how different combinations of online consumer review (OCR) valence can trigger different emotions and customer experiences in the observer (the one who reads the OCRs). This study conducts a consumer neuroscience experiment to monitor emotional arousal. The physiological analyses (through skin conductance response) confirm that the emotional arousal of the observer aligns with that of the observed. The neural analyses (through electroencephalography) show the valence of the arousal, which indicates that negative OCRs activate arousal and pleasure in the observer, while positive OCRs are associated with arousal deactivation and displeasure.     

Environmental Sustainability assessment 2.0: The value of social media data for determining the emotional responses of people to river pollution—A case study of Weibo (Chinese Twitter)

Urban river pollution has brought about serious challenges to residents in terms of bodily health and emotional well-being. Based on a social media platform, Chinese Twitter (Weibo), this paper proposes a research framework to investigate the emotional responses of people according to four dimensions: trends, seasons, space and dynamics (TSSD). This study presents several important findings. First, negative responses were much more common than positive ones across all seasons, 22.8% and 9.2%, respectively, which means that river pollution adversely affects residents' well-being in general. Second, negative responses are likely related to local garbage piles, landslides, heavy rains, traffic jams, and demolition, while positive reactions are likely related to beautiful weather or spending time with family members. Third, summer and winter are more likely to induce negative emotions than spring and autumn, with the negative index of summer or winter approaching 80%. This study confirmed that social media data are of great value in measuring the behaviors and emotional responses of humans to their surrounding environment.     

CATHOLICISM AND CAPITALISM1

Catholic social teaching can be used to help Christians understand the appropriate role of the state in economic life. There is an intrinsic opposition to socialism but also to many of the manifestations of ‘capitalism’. An application of Catholic social teaching to economic problems should lead to a redefinition of the role of the state in many areas of life. That redefinition certainly would favour more autonomy for individuals, families and communities acting independently of the state.     

Hotel service providers’ emotional labor: The antecedents and effects on burnout

The purpose of this study is to examine the antecedents and consequences of two emotional labor strategies (surface and deep acting) in the lodging industry. Variety, duration, and positive display rules are significant predictors of hotel service providers’ deep acting and negative display rules are related to service providers’ surface acting. Employees ohigh in neuroticism are more likely to fake their emotional expressions (surface acting) when dealing with guests and those high in extraversion are more likely to try hard to invoke the appropriate emotions (deep acting). Results further indicate that surface actors are more exhausted and cynical than deep actors and the mediating role of emotional labor between burnout and job and personality characteristics is found to be rather weak. Managerial implications for hotel operators are discussed.     

第二语言教学中的"知彼知己"

当前教师过多注重教学法的改革,忽略了对学生不同个体动机及情感等因素的理解,造成第二语言教学效果、效率不佳.语言学家研究发现,第二语言教学效果的好坏取决于本国的具体情况,因此教师对学习者个人因素及学习目的的了解,及对自身的反思是取得理想教学效果的先决条件.     

The effects of nonverbal communication of employees in the family restaurant upon customers’ emotional responses and customer satisfaction

The purpose of this study was to understand interrelationships among customers’ perception of nonverbal communication, customers’ emotional responses and customer satisfaction in the family restaurant. A total of 333 customers in Korea participated. The results showed that employees’ kinesics and proxemics among nonverbal communications have a significant effect on customers’ positive emotions, while employees’ kinesics and paralanguage affect customers’ negative emotions. Also, it was found that whether customers feel positive or negative determines their satisfaction. Limitations and future research directions are also discussed.     

Dealing with customer incivility: The effects of managerial support on employee psychological well-being and quality-of-life

This research examines the effects of customer incivility and manager procedural and emotional support on employee psychological well-being (PWB) and work quality-of-life (WQOL). Study 1 uses the qualitative critical incident technique to content analyze employee perceptions, finding that incivility affects employee PWB and WQOL. Based on the results of Study 1, a conceptual model examines a 2 (procedural support: high vs. low) × 2 (emotional support: high vs. low) between-subjects experimental design in both a hospitality and general service context. Results from Study 2 and 3 find that managerial procedural and emotional support significantly affect employee’s PWB and WQOL. There is also a significant interaction effect of emotional and procedural support on PWB and WQOL. The research builds upon the incivility, managerial support, psychological well-being, and quality-of-life research as well as provides important managerial implications for actions service firms can take to minimize the negative effects.     

The double-edged sword effect of service recovery awareness of frontline employees: From a job demands-resources perspective

Drawing on job demands-resources (JD-R) theory, this study examines the double-edged sword effect of service recovery awareness (SRA) on post-recovery satisfaction via frontline employees’ (FLEs) emotional responses (including emotional exhaustion and work engagement). The moderating effect of perceived psychological empowerment (PPE) was also assessed. Dyadic and matched responses from 267 five-star hotel FLEs and customers indicated that SRA is appraised as a challenging demand that is positively associated with post-recovery satisfaction through work engagement. However, SRA is also considered a hindrance demand that leads to emotional exhaustion, which is negatively related to post-recovery satisfaction. PPE amplified the impact of SRA on work engagement and buffered the impact of SRA on emotional exhaustion. The theoretical contribution, managerial implications, and suggestions for future research of this study are discussed in detail.