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.     

Social Capital Initiatives: Employees and Communication Managers Leading the Way?

Organizations’ development of social capital and their decision to give back to society are becoming increasingly important to the business of managing organizations as much more than profit-driven entities. This article focuses on the rationale for an Australian–Canadian study on employees’ involvement in social capital initiatives and the communication management of these initiatives. As employees are key stakeholders, they play a vital part in achieving organizational goals. This study, a work in progress, highlights an in-depth, qualitative analysis of two organizations—one in Canada and one in Australia—committed to funding community projects as part of their corporate social responsibility development and commitment. The importance of a qualitative study that focuses on subjective components of social capital is that it develops understanding of employees’ attitudes, feelings, and viewpoints. It also begins to investigate why employees might/might not be committed, to organizations’ social capital initiatives. Using an interpretative analysis lens, an understanding of the moral, relational, and communication dynamics is explored. Questions surrounding concepts such as the moral fiber of social capital are highlighted and critiqued in the context of community engagement and what organizations’ social capital investments mean as part of their responsibility to society.     

Balancing acts: Managing employees and reputation in social media

Abstract

Although previous studies have shown that social-media platforms offer companies new ways to gain business value, they have also identified fundamental brand-related challenges in social media. The purpose of this paper is to complement the extant literature by addressing the ways in which companies manage their reputation in social media, focusing on the role of employees. We first illustrate how social-media environments amplify the need for distinct corporate reputation-management practices and, second, how challenges and solutions vary across companies in different sectors and businesses. We contribute to prior research by conceptualising corporate reputation management in social media as balancing acts, which take place in relation to different, contradictory, and sometimes paradoxical priorities related to branding and managing employees.     

Empowering Chinese Service Employees: A Reexamination and Extension

ABSTRACT

This article extends the knowledge in the area of empowerment of Chinese service employees by addressing the possible conceptual and methodological problems identified in Hui, Au, and Fock's (2004) study. The findings show that the lack of positive effect of discretionary empowerment on the job satisfaction and intention to comply with customer request of the Chinese subjects in Hui et al.'s (2004) Hui, M. K., Au, K. and Fock, H. 2004. Empowerment effects across cultures. Journal of International Business Studies., 35: 46–60. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] study likely resulted from their use of hotel/hospitality management students as subjects. Without the confounding effect from the shared internalized values of the subjects, discretionary empowerment can have a positive effect on the job satisfaction and job behavior (e.g., intention to comply with customer request) of Chinese service employees. Furthermore, the findings show that explicit management support can further enhance the positive effect of discretionary empowerment on the job satisfaction and job behavior of Chinese service employees. The current article also discusses the theoretical contributions, managerial implications, limitations of the study, and future research directions.     

Adoption and Implementation of Internal Marketing Systems by Ghanaian Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises

This paper explores the concept of internal marketing (IM) as an internal supportive system that could provide the infrastructure for a strategic business take-off. It investigates how IM, as a concept, is understood and made practical in the context of Ghanaian small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This qualitative research method was used due to the nature of the enquiry. The government of Ghana is constantly searching for more effective ways of assisting SME performance, through various strategic growth and development schemes. Despite the fact that much has been said in the literature, the IM concept remains elusive. Most SMEs are not aware of IM and demonstrate little understanding of the concept. And SMEs have problems with the implementation of IM. The manufacturing sector demonstrates more IM orientation than does the service sector. This paper unravels sociocultural factors that frustrate the practice of IM among Ghanaian SMEs and calls for a greater awareness of the concept by stakeholders. Suggestions include more general business support for SMEs to improve performance and subsequently grow. The paper finishes by drawing attention to management implications within the practice of IM.     

Dynamic efficiency assessment of the Chinese hotel industry

The paper introduces for the first time a totally dynamic two-stage approach to analyzing the hotel industry's technical efficiency at the sub-national level. The first stage uses data envelopment window analysis (DEWA) to assess regional hotel sectors' technical efficiency over time. Unlike previous studies, the second stage uses a dynamic Tobit model to investigate the impact of macro contextual factors on the hotel sector efficiency. The study chooses the Chinese hotel industry during the period 2001-2006 as its application setting. The findings of the investigation indicate that the Chinese hotel industry is approaching an efficient operation in general, recovering from a major dip in 2003 resulting from the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak. In addition, the study introduces a novel two-dimensional efficiency-based matrix to assess the competitive advantage of different regions of the Chinese hotel sector. The paper presents strategic market implications for hoteliers, government decision-makers, and destination management organizations. The proposed methods are applicable for situations in which an exogenous event of a destabilizing impact (e.g., SARS) does occur.     

Enforcing and re-enforcing trust: Employers,managers and upper-white-collar employees in Finnish manufacturing companies, 1920–1980

In this article employee–employer relations with respect to upper-white-collar employees in Finnish large-scale companies are investigated. The period is from the 1920s to the 1980s. The article shows that the employee–employer relations were during the whole period based on mutual trust. In spite of significant transformations in the labour market practices and in interest formulation and unionisation among these employees, it was in the interests of both parties to maintain these trustful relations. However, the tools with which to maintain such relations changed and adapted. The process was not easy, and was marked by elements of conflict and tension. The elements of trust had to be actively strengthened and rebuilt, especially in the 1960s and 1970s. But as the post-war economic and societal model was marked by a striving for consensus and the smoothing out of conflicts in order to promote industrialisation and growth, the institutional model also supported the maintaining of mutual trust and loyalty between the employees and the employers.     

Investigating the immediate and long-term effects of job stressors on frontline service employees

Two studies investigate the immediate and long-term effects of job stressors on frontline service employees (FSEs). Using cognitive appraisal theory, we develop and test a conceptual model of two job stressors (crowding and emotional labor) that affect coping strategies and job outcomes. Study 1, which is a field experiment, investigates the immediate effects of crowding in a single firm. Study 2 extends the findings of Study 1 and investigates the long-term effects of emotional labor and crowding on FSEs across multiple firms. The results show that crowding has a negative impact on coping strategies and job-related outcomes. In addition, emotional labor can lead to long-term negative outcomes, such as emotional exhaustion and decreased job retention, for some FSEs. Consequently, service organizations should consider strategies or tactics that prevent high levels of customer crowding and help FSEs deal with emotional labor.     

企业新生代员工幸福管理的思考

新生代员工泛指80-90后员工群体。智联招聘的职场调查数据显示,近三成80后出生的职场人已经担任主管以上管理岗位,新生代员工渐成企业发展的生力军,稳定了这个群体,就是稳定了企业的发展。本文在系统分析新生代员工职场特质的基础上,深刻剖析新生代员工目前幸福管理中出现的问题,并结合实际,就如何加强新生代员工幸福管理提出了一些建议。     

浅析新华书店职工企业精神的培养和提高

文章分析了培养和提高新华书店职工企业精神的现实意义及职工应具备的精神状态,并提出了培养和提高新华书店职工企业精神的有效途径。