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Article
Publication date: 25 March 2024

Shu Zhang, Lixun Su, Weiling Zhuang and Barry J. Babin

Given resource constraints such as time and staffing, hotels cannot respond to all negative online reviews (NORs). Therefore, this study investigates (1) what types of NORs hotels…

Abstract

Purpose

Given resource constraints such as time and staffing, hotels cannot respond to all negative online reviews (NORs). Therefore, this study investigates (1) what types of NORs hotels should prioritize responding; and (2) what response strategies are more effective in handling different types of NORs to minimize the negative ramifications.

Design/methodology/approach

Four experiments in the context of hospitability were used to test the hypotheses.

Findings

Our findings show that NORs with implicit conclusions (e.g. “I do not believe that is a good choice, you know what I mean.”) are more dissuasive than NORs with explicit ones (e.g. “Do not buy it.”) because the former NORs are perceived as more objective than the latter NORs. More importantly, our results show that firms do not need to respond to explicit NORs. When responding to implicit NORs, firms should prioritize those related to service failures caused by external (e.g. weather, technological misfunction) rather than internal (e.g. poor management, employee skills) factors.

Research limitations/implications

Our studies focus on the language styles of Chinese NORs, and future research should investigate how language styles influence dissuasion in other languages.

Practical implications

Our results show that NORs with implicit conclusions negatively impact consumer attitude and thus hurt performance more significantly than those with explicit conclusions. Therefore, firms should allocate limited staffing and resources to NORs with implicit conclusions. When responding to implicit NORs, firms should select NORs that can be attributed to external factors.

Originality/value

Our findings shed light on the importance of the language styles of NORs and provide marketers with insights into how to handle NORs. Our results reveal that consumers perceive higher objectivity of NORs when these reviews are implicit than when they are explicit. Furthermore, this study contributes to the online review literature by suggesting that firms should tailor their response strategies for NORs based on the reviewers’ language styles.

Details

Journal of Service Theory and Practice, vol. 34 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2055-6225

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 15 August 2016

Graham L. Bradley, Beverley A. Sparks and Karin Weber

Technological advancement and growth in social media have meant that customers are increasingly using the internet to write a review or express opinions about products and…

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Abstract

Purpose

Technological advancement and growth in social media have meant that customers are increasingly using the internet to write a review or express opinions about products and services. Many of these online reviews are critical of service organizations and workers. The purpose of this paper is to document the experiences that service industry personnel have of negatively valenced, customer-authored, online reviews, the personal impact of these reviews, and the manner in which participants respond emotionally and behaviorally to these reviews.

Design/methodology/approach

This research drew on the stress, coping, and service literature, with particular emphasis on stress appraisal theory. The study involved the completion of an anonymous online questionnaire by 421 restaurant owners, managers, and employees.

Findings

Many respondents reported feelings of anger and use of maladaptive coping strategies in response to negative online reviews (NORs). Smaller numbers reported feelings of embarrassment and guilt, and thoughts of leaving the industry. Factors pertaining to respondents’ online review exposure, emotional responses, and coping strategies predicted the effects of negative reviews on thoughts of exiting current employment.

Research limitations/implications

The findings have implications for protecting worker well-being and job tenure in an industry deeply affected by electronic word-of-mouth. Replication is recommended using a longitudinal design and more objective data obtained from validated instruments and independent sources.

Originality/value

This survey provides the first known evidence of the personal impact of NORs on business owners, managers, and employees.

Details

Journal of Service Management, vol. 27 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1757-5818

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 17 March 2021

André Oksas

This paper aims to show how a sociological description – a swarm analysis of the Nazi dictatorship – initially made with the means borrowed from George Spencer-Brown’s Calculus of…

121

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to show how a sociological description – a swarm analysis of the Nazi dictatorship – initially made with the means borrowed from George Spencer-Brown’s Calculus of Indications, can be transformed into a digital circuit and with which methods and tools of digital mathematics this digital circuit can be analyzed and described in its behavior. Thus, the paper also aims to contribute to a better understanding of Chapter 11 of “Laws of Form.”

Design/methodology/approach

The analysis uses methods of automata theory for finite, deterministic automata. Basic set operations of digital mathematics and special set operations of the Boolean Differential Calculus are used to calculate digital circuits. The software used is based on ternary logic, in which the binary Boolean logic of the elements {0, 1} is extended by the third element “Don’t care” to {0, 1, −}.

Findings

The paper confirms the method of transforming a form into a digital circuit derived from the comparative functional and structural analysis of the Modulator from Chapter 11 of “Laws of Form” and defines general rules for this transformation. It is shown how the indeterminacy of re-entrant forms can be resolved in the medium of time using the methods of automata theory. On this basis, a refined definition of the degree of a form is presented.

Originality/value

The paper shows the potential of interdisciplinary approaches between sociology and information technology and provides methods and tools of digital mathematics such as ternary logic, Boolean Differential Calculus and automata theory for application in sociology.

Article
Publication date: 13 November 2017

Karin Weber, Graham L. Bradley and Beverley Sparks

Owners, managers and employees may be criticized personally and professionally by consumers in online reviews, and may suffer emotional and burnout consequences. The purpose of…

1941

Abstract

Purpose

Owners, managers and employees may be criticized personally and professionally by consumers in online reviews, and may suffer emotional and burnout consequences. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of customer-generated negative online reviews on hospitality employees.

Design/methodology/approach

This research analyzed the effects of traditional face-to-face customer-related social stressors, as well as a newly added negative online review (NOR) stressor, on anger and burnout in a sample of 418 US hospitality workers.

Findings

Structural equation modeling revealed that, after taking into account the contribution of customer-related social stressors, receipt of NORs predicts anger and anger mediates the relationships between NOR-receipt and two indices of burnout.

Practical implications

This research extends our understanding of social stressors that apply to workers in the hospitality industry. It offers strategies for managing the threats and optimizing the opportunities, provided by negative online reviews.

Originality/value

This study is one of the first studies that provide evidence of the personal impact of NORs on hospitality industry employees, thereby extending our understanding of social stressors that apply to workers in this industry.

Details

International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, vol. 29 no. 11
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0959-6119

Keywords

Abstract

Details

George Spencer Brown's “Design with the NOR”: With Related Essays
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83982-611-5

Book part
Publication date: 12 January 2021

Roger Friedland

In this paper, I compare Theodore Schatzki’s practice theory, the existential phenomenology of Martin Heidegger upon whom Schatzki drew in its formation, and my own theory of…

Abstract

In this paper, I compare Theodore Schatzki’s practice theory, the existential phenomenology of Martin Heidegger upon whom Schatzki drew in its formation, and my own theory of institutional logics which I have sought to develop as a religious sociology of institution. I examine how Schatzki and I both differently locate our thinking at the level of practice. In this essay I also explore the possibility of appropriating Heidegger’s religious ontology of worldhood, which Schatzki rejects, in that project. My institutional logical position is an atheological religious one, poly-onto-teleological. Institutional logics are grounded in ultimate goods which are praiseworthy “objects” of striving and practice, signifieds to which elements of an institutional logic have a non-arbitrary relation, sources of and references for practical norms about how one should have, make, do or be that good, and a basis of knowing the world of practice as ordered around such goods. Institutional logics are constellations co-constituted by substances, not fields animated by values, interests or powers.

Because we are speaking against “values,” people are horrified at a philosophy that ostensibly dares to despise humanity’s best qualities. For what is more “logical” than that a thinking that denies values must necessarily pronounce everything valueless? Martin Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism” (2008a, p. 249).

Details

On Practice and Institution: Theorizing the Interface
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80043-413-4

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 March 1992

John Conway O'Brien

A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balanceeconomics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary toman′s finding the good life and society enduring…

1204

Abstract

A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balance economics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary to man′s finding the good life and society enduring as a civilized instrumentality. Looks for authority to great men of the past and to today′s moral philosopher: man is an ethical animal. The 13 essays are: 1. Evolutionary Economics: The End of It All? which challenges the view that Darwinism destroyed belief in a universe of purpose and design; 2. Schmoller′s Political Economy: Its Psychic, Moral and Legal Foundations, which centres on the belief that time‐honoured ethical values prevail in an economy formed by ties of common sentiment, ideas, customs and laws; 3. Adam Smith by Gustav von Schmoller – Schmoller rejects Smith′s natural law and sees him as simply spreading the message of Calvinism; 4. Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, Socialist – Karl Marx, Communist: A Comparison; 5. Marxism and the Instauration of Man, which raises the question for Marx: is the flowering of the new man in Communist society the ultimate end to the dialectical movement of history?; 6. Ethical Progress and Economic Growth in Western Civilization; 7. Ethical Principles in American Society: An Appraisal; 8. The Ugent Need for a Consensus on Moral Values, which focuses on the real dangers inherent in there being no consensus on moral values; 9. Human Resources and the Good Society – man is not to be treated as an economic resource; man′s moral and material wellbeing is the goal; 10. The Social Economist on the Modern Dilemma: Ethical Dwarfs and Nuclear Giants, which argues that it is imperative to distinguish good from evil and to act accordingly: existentialism, situation ethics and evolutionary ethics savour of nihilism; 11. Ethical Principles: The Economist′s Quandary, which is the difficulty of balancing the claims of disinterested science and of the urge to better the human condition; 12. The Role of Government in the Advancement of Cultural Values, which discusses censorship and the funding of art against the background of the US Helms Amendment; 13. Man at the Crossroads draws earlier themes together; the author makes the case for rejecting determinism and the “operant conditioning” of the Skinner school in favour of the moral progress of autonomous man through adherence to traditional ethical values.

Details

International Journal of Social Economics, vol. 19 no. 3/4/5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0306-8293

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 June 2005

Li‐teh Sun

Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American…

Abstract

Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American preemptive invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent prisoner abuse, such an existence seems to be farther and farther away from reality. The purpose of this work is to stop this dangerous trend by promoting justice, love, and peace through a change of the paradigm that is inconsistent with justice, love, and peace. The strong paradigm that created the strong nation like the U.S. and the strong man like George W. Bush have been the culprit, rather than the contributor, of the above three universal ideals. Thus, rather than justice, love, and peace, the strong paradigm resulted in in justice, hatred, and violence. In order to remove these three and related evils, what the world needs in the beginning of the third millenium is the weak paradigm. Through the acceptance of the latter paradigm, the golden mean or middle paradigm can be formulated, which is a synergy of the weak and the strong paradigm. In order to understand properly the meaning of these paradigms, however, some digression appears necessary.

Details

International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, vol. 25 no. 6/7
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-333X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 May 1998

Brian H. Kleiner

Presents a special issue, enlisting the help of the author’s students and colleagues, focusing on age, sex, colour and disability discrimination in America. Breaks the evidence…

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Abstract

Presents a special issue, enlisting the help of the author’s students and colleagues, focusing on age, sex, colour and disability discrimination in America. Breaks the evidence down into manageable chunks, covering: age discrimination in the workplace; discrimination against African‐Americans; sex discrimination in the workplace; same sex sexual harassment; how to investigate and prove disability discrimination; sexual harassment in the military; when the main US job‐discrimination law applies to small companies; how to investigate and prove racial discrimination; developments concerning race discrimination in the workplace; developments concerning the Equal Pay Act; developments concerning discrimination against workers with HIV or AIDS; developments concerning discrimination based on refusal of family care leave; developments concerning discrimination against gay or lesbian employees; developments concerning discrimination based on colour; how to investigate and prove discrimination concerning based on colour; developments concerning the Equal Pay Act; using statistics in employment discrimination cases; race discrimination in the workplace; developments concerning gender discrimination in the workplace; discrimination in Japanese organizations in America; discrimination in the entertainment industry; discrimination in the utility industry; understanding and effectively managing national origin discrimination; how to investigate and prove hiring discrimination based on colour; and, finally, how to investigate sexual harassment in the workplace.

Details

Equal Opportunities International, vol. 17 no. 3/4/5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0261-0159

Keywords

Abstract

Details

George Spencer Brown's “Design with the NOR”: With Related Essays
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83982-611-5

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