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This study conceptualizes commercial hospitality in the form of a conceptual framework, which it operationalizes by means of a questionnaire. A survey using this questionnaire was conducted in Switzerland and Thailand in order to investigate tourists’ levels of satisfaction with commercial hospitality in Switzerland and Thailand and to assess the conceptual framework. The questionnaire was filled in by 1001 tourists in both countries, 601 in Switzerland and 400 in Thailand. The results suggest that tourists in Switzerland are more satisfied with the hospitality in the context of tourism service than tourists in Thailand. The results also serve as an indication that the questionnaire used in this study is able to uncover cultural differences in hospitality in a tourism service context. It is assumed that domestic tourists are accustomed to local practices and are therefore more critical in assessing tourism employees’ hospitality skills and behavior.

The involvement of clients in service encounters and service development has become a central principle for contemporary health and social care organizations. However, in day-to-day work settings, the shift toward client involvement is still in progress. We examined how health and social care professionals, together with clients and managers, co-develop their conceptions of client involvement and search for practical ways in which to implement these in organizational service processes.

The empirical case of this study was a developmental intervention, the client involvement workshop, conducted in a Finnish municipal social and welfare center. The cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) framework was used to analyze the development of client involvement ideas and the modes of interaction during the intervention.

Analysis of the collective discussion revealed that the conceptions of client involvement developed through two interconnected object-orientations: Enabling client involvement in service encounters and promoting client involvement in the service system. The predominant mode of interaction in the collective discussion was that of “coordination.” The clients' perspective and contributions were central aspects in the turning points from coordination to cooperation; professionals crossed organizational boundaries, and together with clients, constructed a new client involvement-based object. This suggests that client participation plays an important role in the development of services.

The CHAT-based examination of the modes of interaction clarifies the potential of co-developing client-involvement-based services and highlights the importance of clients' participation in co-development.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication of the Fortune top-100 companies during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Specifically, the authors examine the messages of international companies' CSR communication to customers during the pandemic, focusing particularly on the companies' posts on Twitter. In addition to identifying what international companies communicate, the authors determine the motives of companies' COVID-19-related CSR communication as well as how companies strategically approach CSR communication.

Using Nvivo, the authors carried out content analysis of the COVID-19-related tweets of the Fortune top-100 companies using Twitter's ‘advanced search’ tool. The analysis included tweets posted between 1 February 2020 and September 2021, a period that represents the peak of the pandemic.

Study findings indicate that COVID-19-related CSR responses of international companies are driven by commitment to organizational values, attainment of recognition for timely response to COVID-19, altruistic motives to combat COVID-19 and congruence with social movements that create expectations from customers to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. Most companies adopt a response strategy to CSR communication, by informing customers of their COVID-19 responses in relation to several issues such as alterations in companies' processes and the impacts of the pandemic on health.

The study suggests that the CSR practices of companies should be strategically embedded in organizations' international marketing plans and not remain just on-off responses to crises should marketing-related benefits be obtained. Several recommendations are made to strengthen companies' adoption of a proactive, engagement-oriented approach to CSR communication.

The CSR communication of international companies during external crises has not been sufficiently studied in relation to international marketing, as most studies considered internal corporate crises. Focusing on an external crisis (COVID-19 pandemic) with global impacts, this study advances existing knowledge on international companies' CSR communication to their customers. Additionally, this study offers new insights on the role of integrated, coordinated and consistent CSR messages and strategies, which are targeted to the needs and expectations of domestic and international customers in response to COVID-19 pandemic.

This study aims to provide a theoretical account of the nexus of religion and entrepreneurship in hospitality and tourism (H&T) by considering the influences of religion on entrepreneurial motivation, acquisition of resources for entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial behaviour.

The authors synthesise research and theory on religion and entrepreneurship and apply it within H&T, taking into account the specificities of the industry. Specifically, they pooled together relevant theory and empirical research findings which they summarised to identify points of convergence and divergence, before refining the data to allow for further theoretical insights to be gained.

The authors suggest that religion may positively or negatively influence entrepreneurship; in particular, they identify various modes of religion influences, which offer insights into how religion may encourage, sustain and amplify entrepreneurship or alternatively inhibit entrepreneurship.

Religion offers an important yet underused lens for understanding the activities and mechanisms influencing entrepreneurship in the rapidly evolving H&T industry. This study identifies different aspects of the two multidimensional and interdisciplinary concepts of religion and entrepreneurship and offers new insights into the relationship between the two within the context of H&T.

The contemporary world's pressure, oriented on flexibility and quick actions, has permanently changed work characteristics. Taking the employees' perspective into account, it seems important to identify whether and which of the employees' individual resources help them cope with those job demands. Therefore, the main research question is what is the relation between holistically conceptualised employees' individual resources and perceived work overload?

Based on the literature on individual resources and job demands, the authors test for relations between three components of individual resources (physical, emotional, spiritual potentials) and job characteristics (work variability and work diversity) and the perceived work overload. Data were collected using a survey method amongst 336 Polish knowledge workers.

The results partially supported the posed hypotheses. Both work variability and work diversity relate positively to work overload. Only the physical potential is related directly and negatively to perceived work overload. The spiritual potential relates indirectly to work overload through work diversity. The authors also found that age moderates the relation between physical and spiritual potential and overload.

Human resource management (HRM) practitioners and supervisors need to consider the level of employee's individual resources, especially when dealing with older employees and their physical resources.

This study contributes to research on the causes of work overload perception by identifying the role of individual resources and employees' age, thereby indicating that taking care of those resources could be another way of preventing occupational burnout in demanding work conditions.

The purpose of this paper is to broaden the perspective on how information and communication technology (ICT) relates to productivity by introducing a novel ICT variable: the share of ICT-schooled employees in firms, an intangible input often neglected or difficult to measure.

Based on a Cobb-Douglas production function specification, the association between the share of ICT-schooled employees and firm productivity is estimated by the use of unique comparable multi-linked firm-level data sets from statistical offices in six European countries for the period of 2001-2009.

There are indications that the share of ICT-schooled employees significantly and positively relates to productivity, and also that this relationship is generally more persistent than that of ICT intensity of firms, measured as the proportion of broadband internet-enabled employees. However, the strength of the association varies across countries and demonstrates that underlying factors, such as industry structure and institutional settings might be of importance too.

Data features and the way to access harmonised firm-level data across countries affect the choice of econometric approach and output variable.

The results emphasise the importance of specific ICT skills in firms independently of where in the organisation the employee works.

Studies on associations between employees with specific (higher) education based on formal credentials and productivity are rare. Even more uncommon is the cross-country setting with harmonised data including general ICT intensity of firms.

Only recently has physical space design become more widely recognized as playing a critical role in delivery of care, with an emerging body of literature on the application of human factors approaches to design and evaluation. This chapter describes the use of human factors approaches to develop and conduct an evaluation of a proposed Neonatal Intensive Care Unit redesign in a Midwestern children’s hospital. Methods included observations and knowledge elicitation from stakeholders to characterize their goals, challenges, and needs. This characterization is integral to informing the design of user-centered solutions, including physical space design. We also describe an approach to evaluating the proposed design that yielded actionable recommendations specific to hospital-driven design goals.

This chapter is concerned with the relationship between gender performativity and rhythm, taking the City of London (often known by its metonym the Square Mile) as the focus for the empirical research and extending a Lefebvrian understanding of urban space and time via the practice of rhythmanalysis. It is concerned with how the City of London is imagined, constructed and experienced in and through gender performativity which can be expressed rhythmically (Reid-Musson, 2018). The research is based on fieldwork including photographic and interview data, as well as an embodied, immersive methodology used to analyse rhythms, showing how this can help to both sense and make sense of organisational place, particularly in terms of how such places can compel feelings of belonging or non-belonging. The chapter looks beyond the spatial configuration of a single organisation to encompass the wider geographical location of multiple organisations, in this case the City.

The findings show that the relationship between the socio-cultural and material aspects of the City can be understood through the rhythms of place. Using a methodological approach based on Lefebvre's Rhythmanalysis (2004), the chapter foregrounds a subjective, embodied and experiential way of researching the places and spaces of organising, and shows how gendered inclusion and exclusion can be expressed spatially and rhythmically.

Having a baby is a sensitive matter and the child's body occupies a relevant space within the imaginary and the concerns of the intentional, biomedicalized contemporary reproducers. Besides, the myth of ‘the perfect child’ claims specific moral injunctions about making bodies since the body conveys social recognition codes both through flesh or genetic matrix and embodied practices. So, having a child with an unexpected ‘defective’ body becomes a stressful challenge for the reproductive experience of the intentional parent(s). In any case, both parent(s) and biomedical professionals enact a hierarchization among the ‘damaged’ materials of the child's body based on the perceived and/or the classified degree of physical or mental abnormality, on its behavioural embodiments and on the possibility to re-order, fix and control the (biosocial) disorder of an abnormal unable and/or undisciplined body.

Based on recent investigations on reproduction and disability in two regions of Italy, this essay comparatively investigates the experiences of two associations of parents with asthmatic and ADHD children.

Specifically, I tried to explore how parents of children with misleading bodies emotionally, practically and morally face their unexpected reproduction, and if and how they are being entrapped in or resist the pressure of neuro-biomedical governance, schooling disciplining techniques and social blame. I tried to articulate some suggesting concepts, such as ‘delegate biopolitics’ and ‘discursive surveillance’ (Memmi, 2008), and ‘self-constraint behaviours’ (Elias, 1998), in order to analyze ethnographic material.