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This paper aims to comment on resilience research within the context of frontline employees in sales and services marketing.

This commentary is a reflection based on my research, extant academic and managerial literature and personal perspectives.

Research findings show resilience is associated with increased employee effort and reduced turnover intentions in customer-facing roles. In addition, resilience can change over time and is not just a trait the employee is born with (or not). Hence, managers can cultivate resilience in employees.

Resilience cannot be purchased. Instead, managers can inspire resilience in frontline employees by developing their feelings of self-efficacy on the job, a sense of belongingness to the organization and peers and a sense of purpose and relatedness to customers.

Resilience is not merely perseverance or grit; it is overcoming adversity and bouncing back to become better in the process. Thus, resilience is an important construct to study, particularly in customer-facing roles.

This commentary offers a unique approach to understanding resilience, its outcomes and its antecedents in customer-facing roles.

COVID-19 disrupted the usual way of working for many people across the globe, making full-time work from home and hybrid models two popular work arrangements. Despite the proliferation and high acceptance of the hybrid model, very little research has focused on the same. This study aims to compare the impact of transitions caused by remote work on work disengagement under two settings: remote work and hybrid model.

The data is collected from three corporate hubs in India: Hyderabad, Gurgaon and Bangalore. This study’s respondents represent two working models: full-time work from home and a hybrid model. Responses were collected using Google forms-based questionnaire, which resulted in the following usable responses: 356 (hybrid) and 398 (work from home).

The findings reveal that the structural model for the hybrid sector explained 11% of the variance in work disengagement, while the same for work from home model accounted for 20% of the variance in work disengagement. The authors also tested for the moderation of individual resilience between work-home and home-to-work conflicts and home-to-work transitions and work-to-home conflict under full-time work-from and hybrid models. Based on 356 respondents from hybrid category and 398 from work from home, the study found that employees experience less work-to-home and home-to-work conflicts in the hybrid model and employees experience more work-to-home and home-to-work conflicts in the full-time work from home model.

The study is also the first to examine the moderating role of individual resilience as a tool to bounce back and handle conflicts. As the full-time work from home model leads to more work-to-home and home-to-work conflicts, individuals have more scope to exhibit resilience, and thus, the moderating relationship is stronger in the full-time work from home model. The paper offers theoretical and managerial implications.

The purpose of this work is to optimize the monitoring of vibrations on dynamometric test rigs for railway brakes. This is a quite demanding application considering the continuous increase of performances of high-speed trains that involve higher testing specifications for brake pads and disks.

In this work, authors propose a mixed approach in which relatively simple finite element models are used to support the optimization of a diagnostic system that is used to monitor vibration levels and rotor-dynamical behavior of the machine. The model is calibrated with experimental data recorded on the same rig that must be identified and monitored. The whole process is optimized to not interfere with normal operations of the rig, using common inertial sensor and tools and are available as standard instrumentation for this kind of applications. So at the end all the calibration activities can be performed normally without interrupting the activities of the rig introducing additional costs due to system unavailability.

Proposed approach was able to identify in a very simple and fast way the vibrational behavior of the investigated rig, also giving precious information concerning the anisotropic behavior of supports and their damping. All these data are quite difficult to be found in technical literature because they are quite sensitive to assembly tolerances and to many other factors. Dynamometric test rigs are an important application widely diffused for both road and rail vehicles. Also proposed procedure can be easily extended and generalized to a wide value of machine with horizontal rotors.

Most of the studies in literature are referred to electrical motors or turbomachines operating with relatively slow transients and constant inertial properties. For investigated machines both these conditions are not verified, making the proposed application quite unusual and original with respect to current application. At the same time, there is a wide variety of special machines that are usually marginally covered by standard testing methodologies to which the proposed approach can be successfully extended.

The purpose of this article is to discuss how the mastery of resilience in operations and supply chains plays a significant role in the transition to a more sustainable future. Furthermore, it is supposed to propose avenues for future research on operational and supply chain resilience, interacting with the sustainability literature in our field.

A conceptual review of resilience and sustainability themes within operations and supply chain management research is conducted. Reflections on the topic are informed by relevant literature published over the last decade.

The major conceptual contributions are threefold: (1) This article elaborates on the understanding of operational resilience and supply chain resilience concepts and reviews their respective primary research streams. (2) It proposes resilience as the missing element in the pursuit of excellence in organizations that want to contribute to a more sustainable future. (3) The article offers a research framework that provides a future research agenda at the intersection of resilience and sustainability in operations and supply chain management research.

The article highlights gaps in current research and illustrates further areas of research that need to be addressed to maximize the contribution of operations and supply chain management research in supporting practitioners to achieve a more sustainable future.

This paper aims to provide an examination of the use of the concept of resilience and its use in service organisation, ecosystem-related literature and the wider social sciences.

This paper provides a critical review and commentary on the resilience literature in the social and business sciences and its relevance to service organisations.

Two main approaches towards resilience are identified (engineering and socio-ecological resilience) with each having different assumptions about the nature of resilience with corresponding implications for policymaking, indicator selection and application in a service context. These approaches operate at different scales and possess different properties with respect to the likelihood of enacting transformative service marketing.

Different conceptualisations of resilience have profound implications for resilience-related policymaking as well as understanding change and adaptation in service ecosystems and organisations.

The transformative possibilities of resilience are connected to the active enhancement and construction of social capacity by service organisations and the persistent resilience of the resilience concept.

This paper highlights the importance of clearly defining the resilience concept and its implications for research and transformative service organisations.

This study aims to: (1) investigate the relationship/connection between organizational change (OC) and organizational resilience (OR) and (2) provide a basis for understanding how organizational change can underpin or build organizational resilience.

An extensive literature review has been made to discuss the goals of OC as well as the enablers of OR. A number of conceptual models have been introduced to demonstrate the correlation between OC and OR and the potential role of OC in supporting OR. Empirical findings were also introduced in order to support the theoretical basis of this research.

This study argues that OC can be practiced for the purpose of building or supporting OR. A variety of views have been introduced to demonstrate the correlation between OC and OR and the role of OC in supporting OR.

The purpose and scope of OC should not only be confined to enabling organizations to respond to the dynamics of their business environments but also to enable organizations to withstand a wider range of internal disruptions, major incidents and external factors. This perspective provides a broader insight that is different from the traditional conceptualization of the goals and purpose of OC.

To the author’s knowledge, this is one of very few studies that discuss the correlation between OC and OR and the role of OC in building OR. This explains the need for more practical change initiatives that aim to elevate levels of OR.

The service environment is becoming increasingly turbulent, leading to calls for a systemic understanding of it as a set of dynamic service ecosystems. This paper advances this understanding by developing a typology of service ecosystem dynamics that explains the varying interplay between change and stability within the service environment through distinct behavioral patterns exhibited by service ecosystems over time.

This study builds upon a systematic literature review of service ecosystems literature and uses system dynamics as a method theory to abductively analyze extant literature and develop a typology of service ecosystem dynamics.

The paper identifies three types of service ecosystem dynamics—behavioral patterns of service ecosystems—and explains how they unfold through self-adjustment processes and changes within different systemic leverage points. The typology of service ecosystem dynamics consists of (1) reproduction (i.e. stable behavioral pattern), (2) reconfiguration (i.e. unstable behavioral pattern) and (3) transition (i.e. disrupting, shifting behavioral pattern).

The typology enables practitioners to gain a deeper understanding of their service environment by discerning the behavioral patterns exhibited by the constituent service ecosystems. This, in turn, supports them in devising more effective strategies for navigating through it.

The paper provides a precise definition of service ecosystem dynamics and shows how the identified three types of dynamics can be used as a lens to empirically examine change and stability in the service environment. It also offers a set of research directions for tackling service research challenges.

This study aims to investigate the impact of seaport efficiency on economic growth in Ghana over the period 2006–2020.

Comprehensive methodology, diverse data analysis techniques, including Augmented Dickey–Fuller tests, autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) modeling and Granger Causality, were applied to explore the intricate relationship between Seaport Efficiency and Economic Growth.

The findings reveal a statistically significant and positive association between seaport efficiency and GDP, underscoring the crucial role of efficient seaport operations in actively stimulating economic growth. Beyond seaport efficiency, influential factors such as capital, human capital, knowledge spillover and productive capacities were identified, contributing to the dynamics of economic growth.

The Granger Causality Test solidifies seaport efficiency as a robust predictor of GDP fluctuations, emphasizing its significance in economic forecasting. Notably, this study contributes to the existing body of knowledge with its nuanced exploration of the intricate relationship between seaport efficiency and economic growth in the specific context of Ghana.

This study’s implications extend beyond academia, offering invaluable guidance for policymakers and planners. It serves as a comprehensive roadmap for informed decision-making, emphasizing the pivotal role of efficient seaports in charting a trajectory for enduring and resilient economic progress in the nation.

While the broader theme has been explored in existing literature, the uniqueness of this study lies in its specific application to the Ghanaian context. The choice of Ghana, a nation where maritime transport handles over 90% of trade, underscores the significance of understanding seaport efficiency in this regional and economic setting. The study’s originality is reinforced by incorporating diverse economic variables, aligning with recommendations for a comprehensive analysis of factors influencing port performance.

Green HRM practices in the hospitality sector are now receiving growing interest. However, the extent to which these practices contribute towards employee non-green workplace outcomes remains largely unknown. This study explores the relationships among green HRM practices, happiness at work, employee resilience, and feedback-seeking behaviour.

The study employs two-wave data from a sample of 306 five-star hotel employees in India. Using partial least square-structural equation modelling, the relationships are tested.

The study’s results demonstrate that green HRM practices positively impact happiness at work, employee resilience, and feedback-seeking behaviour. Additionally, the relationship between green HRM practices and feedback-seeking behaviour and employee resilience is mediated by happiness at work.

Drawing on the Job Demands-Resources Theory, Social Exchange Theory, and Broaden and Build theory, this paper proposes that green HRM practices can contribute to happiness at work, employee resilience, and feedback-seeking behaviour.

To establish a positive connection between green HRM practices and employee outcomes, organizations must recognize the vital role played by happiness at work as a mediator. This means that organizations must implement green HRM practices and ensure their positive impact on employee happiness at work.

The originality of this research lies in its holistic approach to green HRM outcomes, suggesting that the benefits of these practices extend beyond environmental impacts to influence the psychological and behavioural dimensions of employees.

The work-from-home scheme (WFH) is increasingly being adopted in service firms. However, the blurred border between employees’ work and life can create work–life conflict (WLC) that negatively affects their well-being. Therefore, identifying factors that help employees overcome WLC and nurture their well-being is imperative. From a transformative service research (TSR) and personal psychology perspective, this study aims to explore the roles of service employee state of mindfulness and resilience in reducing WLC, alleviating its negative effects and ultimately nurturing their happiness.

A structural model was proposed. Data were collected from 339 WFH employees in various knowledge-based services such as professional services, information, education and training, financial consulting and marketing. Direct, indirect, mediating and moderating effects were estimated using the CB-SEM method.

Mindfulness is the overarching capability that helps reduce WLC and raise resilience. It nurtures WFH employee happiness not only directly but also via the mediation of resilience and WLC. Resilience, on the other hand, mediates the effect of mindfulness on happiness and moderates the negative impact of WLC on happiness.

Firms are recommended to organize mindfulness and resilience training programs, and encourage organizational- and job-related facilitators. WFH employees should actively participate in such programs and add them to their to-do-list practices.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first empirical studies of employee mindfulness and resilience in the WFH context. It contributes to the TSR research stream and enriches the concepts of mindfulness and resilience by elucidating different mechanisms in which each of these personal qualities operates to help employees nurture happiness in this specific working condition.