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Organizational Behavior and Strategic Management.

MBA, Management/Executive development programs.

This case study can be used effectively for understanding the nuances of employee loyalty, especially if there is a cost of employee loyalty. While Anand Finance is happy that its workforce has largely been loyal, the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous times force it to chart new course of action. The newly appointed Business Head, Ashok Singh's challenges compound when he finds that there was not’t a single innovation or best practice adopted over the past three years. Given his mandate to make Anand Finance as the Walmart of financial services, can he aspire to rally the forces behind the new mission? This case study facilitates an interesting discussion on the significance of operational and strategic alignment at organizations in the backdrop of an interesting story of Anand Finance, one of the leading non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) in India. The non-alignment was noticed by Ashok Singh (Singh) who took over as the Business Head of Anand Finance. While the company boasted of long-standing employees, Singh was quick to notice that the company had been paying a cost for employee loyalty. What was the cost of employee loyalty? Singh could also sense that the company was in a state of active inertia. Expected to make Anand Finance Walmart for financial services by 2025, Singh had a big task at hand given the lack of strategic orientation of the employees. What would be the likely course of Singh's actions? As the case study deals with strategic dilemmas related to the organizational culture, it can be suitably used for organizational behavior and strategic management courses. This case study is meant highlight that even if an organization is operationally sound and successful, it cannot afford to be strategically disoriented, as its strengths may prove to be its weaknesses with changing business conditions.

At the end of this case discussion, the participants are expected to know the merits and demerits of employee loyalty and the implications of the same for organizational change; whether employees’ relatively longer stints at companies would contribute to active inertia (as defined by Donald N. Sull in Harvard Business Review article, “Why Good Companies Go Bad”); and the ways to align operational orientation with strategic mindset, especially in the case of employees who rose through the ranks and had been serving the company for relatively longer period.

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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relation between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and firm financial performance, and how audit quality moderates this relationship.

This study uses panel dataset of 200 French firms listed during 2007–2018 period. The direct and moderating effects were tested by using multiple regression technique.

The authors find that CSR has a positive impact on firm financial performance proxy with return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE) and Tobin's Q (TQ), suggesting that investment in social activities helps firms to achieve better financial results. The authors also find that the improvement effect of CSR on corporate financial performance is more pronounced for firms audited by Big 4 auditors.

One limit of this study is the selection of independent variables. We are limited to one variable, namely CSR engagement. Further studies may consider other independent variables, such as the age of the company, the type of industry, the composition of the board of directors, etc., in order to provide an in-depth analysis of corporate financial performance drivers.

The findings have practical implications that may be useful to managers in their management of the firm. They encourage all board members to seriously weigh investing in developing strategies that promote the social behavior components in order to improve overall corporate performance.

The research adds to the current literature on CSR by revealing the impact of external auditor quality on the CSR–financial performance relationship. In addition, it investigates not only the overall CSR ratings but also each of CSR dimensions, namely environmental, social and governance.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the moderator effects of switching costs, classified by type (relational, procedural, and financial) and direction (positive and negative), on the relationships between customer-perceived value, trust, and loyalty.

This study reports on quantitative data from a survey of two service contexts which vary in their degree of customer-employee contact and customization. In total, 360 usable questionnaires were collected, and the data were analyzed using multi-group structural equation modeling.

The results demonstrate that switching costs moderate, in different ways, the relationships between customer loyalty, trust and perceived value. Moreover, the strength of the moderator effects vary according to service type.

This study provides new insight into understanding the moderating role of switching costs thus, reduces inconsistencies about the direction and the strength of the moderator effect of switching costs in loyalty frameworks.

This study helps managers choose the most effective loyalty strategy for specific service industries and perceptions of switching costs, and to look beyond their service boundaries in order to cross-fertilize strategies for handling switching costs.

No empirical study to date has simultaneously examined the moderator effect of switching costs classified by type and direction on the relationships between customer-perceived value, trust, and customer loyalty across two different service contexts in a single framework.

This paper reports some empirical findings which appear to challenge the received wisdom prevailing in the operations management, service management, TQM and HRM literatures, namely, that employee satisfaction and loyalty are key drivers of productivity, efficiency and profit. An empirical study of one of the UK’s four large supermarket chains reveals an inverse correlation between employee satisfaction and the measures of productivity, efficiency and profitability, the most profitable stores being those in which employees are least satisfied. Employee loyalty, measured in terms of length of service, also appears to be inversely correlated with productivity and profitability. It also emerges that the pressure to maximise store efficiency may be leading to dysfunctional managerial behaviour at store level. These preliminary findings suggest two imperatives for managers and academics. For managers, it is advocated that they analyse the relationship between employee satisfaction, loyalty and financial performance in their own organisations rather than assuming that the rhetoric of the management literature applies in all operational contexts. For academics, four contingent variables are proposed which distinguish those service contexts in which the assumed relationship may pertain: services where customer contact with staff is high; services where there is little opportunity for technological substitution; services where staff contact is critical to the customer value proposition; and services with high labour costs.

The paper aims to investigate the impact of employee relationship proneness (RP) on the three different types of attitudinal loyalty (affective, calculative, and normative commitment (NC)) and relate these different types of attitudinal loyalty to employee loyalty behaviours in terms of word‐of‐mouth, intention to stay (ITS), benefit insensitivity (BI), and complaining (COM).

An empirical research among 199 employees of a bank was conducted to test the hypothesized model.

Structural equation modelling results reveal that employee RP is a strong antecedent of affective and NC. Affective commitment plays a pivotal role in creating all positive loyalty behaviours of employees, whereas NC only supports ITS and BI while it has a negative impact on COM. Calculative commitment has a negative impact on BI and COM.

As a result of the single industry, cross sectional design the external validity of the findings is somewhat limited.

The main practical implication of the study is that banks should incorporate RP when assessing potential employees. These relationship prone employees are most likely to exhibit affective and NC, which can be considered as the foundation of employees' loyalty behaviours.

The value of this paper is that we develop an extended model on the complex phenomenon of employee loyalty which is generally acknowledged as one of the important building blocks of customer loyalty and the organizational performance of a bank.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the relationship between employee loyalty and organizational performance. It starts with the idea that the employee loyalty creates value for the organization. This statement is widely endorsed in the literature although there is little consensus on the definition of loyalty. The paper proposes a refined synthesis of the literature on the link between employee loyalty and organizational performance.

The paper addresses the question of whether there is a robust positive link between employee loyalty and organizational performance. The paper starts by reviewing the various, sometimes divergent, approaches to employee loyalty in the literature and then compare the different indicators of loyalty in relation to their relevance to different indicators of performance.

The paper provides a critical overview of the different existing conceptions of employee loyalty. It points out ambiguity about both the theoretical contours of the concept, and practical means of making it a source of value for the organization. The paper shows that the link between employee loyalty and performance varies according to the type of indicators used.

The paper highlights a variety of indicators for employee loyalty to their firm and for organizational performance. But much research remains to be conducted, notably on the managerial levers that might consolidate or improve organizational performance.

This paper fulfills an identified need to survey a fragmented theoretical field of analysis.

Loyalty in the workplace has become a radically misunderstood concept. In this interview, Frederick Reichheld argues that loyalty drives financial success ‐ especially, in today’s volatile economy. As companies face the harsh realities of an economic downturn, holding onto their customers must be a priority for growth. Reichheld believes companies must focus on building a loyal customer base by forming strong relationships with front line employees. By keeping profitable customers and growing relationships with them, the “loyalty leader” companies identified by Reichheld out‐performed their competitors in the stock market by a factor of 2.2 on average during the 1990s. Bain research shows that a mere 5 percent increase in customer retention generates 30 percent to 40 percent increases in a customer’s lifetime profitability in industries like software and building management, and as much as 90 percent gains in financial services and advertising. Reichheld concludes that companies can only build a sustainable competitive edge by creating enduring, mutually beneficial relationships built on trust with employees, customers and suppliers. The ability to build and nurture loyalty over time has become an invaluable differentiator for successful organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors affecting the course of action that employees in acquired firms choose to follow. Loyalty, compliance, voice and neglect (LCVN) are four employee behaviors in acquired companies.

Two questionnaires were designed: one was administered to employees of the acquired company and the other to a member of the post‐acquisition managerial team. One hundred and thirty‐five administrative employees in 27 acquired companies in Greece participated in the research.

The results of the study support that employees decide their course of action based on the cost of their action, the effectiveness of the behaviour and the attractiveness of the company.

This study concentrated at the individual level to examine the factors affecting employee behaviours. Future research is needed to examine behavioural changes over time and the factors that make employees move from one behavioural category to the other.

The findings in the paper have implications for organization members facing the challenge of managing human issues in the sensitive phases of an acquisition. Evidence of specific behavioural responses and the factors affecting them is presented.

The present study provides a model for understanding the complex and multiple behavioral choices employees have after an acquisition.

Corporate meetings are a large sector of the global meetings, incentive, convention and exhibition (MICE) industry. However, regular attendance and productive participation by employees are regularly cited as critical problem areas. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how key inhibiting factors related to meeting attendance influence one dimension of employee organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB)–civic loyalty.

An online survey was administered to 229 attendees of corporate meetings, drawn from a large range of private companies and government agencies. Regression analysis was used to investigate which factors affected two variables reflecting employee OCB–civic loyalty: future attendance intentions and positive co-worker advocacy.

It was found that opportunity costs and travel convenience were the two most important factors. Opportunity costs reflected the personal costs faced by attendees attending corporate meetings offsite through family or work-related responsibilities. In addition, organizational support was a further significant factor. The strength of relationships varied depending upon gender and mode of transport to the destination.

While there is a large literature on motivators of meeting attendance in general, this is the first study to examine attendance factors for the corporate meeting sector. This study addresses calls for studies that seek to understand which key factors are related to positive attendance outcomes, and especially extends the scant level of research on meeting inhibitors. This study is also the first to utilize organizational citizenship theory to understand these relationships within the MICE sector. Implications are drawn for event organizers.

For many, quality circles have been a struggle, total quality management has been something to “get around to one day” and continuous improvement has just been another expression meaning total quality management, which, of course is something that we will “get around to one day”. Worse, the acronyms used ‐ QC, TQM, CI ‐ have joined such exotic practices as JIT (Just‐in‐Time inventory), CAD‐CAM (computer‐aided development and manufacturing) and more recently BPR (business process re‐engineering) in an alphabet soup of consultant‐led packages, available to the discerning manager ‐ at a price.