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This article overviews some key contributions to service research from the organizational behavior/human resource management (OB/HRM) discipline with its strong focus on the role of employees. This focus complements the Marketing discipline’s heavy emphasis on customers, largely true of service research, overall.

Ten OB/HRM frameworks/perspectives are applied to analyzing the roles of people (with a focus on employees and modest consideration of customers as “partial” employees who co-create value) in a service organization context. Also, commentary is offered on how the frameworks relate to six key themes in contemporary service research and/or practice. The article concludes with five reflections on the role and status of employees in service research—past, present and future.

Employee roles in evolving service contexts; participation role readiness of both employees and customers; role stress in participating customers; an employee “empowered state of mind”; an emphasis on internal service quality; “strong” HRM systems link individual HRM practices to firm performance; service-profit chain with links to well-being of employees and customers; a sociotechnical system theory lens on organizational frontlines (OF); service climate as an exemplar of interdisciplinary research; emotional labor in both employees and customers; the Human Experience (HX); specification of employee experience (EX).

Service remains very much about people who still guide organizational design, develop service strategy, place new service technologies and even still serve customers. Also, a people and organization-based competitive advantage is tough to copy, thus possessing sustainability, unlike with imitable technology.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of what (service) experience is and examine it using three distinct perspectives: customer experience (CX), employee experience (EX) and human experience (HX).

The present conceptualization blends the marketing and organizational behavior/human resources management (OB/HRM) disciplines to clarify and reflect over the meaning of (service) experience. The marketing discipline illuminates the concept of CX, whereas the OB/HRM discipline illuminates the concept of EX. The concept of HX, which transcends CX and EX, is examined in light of its recent development in service research. For each of the three concepts, key themes are identified, and future research directions are proposed.

Because the goal that individuals seek to achieve depends on the role they are enacting, each of the three perspectives on experience (CX, EX and HX) should have a different focal point. CX requires to focus on the process of solving customer goals. EX necessitates to think in terms of organizational context and job content that support employees. Finally, the focus of HX should be on well-being via enhanced gratification, and reduced violation, of basic human needs.

This paper offers an interdisciplinary perspective on (service) experience and simultaneously addresses CX, EX and HX in order to reconcile the different perspectives on experience in service research.

Highly committed, motivated and engaged employees assure organizational success and competitiveness. The study aims to examine the association between human resource development (HRD) practices and employee engagement with organizational commitment as a mediating variable.

Data were collected from 760 employees of 13 star-rated hotels comprising 5 (five-star) and 8 (four-star). The data supported the hypothesized relationships. Structural equation modeling was used to evaluate the proposed model and hypotheses. Construct validity and reliability were established through confirmatory factor analysis.

The results indicate that HRD practices and affective commitment are significantly associated. HRD practices and continuance commitment were shown to be non-significantly associated. HRD practices and normative commitment were shown to be non-significantly associated. Employee engagement and organizational commitment are significantly associated. The results further show that organizational commitment mediates the association between HRD practices and employee engagement.

The generalizability of the findings will be constrained due to the research's hotel industry focus and cross sectional data.

The study's findings will serve as valuable pointers for stakeholders and policymakers of the hotel industry in the adoption, design and implementation of proactive HRD interventions to keep highly engaged and committed employees for organizational competitiveness and sustainability.

By evidencing empirically that organizational commitment mediates the nexus between HRD practices and employee engagement, the study extends the literature.

The purpose of this study is to investigate characteristics of apparel-related critical incidents that motivate both Generation Z and Y consumers to share electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) via specific online channels.

The current research used an exploratory mixed-methods approach.

Qualitative findings of critical incidents revealed that the main situations that led to the spread of eWOM involved new purchases (49%), product quality (21%), pricing and promotions (19%), complaints (9%) and brand content (48%). Participants were motivated to spread information about the critical incidents by a desire to connect with friends and family (83%), help others (37%), influence others (48%) and express brand loyalty (32%). Quantitative results indicated significant relationships between critical incidents, motivations and eWOM channel choice.

This study has theoretical implications for apparel researchers attempting to gain insight into critical incidents that motivate consumers to engage in eWOM on specific channels in a positive or negative manner.

These findings are important for marketers as it appears that brand content does an efficient job at driving engagement on SM; marketers need to increase efforts to engage with consumers via feedback on websites, as this is an opportunity to counteract negative experiences and retain consumers’ loyalty.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the current research is the first to extend theories of communication and motivation to connect critical incidents with situational intrinsic and extrinsic motivations for spreading eWOM via online channels for Millennial and Generation Z consumers.

The impact of frontline robots (FLRs) on customer orientation perceptions remains unclear. This is remarkable because customers may associate FLRs with standardization and cost-cutting, such that they may not fit firms that aim to be customer oriented.

In four experiments, data are collected from customers interacting with frontline employees (FLEs) and FLRs in different settings.

FLEs are perceived as more customer-oriented than FLRs due to higher competence and warmth evaluations. A relational interaction style attenuates the difference in perceived competence between FLRs and FLEs. These agents are also perceived as more similar in competence and warmth when FLRs participate in the customer journey's information and negotiation stages. Switching from FLE to FLR in the journey harms FLR evaluations.

The authors recommend firms to place FLRs only in the negotiation stage or in both the information and negotiation stages of the customer journey. Still then customers should not transition from employees to robots (vice versa does no harm). Firms should ensure that FLRs utilize a relational style when interacting with customers for optimal effects.

The authors bridge the FLR and sales/marketing literature by drawing on social cognition theory. The authors also identify the product categories for which customers are willing to negotiate with an FLR. Broadly speaking, this study’s findings underline that customers perceive robots as having agency (i.e. the mental capacity for acting with intentionality) and, just as humans, can be customer-oriented.

This paper aims to examine the consequences of Covid-19 for the migrants and the tourism industry following the emergence of the new business models and operational practices in the following three areas: i) Covid-19 and post-Covid-19 labour shortages, ii) the development of migrant gig jobs and iii) future trends.

Covid-19 posed challenges for labour retention and has given rise to new outsourced and precarious forms of employment. The growth of various tourism-related apps and establishments, such as “ghost kitchens” or pop-up restaurants, has transformed the landscape of tourism work and opportunities. This short paper provides an overview of the labour consequences of Covid-19, focusing on migrant tourism workers.

Despite growing attention towards promoting sustainable, just and decent employment, global trends and changing industrial relations in the sector have led to heightened levels of precariousness and uncertainty in migrants’ work.

This paper contributes to the literature on tourism employment by examining the forms of new business models and operational practices that affect migrant labour.

The emergence of dark kitchens in the restaurant industry is a contemporary phenomenon, arising most recently in the context of the so-called gig economy. This new business model flourished during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on a global scale. Despite dark kitchens' popularity, considerable negative publicity exists in the news related to poor working conditions. To highlight this new phenomenon, this paper explores the existing literature on worker exploitation in dark kitchens in the context of the gig economy.

A systematic literature review of hospitality and tourism databases generated 1,430 articles, of which 18 met the authors' inclusion criteria for the final analysis, and 1,030 anecdotal sources, of which 47 were included. Thematic analysis was used to identify the key themes and summarise the findings to be used for further studies.

The popularity of dark kitchens as a business model is premised on the fact that dark kitchens' dramatically reduces the operational cost and increases productivity. On the other hand, the working conditions and contractual agreements of the gig workers in dark kitchens raise several questions from operational, legal and ethical perspective. These poor working conditions create the conditions for worker exploitation and further damage the sector's image.

This study advocates that companies and managers are responsible for implementing and monitoring fair working conditions in dark kitchens. The existence of poor working conditions increases employee turnover and, overall, affects the industry's reputation.

This explorative study provides insights into the working conditions and contractual agreements in dark kitchens. Currently, there is no other study (empirical or conceptual) to shed light on the working practices. The authors hope this study will trigger further discussion and empirical research in this field.

This paper aims to focus on the issue of high employee turnover in the Indian tech industry. An integrative review is conducted to analyse the past and current state of literature, as well as prepare a research agenda for future studies.

A pool of 72 articles published between 2010 and 2022 is reviewed with a special focus on Indian tech employees. This study elucidates the extent and impact of employee retention strategies through content analysis.

Two broad perspectives have been established in the literature: the reasons for quitting and the explanations for staying. By means of a comprehensive review, this paper combines these two aspects of literature and suggests factors under organization’s control to retain competent tech employees.

The study is designed to integrate the two theoretical viewpoints of employee turnover literature by consolidating the reasons behind quitting behaviour and staying intention. Codes combining the two aspects are presented as a valuable resource to retain tech talent.

The objective of this paper is to define a structural equation model (SEM) that examines how fashion consumers' expectations of consumer brand engagement (CBE) influence purchase intention, both directly and through consumer happiness as a mediator. For this purpose, the authors will develop the components of CBE and consumer happiness variables, whose relevance in the literature has increased considerably.

For this purpose, a cross-sectional descriptive study was carried out by means of a survey developed on the basis of the scales found in the literature, with a sample of 1,296 consumers representative of the Spanish population. The method used to test the hypotheses was partial least squares SEM.

The results of this research indicate that both CBE and consumer happiness positively influence the purchase intention of fashion brands. In turn, the importance of the dimensions of the antecedent variables can be established.

The current research does not allow a longitudinal analysis of the consumption of fashion retailers. The findings of this scientific study provide a wealth of theoretical and practical information for managers to develop management models based on the sensory enjoyment of their consumers.

One of the novelties of this study is that it considers the consumer happiness variable and its dimensions in a consumer behavior model together with CBE.

The sharing economy has evolved as a result of the diffusion of information and communication technology and facilitates collaborative consumption and production otherwise known as value co-creation. The present research aims to explore the consumer responses to value co-creation in sharing economy such as satisfaction, brand preference and enduring buyer–platform relationships, amid consumer's CSR concerns.

Drawing on the sharing economy and value co-creation literature and rooted in the stimulus-organism-response framework, an online panel data provider was employed to recruit 393 actual sharing economy consumers from the United States. Empirical analyses are performed using structural equation modeling through Amos, version.27.

Findings confirm that value co-creation intentions contribute to consumers' satisfaction, brand preference and sustainable social relationships in the sharing economy. As expected, heightened concerns of corporate social responsibility (CSR) led to decreased consumer satisfaction with the sharing economy platform.

The study contributes to the digital sharing economy literature by emphasizing the role of CSR perceptions for building long-term relationships (buyer–platform relationships) where value co-creation is crucial.