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Article
Publication date: 16 February 2022

Chi-I Lin and Yuh-Yuh Li

This study aims to investigate the potential of an empathetic mindset aimed at empowering undergraduate students to work toward sustainable development (SD), addressing both…

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to investigate the potential of an empathetic mindset aimed at empowering undergraduate students to work toward sustainable development (SD), addressing both theoretical and practical dimensions.

Design/methodology/approach

A mixed quantitative and qualitative research method was used in this study. Cross-sectional quantitative survey data on students’ mindsets and actions toward SD was collected to examine the theoretical relationship between belief and behavior. Qualitative inquiry using focus-group interviews explored students’ on-site learning experiences.

Findings

This study provides evidence for the impact of an empathetic mindset on education for sustainable development (ESD). Results showed that students with a more empathetic mindset showed better attitudes and behaviors toward SD actions. Findings suggest that developing an empathetic mindset improves students’ attitudes toward taking substantial action to protect the environment.

Originality/value

This study introduces a novel perspective extending the application of empathetic mindset in ESD.

Details

International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1467-6370

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 29 August 2023

Vilja M.R. Levonius and Eveliina Saari

This paper aims to introduce the Empatia video reflection method, designed to enhance care workers’ awareness of empathic care. The method makes the quality of care visible, which…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to introduce the Empatia video reflection method, designed to enhance care workers’ awareness of empathic care. The method makes the quality of care visible, which is needed when digitalization efforts in elder care focus on the efficiency and adequacy of care work.

Design/methodology/approach

The Empatia method leans on previous studies of the interaction between care professionals and clients and elaborates further previous video reflection methods. In empathic care work, the care worker sees the client on their life continuum, rather than focusing on only medical treatments.

Findings

The empirical example demonstrates how a care worker gained awareness of their empathic interaction habits. Within the work community, the reflection process sparked discussions on values: the purpose of care work and how to conduct empathic care. Focusing on empathic relationships in care fosters both the client’s and the care worker’s well-being.

Practical implications

The strength of the Empatia method is that it makes empathy visible in interaction and something that is individually and collectively learnable. The Empatia includes an analytical tool for researchers to reveal empathy in client interaction. It can be developed further into a reflection tool for service work to learn how to be empathic in service encounters.

Originality/value

Compared to other video-stimulated recall methods, the Empatia involves contextual understanding of care work. Empowering positive interactions instead of detecting errors and solving problems is a novel concept and is scantily used in studies of organizational learning. The Empatia provides a detailed method description that allows for the replication of the method by anyone.

Details

Journal of Workplace Learning, vol. 35 no. 8
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1366-5626

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 3 December 2021

Arash Ahmadi and Sohrab Fakhimi

The main purpose of this work is to evaluate the different psychological impacts of two initial verbal recovery strategies (gratitude vs empathetic apology) on the consumers'…

Abstract

Purpose

The main purpose of this work is to evaluate the different psychological impacts of two initial verbal recovery strategies (gratitude vs empathetic apology) on the consumers' loyalty after a service failure. The proposed theoretical model also appraises the mediating role of two emotional responses (consumer forgiveness, consumer anger) and consumer self-esteem and the moderating role of self-oriented perfectionism.

Design/methodology/approach

Two studies (i.e. an experimental design and a field study) are considered for this investigation to assess the effectiveness of gratitude expression versus empathetic apology on post-recovery loyalty and test the effects of mediators and the moderator applied between the verbal recovery strategies and post-recovery loyalty.

Findings

The results of Study 1 revealed the supremacy of gratitude to empathetic apology in maintaining consumers' loyalty after service failure recovery. The better impact of gratitude expressed in increasing post-recovery loyalty is mediated through the elevation of consumers' forgiveness, the reduction of consumers' anger and consumers' self-esteem. The findings of Study 2 indicated that gratitude increases more post-recovery loyalty through individuals with a high level of self-oriented perfectionism.

Research limitations/implications

Future research could examine other service failure situations, different types of service recovery, mediators or moderators, which contribute to the service marketing literature.

Practical implications

After a service failure, using gratitude expressions to consumers often makes them feel better and more valuable.

Originality/value

This work increases service providers' knowledge in using proper expressions after a service failure to help elevate consumers' positive reactions resulting in maintaining their loyalty.

Details

Journal of Contemporary Marketing Science, vol. 4 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2516-7480

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 6 February 2024

Jagdish N. Sheth, Varsha Jain and Anupama Ambika

This study aims to develop an empathetic and user-centric customer support service design model. Though service design has been a critical research focus for several decades, few…

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to develop an empathetic and user-centric customer support service design model. Though service design has been a critical research focus for several decades, few studies focus on customer support services. As customer support gains importance as a source of competitive advantage in the present era, this paper aims to contribute to industry and academia by exploring the service design model.

Design/methodology/approach

The study adopted a theories-in-use approach to elucidate mental models based on the industry’s best practices. In-depth interviews with 62 professionals led to critical insights into customer service design development, supported by service-dominant logic and theory of mind principles.

Findings

The ensuing insights led to a model that connects the antecedents and outcomes of empathetic and user-centric customer service design. The precursors include people, processes and technology, while the results are user experience, service trust and service advocacy. The model also emphasises the significance of the user’s journey and the user service review in the overall service design.

Research limitations/implications

The model developed through this study addresses the critical gap concerning the lack of service design research in customer support services. The key insights from this study contribute to the ongoing research endeavours towards transitioning customer support services from an operational unit to a strategic value-creating function. Future scholars may investigate the applicability of the empathetic user service design across cultures and industries. The new model must be customised using real-time data and analytics across user journey stages.

Practical implications

The empathetic and user-centric design can elevate the customer service function as a significant contributor to the overall customer experience, loyalty and positive word of mouth. Practitioners can adopt the new model to provide superior customer service experiences. This original research was developed through crucial insights from interviews with senior industry professionals.

Originality/value

This research is the original work developed through the key insights from the interview with senior industry professionals.

Details

European Journal of Marketing, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0309-0566

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 March 2024

Karen M. Peesker, Lynette J. Ryals and Peter D. Kerr

The digital transformation is dramatically changing the business-to-business (B2B) sales environment, challenging long-standing views regarding the critical competencies required…

Abstract

Purpose

The digital transformation is dramatically changing the business-to-business (B2B) sales environment, challenging long-standing views regarding the critical competencies required of salespeople. This paper aims to explore the personal traits associated with sales performance in a digital selling environment.

Design/methodology/approach

Using template analysis, the researchers captured and coded over 21 h of in-depth, semi-structured interviews with senior sales leaders from various industry sectors, exploring their perceptions of the personal traits now required of B2B salespeople in the digital landscape.

Findings

The research identifies three high-level trait types critical to sales success within a digital selling environment: “analytical curiosity” – the natural motivation and ability to gather and synthesize sales-related knowledge, “empathetic citizenship” – the ability to establish initial rapport while building long-term trust and “disciplined drive” – the exertion of selling effort in a highly focused and methodical manner across all stages of the sales process.

Research limitations/implications

The present data came from interviews with sales leaders in Canada. A more global sample may lead to additional insights. Moreover, the sample was drawn from long-cycle B2B sales environments; conclusions may differ for short-cycle or business-to-consumer markets.

Practical implications

This paper presents a framework for hiring and developing salespeople in the digital sales environment, identifying personal trait types that sales leaders should look for when hiring: analytical curiosity, empathetic citizenship and disciplined drive. The paper identifies how these trait types influence sales success, suggesting that sales leaders could coach and educate their teams to make the best use of them.

Originality/value

This paper presents a conceptual framework for hiring in the digital sales environment and introduces the trait of analytical curiosity not previously discussed in the literature.

Details

Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0885-8624

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 November 2023

Juan Yang, Zhenkun Li and Xu Du

Although numerous signal modalities are available for emotion recognition, audio and visual modalities are the most common and predominant forms for human beings to express their…

Abstract

Purpose

Although numerous signal modalities are available for emotion recognition, audio and visual modalities are the most common and predominant forms for human beings to express their emotional states in daily communication. Therefore, how to achieve automatic and accurate audiovisual emotion recognition is significantly important for developing engaging and empathetic human–computer interaction environment. However, two major challenges exist in the field of audiovisual emotion recognition: (1) how to effectively capture representations of each single modality and eliminate redundant features and (2) how to efficiently integrate information from these two modalities to generate discriminative representations.

Design/methodology/approach

A novel key-frame extraction-based attention fusion network (KE-AFN) is proposed for audiovisual emotion recognition. KE-AFN attempts to integrate key-frame extraction with multimodal interaction and fusion to enhance audiovisual representations and reduce redundant computation, filling the research gaps of existing approaches. Specifically, the local maximum–based content analysis is designed to extract key-frames from videos for the purpose of eliminating data redundancy. Two modules, including “Multi-head Attention-based Intra-modality Interaction Module” and “Multi-head Attention-based Cross-modality Interaction Module”, are proposed to mine and capture intra- and cross-modality interactions for further reducing data redundancy and producing more powerful multimodal representations.

Findings

Extensive experiments on two benchmark datasets (i.e. RAVDESS and CMU-MOSEI) demonstrate the effectiveness and rationality of KE-AFN. Specifically, (1) KE-AFN is superior to state-of-the-art baselines for audiovisual emotion recognition. (2) Exploring the supplementary and complementary information of different modalities can provide more emotional clues for better emotion recognition. (3) The proposed key-frame extraction strategy can enhance the performance by more than 2.79 per cent on accuracy. (4) Both exploring intra- and cross-modality interactions and employing attention-based audiovisual fusion can lead to better prediction performance.

Originality/value

The proposed KE-AFN can support the development of engaging and empathetic human–computer interaction environment.

Details

Data Technologies and Applications, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2514-9288

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 12 April 2013

Annie Gentès and Marie Cambone

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the challenge of designing an interface for a virtual class, where being represented together contributes to the learning process. It…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the challenge of designing an interface for a virtual class, where being represented together contributes to the learning process. It explores the possibility of virtual empathy.

Design/methodology/approach

The challenges are: How can this feeling of empathy be recreated through a delicate staging of location and interactions? How can the feeling of togetherness be organized in a 3D environment without creating a feeling of distraction? What are the tools of empathy in a mediated situation? The authors propose to use the concept of “contradictory semiotic analysis” to describe the design process that taps into visual cultures to build a representation and tools that support users' empathetic interactions. The analysis of designers' work from a semiotic point of view shows that they do not necessarily paint after life but play with different media and representations to build “remediated” situations of use.

Findings

The paper introduces the concept of “control room” elaborated after Manovich's control panel, to describe the visual interface that supports a diversity of points of view, hence supporting mediated empathetic relationships.

Originality/value

The paper answers the design questions: how can the system of representation support the feeling of empathy amongst participants through a delicate staging of space, people and of interactions within this space? How can a participant get, first, a feeling of togetherness and, second, a feeling of empathy with other participants? The design methodology is explained based on a “contradictory semiotic analysis” made of the comparison with similar platforms and with other modalities of empathy in different media. Second, the design proposition is described. Third, the design challenges that this type of production entails are discussed and the difficulties faced during the design process are analyzed.

Details

Interactive Technology and Smart Education, vol. 10 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1741-5659

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 20 February 2020

Mehmet Okan and Ayse Banu Elmadag

This paper aims to examine the widespread effects of service actors’ verbal aggression on witness customers’ intentions toward the service organizations through their…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to examine the widespread effects of service actors’ verbal aggression on witness customers’ intentions toward the service organizations through their self-conscious emotions. The moderating roles of the witness customers’ empathic tendencies and the source of aggression are also examined.

Design/methodology/approach

In two scenario-based experiments and by adopting a multifoci approach, severity of mistreatment (aggression vs incivility vs no-mistreatment) and source of mistreatment (employee-to-employee and customer-to-customer) were manipulated to test distinctive effects of witnessing aggression on self-conscious emotions and intentions.

Findings

This study shows that witnessing aggression during service experiences negatively influences customers’ intentions towards the service organization through self-conscious emotions. Moreover, empathic tendencies of customers make these effects more pronounced. It is also shown that witnessing employee-to-employee aggression has a stronger effect on self-conscious emotions and intentions than customer-to-customer aggression.

Research limitations/implications

This paper uncovers the distinctive effects of aggressive behaviors of service actors on self-conscious emotions from the third-party perspective. It is also shown that empathic tendencies can be detrimental to service organizations in certain conditions.

Practical implications

The results warn service managers against verbal aggression because of its negative effects on witness customers. It is suggested that they should try to clarify the incident and restore justice in front of the witnesses.

Originality/value

This paper is one of the first attempts to investigate the distinctive effects of witnessing aggression during service experiences and the roles of self-conscious emotions and emphatic tendencies.

Details

Journal of Services Marketing, vol. 34 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0887-6045

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 26 October 2018

Duleep Delpechitre, Brian Nicholas Rutherford and Lucette B. Comer

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of salesperson empathy, both cognitive and affective, on business-to-business buyer-salesperson relational outcomes…

2166

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of salesperson empathy, both cognitive and affective, on business-to-business buyer-salesperson relational outcomes. Specifically, the direct impact of empathy is examined in relation to both the salesperson’s communication ability and customer-oriented behavior. The impact of empathy is then examined as a direct and indirect influencer of satisfaction with the salesperson and commitment to the salesperson.

Design/methodology/approach

To attain the objective of this research, an empirical study was conducted using 248 business-to-business purchasing agents.

Findings

The study found that cognitive empathy and affective empathy had a positive relationship with customer-oriented behaviors, information communication ability and commitment to the salesperson. However, only cognitive empathy was found to have a positive relationship with customer’s satisfaction with the salesperson.

Originality/value

Although empathy has found to have a positive effect on sales, sales research has yet to provide conclusive evidence on whether cognitive empathy and affective empathy would have a similar effect on a salesperson-customer relationship. This study provides evidence that not all facets of empathy influence relational outcomes the same way and differ in magnitude. This provides strong support for the importance of studying the impact of empathy from a faceted viewpoint rather than a uni-dimensional perspective when examining the influence on buyer-seller relational outcomes.

Details

Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, vol. 34 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0885-8624

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 24 May 2018

JJ Pionke

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the problematic nature of librarian attitudes toward people with disabilities and how a language change to the use of the term…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the problematic nature of librarian attitudes toward people with disabilities and how a language change to the use of the term “functionally diverse” can highlight a greater sense of inclusion and equality, as well as develop a new type of literacy that focuses on understanding and awareness of disabilities, accessibility and difference.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper examines current trends of language use about people with disabilities and then posits a counterpoint by discussing functional diversity as a viable alternative in not just language but also literacy.

Findings

Examples of current problematic language by librarians are drawn from social media and the literature. The examples are deconstructed in regard to why they are problematically exclusive, and then the alternative language of functional diversity is examined as a way to be more inclusive. Developing a new literacy in terms of interaction with functionally diverse people is also discussed.

Originality/value

Library literature on disability largely focuses on a case study approach and on the view of how to assist people with single disabilities. This is one of the very few papers that focuses on discussing the underlying attitudes and assumptions of librarians that make outreach to people with disabilities who use libraries, difficult. This is also one of the few papers that discusses the need for a new type of literacy within librarianship.

Details

Reference Services Review, vol. 46 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0090-7324

Keywords

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