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A theme emerging from research into the determinants, content and consequences of market orientation is that developing a market‐oriented culture exerts a profound influence on the organizational culture of a company. Explores and describes the manner and forms of front‐line employees’ responses to market‐oriented culture change initiatives. The paper begins with a brief overview of existing literature discussing the definition and components of a market orientation. Thereafter, extant research into the consequences of developing a market‐oriented culture is reviewed critically. After detailing the research design and methodology adopted in this study, the summary findings of two in‐depth case studies are presented. The findings indicate that front‐line employees respond differentially to market‐oriented culture change programmes. Concludes with a series of implications for both marketing and culture theorists and practitioners.

By drawing on leader–member exchange theory, this study aims to understand the relationship between job autonomy, transformational leadership and psychological well-being mediated by job satisfaction among front-line employees in Chinese commercial banks.

A cross-sectional study which consists of 96 respondents from 5 Chinese commercial banks is conducted.

Through data analysis, the results reveal that transformational leadership and job autonomy are significantly positively related to job satisfaction and directly related to the psychological well-being of front-line employees in Chinese commercial banks. Another interesting finding is that there is a mean difference between male and female front-line employees in Chinese commercial banks on the preference of job autonomy and transformational leadership.

The current study offers further evidence for which strategies Chinese commercial banks should adopt to enhance and protect the rights of front-line employees’ psychological well-being. As front-line employees in commercial banks play a vital role in contributing to bank profits and operational efficiency. They are not only the employees for making profits but also have the right to experience the psychological well-being as a human. Employees with a high level of job satisfaction and psychological well-being benefit both their own health and organizational performance in the long run.

The purpose of this paper is to examine a multidimensional model of marketing culture and performance in tourism restaurants operating in Jordan. The paper introduces a model proposing certain associations between Webster’s (1990) marketing culture dimensions and attempts to underline how such associations affect restaurants’ performance.

A structured and self-administered survey was used, targeting managers and employees of tourism restaurants operating in Jordan. A sample of 334 tourism restaurants’ managers and employees were involved in the survey. A series of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to assess the research constructs dimensions, unidimensionality, validity and composite reliability. Structural path model analysis was also used to test the hypothesised interrelationships of the research model.

The empirical findings indicate that the marketing culture dimensions are seven rather than six, as proposed by Webster’s (1990) original model: service quality, interpersonal relationships, management–front-line interaction, selling task, organisation, internal communication and innovativeness. “Organisation” had positively and significantly affected “interpersonal relationships”. “Interpersonal relationships” had positively and significantly affected each of “management–front-line interaction”, “selling task” and “internal communications”. On the other hand, each of “management–front-line interaction”, “selling task” and “internal communications” had positively and significantly affected “innovativeness”. However, “innovativeness” itself had positively and significantly affected each of “service quality” and restaurant performance. Finally, “service quality” had positively and significantly affected restaurants’ performance.

Only seven dimensions of marketing culture were examined; meanwhile, there could also be other dimensions that affect restaurants’ performance. This paper has also examined the effect of a multidimensional model of marketing culture on restaurants’ financial performance only; the use of other types of non-financial measures could yield different results. The fact that paper’s sample consisted only of Jordanian restaurants further limits its generalisation potential.

The paper reinforces the importance of sound marketing culture to Jordanian tourism restaurants. It further underlines the importance of several marketing culture dimensions, particularly those related to employees’ selection, development and communication. Further, the paper emphasises the particular importance of front-office employees to the success of Jordanian restaurants. Tourism restaurants’ managers and executives can benefit from such findings for designing their marketing culture strategies to achieve long-term performance objectives.

This paper represents the first empirical attempt to examine the interrelationships between marketing culture dimensions introduced by Webster (1990). Accordingly, it should shed more light on the dynamics of marketing culture within service organisations, and how such dynamics affect organisations’ performance. Further, the paper is the first of its kind to study marketing culture dynamics in the context of Jordanian tourism restaurants industry. International tourism restaurants planning to expand their operations in Jordan’s tourism industry have now valuable empirical evidence concerning the marketing culture dimensions and their effect on performance.

In the search for innovation, front‐line employees are usually not encouraged to be part of the creative team, even though they may have fresh ideas and genuine insights. However, front‐line employees, those closest to the customers and the work of delivering products and services, have fresh ideas and genuine insights. This paper aims to investigate this issue.

The article describes how to create a complementary “Front‐Line Innovation” system for stimulating potentially valuable ideas and converting them to innovations that have an impact on competitiveness.

The implementation of a front‐line program involves a set of six components applied systemically and thoughtfully: people, process, tools, technology, governance, and metrics.

The Front‐line Innovation program surfaces new leaders and gives them the tools to create and act on ideas that are aimed at the most difficult problems facing the organization.

The article shows that a creative front‐line employee is a potent competitive weapon when supported by such a system.

The purpose of this paper is to build a mathematical model of men’s wear prototype, so that the computer can draw men’s wear prototype automatically.

First, the bust line, front and back center line, waist line, side seam, front chest width and back width line in the coordinate system are expressed by equations. Then, a parabola is used to establish a neckline curve, a linear equation is used to establish a shoulder oblique line, and a double ellipse is superposed to construct the armhole arc. Finally, all the garment prototype curves are built mathematical models.

The result shows that every curve of garment prototype can be expressed approximately by mathematical model.

This research lays the foundation for the automation and intelligence of garment pattern-making.

Service guarantees have been attributed the benefit of improving the overall service of a service provider. However, little research has been carried out within the area. This article focuses on one aspect of the service guarantee, the effects that service guarantees may have on service recovery. Critical incident data were collected using the critical incident interview technique with customers of RadissonSAS, a worldwide hotel chain using a service guarantee. One contribution of this article is that the interviews convey that the implicit guarantee may serve as a risk reducer, which contradicts and adds to previous research. Previous research states that only the explicit guarantee has these benefits. In this case, the guarantee does not reduce risk in the purchase or consumption stage, but after the consumption when the service has failed, as the customer finds out about the guarantee in the recovery situation. Another contribution of this article is that service guarantees are found to influence the outcome of service recovery as they affect how employees behave to recover the customer.

Previously, a questionnaire survey was conducted and it was found that some management practices were more influential to service quality than others. The purpose of this paper is to identify in more detail the reasons behind the survey findings.

Eighteen in‐depth interviews into a range of management practices which support service quality were conducted.

It was found that there were difficulties in implementing some of the management practices due to the type of staff employed and to the nature of tasks undertaken.

As the purpose of this research is to facilitate interpretation of the quantitative data, the investigation did not go in detail beyond mass and technological services. Hence, individual organisational characteristics, individual circumstances, or details of the service offered to customers are not considered beyond the category of either mass or technological services.

The paper identifies that the actual contribution from different management practices to service quality varied, and explains the reasons behind the diverse contributions in each type of service business.

Cycle time fluctuations in assembly lines are one of the important reasons of re‐balancing. As a result of re‐balancing of assembly lines, it will be necessary to change task sequences or equipment locations. The purpose of this paper is to find the task sequence which enables assembly line balancing (ALB) with minimum number of stations (NS) for different cycle times such that tasks and equipment or fixture locations remain unchanged.

In this paper a heuristic which consist of two stages is proposed to find a common task sequence for different cycle times in assembly lines.

It is shown that optimal NS for different cycle times can be achieved with a fixed task sequence.

The approach is limited to a single model case. Model variety together with cycle time variety can be investigated in further studies.

Assembly lines which require less time and cost for re‐balancing can be easily designed by the proposed approach.

ALB problem is handled with a new viewpoint. Also, it is observed that the proposed approach serves as a bridge between assembly line design and balancing. In this regard, it is thought to have an important place in the ALB literature.

This paper aims to present a flattening method for developing 2D basic patterns from 3D designed garments. The method incorporates the techniques of professional pattern development for the purpose of pattern‐making automation. The aims of the flattening method are to improve the dressing suitability and to produce pleasing figures by reversing design procedures.

A flattening method is presented in this paper for developing 3D undevelopable NURBS surfaces in 2D. The automatic operation embeds the expertise of pattern makers by reducing total area differences between the designed garments in 3D styles and the two‐dimensional patterns. Basic pattern‐making invokes the boundary constraints which apply mesh alignments techniques.

The global area difference between the original 3D designs and the 2D‐developed pattern is controlled within 5 percent in order to reach the final outcomes of basic patterns, whose shapes are similar to the drawing patterns currently utilized in the industry.

This study currently handles simple designs, such as basal designs, and can only flatten garments in symmetric styles. The direct flattening method is developed by this study. In addition, this study is supplemented by expert‐based knowledge, and it establishes basic boundary conditions for various garment patterns to increase the feasibility of flattening automation.

This study introduces the fundamental theories and methodologies used in the automatic making of basic patterns from 3D garment designs. It proposes a flattening method with pattern expertise embedded by real‐time approximations of the global area of the 3D undevelopable designs to the 2D patterns.