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This paper aims to undertake a simultaneous assessment of interdependence in the behaviours of front-line and back-office employees and their joint effect on customer-related organisational performance. It also tests for a moderating influence of the emotional intelligence of front-line salespeople and back-office employees.

The sample comprises 105 front-line sales employees and 77 back-office employees. The customer-related organisational performance data come from a UK business-to-business (B2B) electronics company. With these triadic data, this study uses partial least squares to estimate the measurement and structural models.

Salespeople’s customer orientation directly affects customer-related organisational performance; the relationship is moderated by salespeople’s emotional intelligence. The emotional intelligence of salespeople also directly affects the customer-directed citizenship behaviour of back-office employees. Furthermore, the emotional intelligence of back-office staff moderates the link between the emotional intelligence of salespeople and back-office staff citizenship behaviour. Back-office staff citizenship behaviour, in turn, affects customer-related organisational performance.

The emotions deployed by employees in interactions with customers clearly shape customers’ perceptions of service quality, as well as employee-level performance outcomes. However, prior literature lacks insights into the simultaneous effects of front-line and back-office employee behaviour, especially in B2B settings. This paper addresses these research gaps by investigating triadic relationships – among back-office employees, front-line employees and customer outcomes – in a B2B setting, where they are of particular managerial interest.

Adopting the transformative service research (TSR) perspective, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of positive customer feedback on the well-being of front-line employees, companies, and society. Using a multidisciplinary approach, the overlooked area of “positive feedback” is explored resulting in the development of the “Positive Feedback Model” (PFM). The study also compares managers’ and employees’ perceptions of positive customer feedback.

Two exploratory qualitative studies were conducted: Study 1 consisted of 22 semi-structured interviews with managers working in the service industry and Study 2 consisted of seven focus groups with front-line service employees. The extensive literature review and the results of these two studies contributed to the development of the PFM.

Positive customer feedback is an overlooked area of service research which offers potential for improving the well-being of the service entities. Front-line employees are the main recipients and topics of positive customer feedback. The developed PFM describes various forms, channels, and times of administration of positive customer feedback and its multitude of impacts on the well-being of service entities.

This study contributes to the literature on TSR and customer feedback management. The developed model presents possible positive feedback categories, their various outcomes and the outcomes for the concerned parties involved. By developing PFM and encouraging a multidisciplinary approach combined with advanced research methodologies, the researchers propose an agenda for further research insights within the TSR and customer feedback areas. The comparison of the managers’ and employees’ perceptions of positive customer feedback presents novel managerial implications and directions for future research.

This study is the first to explore customer feedback from a TSR perspective. It examines the overlooked area of positive customer feedback. The well-being of service entities is prioritized as services have been extensively criticized for ignoring human well-being.

There is considerable research examining the consequences and contingency factors of customer participation in the service encounter. In comparison, there is disproportionately less research examining the antecedents of customer participation. This paper aims to propose and test an appraisal-emotive framework of the effects of front-line employees’ in-role and extra-role behaviours on customer participation.

A survey on 583 customers of retail banks in China has been conducted to test the framework. Structural equation modelling and dominance analysis have been used for hypotheses testing.

Employees’ extra-role behaviour (i.e. organisational citizenship behaviour or OCB) has a stronger effect than their in-role behaviour (i.e. role-prescribed behaviour) in inducing customer participation. These effects are mediated by customer emotions. Specifically, the effect of employees’ in-role behaviour on customer participation was mediated by customers’ positive and negative emotions, whereas the effect of employees’ OCB was mediated by customers’ positive emotions but not by their negative emotions.

The findings reveal that strategic management of employee behaviours can influence customer participation. While organisations often provide training to enhance employees’ in-role behaviour to deliver service performance, they should also recognise and encourage employees’ OCB as a means of increasing customer participation. In particular, employees who display positive emotions tend to evoke positive emotions in customers, which increase customer participation in the service encounter.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the few studies in marketing to examine the differential effects of employees’ in-role and extra-role behaviours on customer participation. Importantly, the findings show that employees’ OCB is not only more effective than employees’ in-role behaviour in influencing customer participation but also these two behaviours have varying effects on customer emotions. These findings are new and contribute to the literatures on customer participation, value co-creation and human resource management.

Ind suggests front line employees can be segmented according to their level of brand-supporting performance. His employee typology has not been empirically tested. The paper aims to explore front line employee performance in retail banking, and profile employee types.

Attitudinal and demographic data from a sample of 404 front line service employees in a leading Irish bank informs a typology of service employees.

Champions, Outsiders and Disruptors exist within retail banking. The authors provide an employee profile for each employee type. They found Champions amongst males, and older employees. The highest proportion of female employees surveyed were Outsiders. Disruptors were more likely to complain, and rated their performance lower than any other employee type. Contrary to extant literature, Disruptors were more likely to hold a permanent contract than other employee types.

The authors augment the literature by providing insights about the profile of three employee types: Brand Champions, Outsiders and Disruptors. Moreover, the authors postulate the influence of leadership and commitment on each employee type. The cluster profiles raise important questions for hiring, training and rewarding front line banking employees. The authors also provide guidelines for managers to encourage Champions, and curtail Disruptors.

This study aims to explore how the adoption of internal market orientation (IMO) can enhance front-line employee brand enactment within an interpersonal service setting. Insights from equity theory and the person – environment paradigm are drawn upon to develop a theoretical model describing the impact of IMO on employee – organization fit, employee – supervisor fit and employee – job fit and the consequences of IMO on employee brand knowledge and brand identification. Second, the role of various types of fit and brand knowledge/identification for front-line employee brand enactment is confirmed.

This study draws from service employees in a high-contact customer setting.

Results uncover two mechanisms for successful internal branding: increasing employee fit with the service environment and enhancing employee brand knowledge.

The study contributes to practice in that the findings outline a realistic understanding of how managerial actions facilitate employees’ alignment with the firm’s brand promise within the realm of the broader organizational context in which service delivery takes place.

The present study contributes in the extant literature as it enables a more holistic view of the drivers of brand-congruent behaviors among front-line employees. Moreover, it has a significant contribution for future researchers as it lays the ground to further examine how employees’ perceptions of internal marketing strategies shape their fit levels with different aspects of their working environment which also affect the internal branding efforts of service organizations.

The purpose of this study is to explore how the adoption of an internal marketing (IM) programme in a retail banking setting enhances some positive employee behaviours that promote customer perceived service quality.

A multilevel research design is adopted which draws evidence from branch managers, employees and customers in order to investigate whether branch manager’s adoption of an IM philosophy affects front-line employee responsiveness to the firm’s IM strategies and their levels of motivation, empowerment and organizational identification (OI), respectively.

Results indicate that manager’s IM adoption can enhance employee adoption of IM and raises their levels of motivation, empowerment and OI. The moderating role of manager-employee dissimilarity is also discussed. Finally, findings confirm that employee motivation, empowerment and OI affect customer perceptions of service quality.

This study provides an important shift by formally including IM into multilevel marketing research and establishes another link in the IM-organizational performance relationship, uncovering some behavioural routes through which the positive effects of IM can add to the achievement of firm’s external marketing objectives.

Whereas past research has been valuable in explaining how “perceived usefulness” (PU) and “perceived ease of use” (PEU) constructs lead to technology acceptance and refusal behaviors in organizations, it has not explored the antecedents of these two factors. The purpose of this paper is to propose an interpretive approach to the study of front-line employees’ sense making of technological change as well as the understanding of behavioral and psychological origins of PU and PEU.

This study analyses a major transition in work mode induced by an IT innovation implemented within a leading French hospitality company. A qualitative method was employed to answer the research questions. The data were collected using 22 in-depth semi-structured interviews from front-line employees and their line managers in five 4-star hotels in Paris. The participants were asked how they made sense of the technological change and what they consider when they judge the usefulness and the ease of use during the implementation of change.

The analysis revealed that employees’ acceptance of technological change is paradoxical and shaped by a continuous process of sense making when using the IT innovation. The findings also suggest that PU can be explained by factors like job relevance, PEU and output quality. Anxiety, playfulness, perceived enjoyment, objective usability and facilitating conditions were identified as antecedents of PEU.

The paper reports the effect of perceptions of social influence, system characteristics, individual differences and facilitating conditions on PU and PEU constructs in IT adoption process. It is among the first to examine the antecedents of such beliefs in the hospitality industry through the use of a qualitative method. It also shows that that three variables – result demonstrability, computer self-efficacy and social influence process described by subjective norm and image – did not play a significant role in influencing the intensions of using the system through PU and PEU.

Understanding the antecedents of the two key predictors in technology acceptance models allows managers to implement efficient adjustments and interventions in order to positively influence employees’ IT innovation acceptance and use.

This qualitative study contributes to open the black boxes concerning the conceptualizations of PU and PEU. It advances the understanding of the employees’ acceptance of IT innovation.

This paper aims to explore managers' and employees' views about service brand sabotage at the front line in retail banking. The current literature emphasises the role of the employee in service delivery, and advocates the cultivation of brand ambassadors – employees who support the service brand through their performance. Yet there also exist saboteurs – employees who actively work against the brand, and there is a dearth of literature exploring the nature of this group. Moreover, much of the extant literature explores service performance from the perspective of the consumer and little is known about employees' views. This paper seeks to present managers' and employees' views about service performance, and service sabotage.

The study incorporates findings from in‐depth interviews with bank managers, and a survey of 438 branch employees reveals sabotage drivers in the “job for life” banking environment in Ireland.

The paper identifies employee fear, overwork and compliance demands as issues which influence job dissatisfaction, consumer resentment and employee insecurity.

The research is exploratory. The paper advocates further research to confirm the components of service sabotage, and test the influence of these components on consumers' perceptions of the service.

The paper offers suggestions to help managers to better manage sabotage in this sector, and recommend future research in other highly structured services sectors.

The paper provides new insights into the constraints on the banking employee that may lead to service sabotage. It also offers advice to managers that may help them better harness employees as brand ambassadors.

Using employee voice to advocate for customers' requirements, improves hospitality service. Organizations must understand what motivates or deters employee customer-oriented voice behaviour (COVB) to achieve its goals and enhance performance. This research investigates the predictors and outcomes of COVB of front-line employees (FLEs) in the hotel industry.

The study used the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines to steer the article search, screening, and inclusion. The research identified the extant studies conducted in both, high/low power distance countries that met the search criteria using the databases of SCOPUS, Web of Science, EBSCOHost and through snowballing of references.

The content analysis of 55 selected studies identified four themes that explain FLEs’ COVB in the hospitality industry. These four themes include customer-related, employee-related, organizational and leadership factors. Moreover, it was found that theoretical frameworks of the most of published studies are dominated by social exchange and conservation resource theories.

This study suggests hospitality firms to develop management strategies to foster FLEs COVB especially long-term personality trainings for FLEs is suggested for innovative and novel ideas.

This is the first study, as per our knowledge, on the hospitality industry that has been conducted to analyse and synthesize the literature related to FLEs’ COVB.

In a world of fast-changing markets, corporate brand is the heart and soul of a company. A company’s employees are crucial in nourishing a successful corporate image. Eventually, organizations require committed employees who orient their energy and drive the company toward a shared vision. However, employees’ deviant behavior can cripple the organization’s brand image. Given this fact, the purpose of this study is to offer strategies that can play a vital role in overcoming destructive deviance and in turn fostering the pavement for building a strong corporate brand image.

Given the purpose, this study used systematic review of literature to analyze the newspaper articles that reported the cases of deviant behaviors exhibited by employees of “Air India” and were published between 2015 and 2017. Further, this study used document analysis to identify and categorize the various forms of deviant behaviors exhibited by employees of Air India.

The current study asserted four chief interventions, namely, talent management strategies, resilience, workplace spirituality and mindfulness to overcome destructive deviance and promote constructive behavior among employees of Air India.

The present study offers vital implications for organizations to curb the escalating deviant behavior among employees in the hospitality industry. These interventions might lay a significant pavement for fostering positive emotions among employees, which in turn could play a crucial role in enhancing service quality and building a strong brand image.

Given the mounting cases of deviant behavior among employees, the present study draws attention to the necessity for a shift in the generic organizational strategies and instigates organizations to integrate the study’s strategies to curb deviant behavior and in turn build a strong corporate image.