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1 – 10 of over 11000Terje Slåtten, Göran Svensson and Sander Sværi
The purpose of this paper is to describe and explain the relationships between empowering leadership and a humorous work climate; and service employees' creativity and innovative…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to describe and explain the relationships between empowering leadership and a humorous work climate; and service employees' creativity and innovative behaviour in frontline service jobs.
Design/methodology/approach
A model of causal relationships is presented, along with formulated hypotheses. The data were collected with a survey answered by frontline service employees in hotels.
Findings
The findings indicate a strong relationship between frontline cognitive creativity production of novel ideas and the behavioural implementation of these ideas into their respective work role. Moreover, the empirical findings indicate that both empowering leadership and a humorous work climate are able to trigger frontline service employees' creativity. In addition service employees' creativity appears to be a mediating variable in the relationship between empowering leadership, a humorous work climate, and the service employees' innovative behaviour.
Research limitations/implications
This study limits its focus on two factors: the stimulation of service employees' creativity and innovative behaviour in frontline service jobs, both of which offer opportunities for further research.
Practical implications
This study has indicated that both leadership practice and work climate play important roles in explaining service employees' creativity and innovative behaviour. In particular, managers should be aware of their empowering practices, as well focusing on the degree of a humorous work climate. An important practical managerial implication from the findings is to take humour into account and consequently to develop and implement strategies followed by necessary actions to manage humour in an appropriate manner in service organizations.
Originality/value
The reported study contributes to enhancing the knowledge of the roles of empowering leadership and a humorous work climate for service employees' creativity and innovative behaviour in frontline service jobs.
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Fong-Jia Wang, Weisheng Chiu, Kuo-Feng Tseng and Heetae Cho
In this study the authors examined the impact of employees' collaborative behaviours with colleagues and customers (i.e. employee–employee collaboration and employee–customer…
Abstract
Purpose
In this study the authors examined the impact of employees' collaborative behaviours with colleagues and customers (i.e. employee–employee collaboration and employee–customer collaboration) on their creative self-efficacy and service innovation from the perspective of service-dominant logic. The authors also examined the differences between frontline and non-frontline fitness service employees in our research model. This study aims to discuss the aforementioned objectives.
Design/methodology/approach
Participants were fitness-centre employees in Taiwan recruited via convenience sampling. A total of 410 participants completed our online survey, and the authors analysed the data using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).
Findings
The authors found that collaboration with both colleagues and customers had a positive impact on employees' creative self-efficacy. Collaboration with colleagues directly affected service innovation, while collaboration with customers indirectly affected service innovation via creative self-efficacy. In addition, there was a significant difference between frontline and non-frontline employees in our research model. Specifically, the path from collaboration with customers to creative self-efficacy was stronger for frontline employees, and the path from creative self-efficacy to service innovation was stronger for non-frontline employees.
Originality/value
This study improves the understanding of the way in which different collaborative behaviours promote employees' creative self-efficacy and service innovation. Further, it is the first to identify the difference between frontline and non-frontline employees and it shows how the effects of collaborative behaviours differ between them in the context of fitness services.
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Zizhen Geng, Caifeng Li, Kejia Bi, Haiping Zheng and Xia Yang
The purpose of this paper is to advance our understanding of the roles that service employees’ responses to high job demands play in service innovation, by examining the effects…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to advance our understanding of the roles that service employees’ responses to high job demands play in service innovation, by examining the effects that service employees’ motivational orientation in self-regulation (regulatory focus) and their emotional labour strategy have on their creativity.
Design/methodology/approach
By integrating regulatory focus theory and emotion regulation theory, the authors developed a theoretical model to propose the links between promotion and prevention regulatory foci, different emotional labour strategies and frontline employee creativity. The research hypotheses were tested using hierarchical linear model based on data collected from 304 frontline employees and 72 supervisors in 51 restaurants.
Findings
The results showed that promotion focus was positively related to frontline employee creativity while prevention focus was negatively related to it. In addition, both emotional labour strategies (deep acting and surface acting) mediated the effect of promotion focus on frontline employee creativity. Surface acting mediated the effect of prevention focus on frontline employee creativity.
Originality/value
This is the first research conducted to explain, from a self-regulatory perspective, the influence that is exerted on service employees’ service innovation by their responses to high job demands. The findings identify the effects that service employees’ promotion focus or prevention focus in self-regulation have on their creativity, and the data unravel the role of emotional labour strategy as the mediating mechanism that explains the influence of regulatory focus on service employee creativity. On the basis of the findings, managerial directions are offered with regard to managing service employees’ regulatory focus and emotional labour, with a view to enhancing the creativity and innovation within a service organisation.
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Keo Mony Sok, Devin Bin and Phyra Sok
Business-to-business (B2B) firms increasingly have a need for frontline sales employees who can both sell and service customer account, a task known as sales-service ambidexterity…
Abstract
Purpose
Business-to-business (B2B) firms increasingly have a need for frontline sales employees who can both sell and service customer account, a task known as sales-service ambidexterity which may pose significant challenges to frontline sales employees. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to show that one has to be cognizant of the potential negative consequences brought about requiring frontline sales employees to engage in sales-service ambidexterity and find a way to mitigate such negative consequences.
Design/methodology/approach
The multisource data for this study was collected from frontline sales employees and their respective supervisors working across multiple B2B pharmaceutical companies in a Southeast Asian country. The data were analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) and PROCESS Macro.
Findings
The results reveal a negative indirect effect of sales-service ambidexterity sales performance through role overload. This negative indirect effect is fully neutralized when information exchange is high but not when it is low.
Originality/value
This study underscores the importance of not only the negative consequence of sales-service ambidexterity but also offers insights into how this negative consequence is neutralized so that sales performance is maximized.
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Zizhen Geng, Chao Liu, Xinmei Liu and Jie Feng
– The purpose of this study is to empirically test and extend knowledge of the effects of emotional labor of frontline service employee.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to empirically test and extend knowledge of the effects of emotional labor of frontline service employee.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors examined the effects of emotional labor (surface acting and deep acting) on frontline employee creativity, as well as the mediating effects of different kinds of job stress (hindrance stress and challenge stress) on the relationship between emotional labor and creativity. The research hypotheses were tested using data collected from 416 service employee–supervisor dyads in 82 Chinese local restaurants.
Findings
Results show that surface acting is negatively related to and deep acting is positively related to frontline employee creativity; surface acting is positively related to hindrance stress, while deep acting is positively related to challenge stress; and hindrance stress mediates the relationship between surface acting and creativity.
Originality/value
This study extends the consequences of emotional labor to frontline employee creativity from a cognitive perspective. It also advances knowledge about the effects of emotional labor on stress by classifying different kinds of job stress caused by different cognitive appraisals of surfacing acting and deep acting, and revealing the role of hindrance stress as psychological mechanism through which surface acting affects creativity.
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Christine Mathies and Marion Burford
Despite widespread acknowledgement of the importance of employees to the success of service firms, research into how well frontline service staff understand service remains…
Abstract
Purpose
Despite widespread acknowledgement of the importance of employees to the success of service firms, research into how well frontline service staff understand service remains scarce. This study aims to investigate what constitutes good customer service from the viewpoint of frontline service employees and to explore gender differences in particular.
Design/methodology/approach
The data were collected from 876 frontline employees across a wide range of service industries. An automated text analysis using Leximancer explored general and gender‐specific patterns in employees' customer service understanding.
Findings
Irrespective of gender, frontline service staff share the perception that the pillars of good customer service are listening skills, making the customer happy, and offering service. Males have a more functional, outcome‐oriented interpretation of customer service; females focus more on the actual service interaction and emotional outcomes.
Practical implications
By acknowledging gender‐based dissimilarities in the customer service understanding of frontline service employees, the efficiency of recruitment and training processes will be enhanced.
Originality/value
This study contributes to limited work on service models of frontline staff and shows that gender can explain some differences. This study also adds another dimension to the understanding of gender effects in services, beyond its influence on customers' quality perceptions and behaviours. The results are important for services marketing research and for managers in charge of recruiting and training frontline service staff.
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Daniel Belanche, Luis V. Casaló, Carlos Flavián and Jeroen Schepers
Service robots are taking over the organizational frontline. Despite a recent surge in studies on this topic, extant works are predominantly conceptual in nature. The purpose of…
Abstract
Purpose
Service robots are taking over the organizational frontline. Despite a recent surge in studies on this topic, extant works are predominantly conceptual in nature. The purpose of this paper is to provide valuable empirical insights by building on the attribution theory.
Design/methodology/approach
Two vignette-based experimental studies were employed. Data were collected from US respondents who were randomly assigned to scenarios focusing on a hotel’s reception service and restaurant’s waiter service.
Findings
Results indicate that respondents make stronger attributions of responsibility for the service performance toward humans than toward robots, especially when a service failure occurs. Customers thus attribute responsibility to the firm rather than the frontline robot. Interestingly, the perceived stability of the performance is greater when the service is conducted by a robot than by an employee. This implies that customers expect employees to shape up after a poor service encounter but expect little improvement in robots’ performance over time.
Practical implications
Robots are perceived to be more representative of a firm than employees. To avoid harmful customer attributions, service providers should clearly communicate to customers that frontline robots pack sophisticated analytical, rather than simple mechanical, artificial intelligence technology that explicitly learns from service failures.
Originality/value
Customer responses to frontline robots have remained largely unexplored. This paper is the first to explore the attributions that customers make when they experience robots in the frontline.
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Angela J. Xu, Ting Ting Zhu, Raymond Loi and Cheris W.C. Chow
Drawing on and extending the socially embedded model of thriving, this paper aims to investigate how and when customer participation promotes hospitality frontline employees’…
Abstract
Purpose
Drawing on and extending the socially embedded model of thriving, this paper aims to investigate how and when customer participation promotes hospitality frontline employees’ engagement in extra-role service behavior.
Design/methodology/approach
A two-wave questionnaire survey was carried out among frontline service employees and their immediate supervisors in a four-star business hotel in Eastern China. Path analysis using Mplus 8.3 examined a multilevel moderated mediation model.
Findings
Customer participation has a positive effect on frontline employees’ experience of thriving, which in turn promotes their engagement in extra-role service behavior. Nevertheless, supervisors’ negative affect weakens the positive effect of customer participation.
Practical implications
Hotels could implement employee assistance programs, arrange training on emotional regulation and positive psychology and create a fun work environment to help alleviate supervisors’ experience of negative affect so as to lessen its adverse effect on frontline employees’ perception of customer participation.
Originality/value
First, this work is one of the few studies exploring how customer participation affects frontline employees’ well-being (in terms of thriving) and extra-role service behavior, which advances extant value co-creation literature. Second, the moderating role of supervisors’ negative affect enriches the limited understanding of when customer participation might not bring firm benefits. Third, by uncovering customer participation as an antecedent of employee thriving, this study extends thriving research that only attends to contexts located within organizations.
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Christo Boshoff and Janine Allen
This study considers the impact that some organisational factors can have on a service firm’s ability to return dissatisfied customers to a state of satisfaction through service…
Abstract
This study considers the impact that some organisational factors can have on a service firm’s ability to return dissatisfied customers to a state of satisfaction through service recovery. In other words, it investigates the potential impact organisational variables (modelled as antecedents) can have on the service recovery performance of frontline staff. It also assesses the impact that successful service recovery has on two outcome variables, namely, intentions to resign and job satisfaction. The results show that organisational commitment exerts a strong positive influence on the service recovery performance of frontline staff as does empowerment and rewarding them for service excellence. When frontline staff are performing service recovery effectively, they are less likely to resign and report higher levels of job satisfaction.
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Behrooz Ghlichlee and Fatima Bayat
Within the retail banking sector, the customer-centric business model has become an important and new business trend in recent years. The enhancement of the frontline service…
Abstract
Purpose
Within the retail banking sector, the customer-centric business model has become an important and new business trend in recent years. The enhancement of the frontline service employees’ engagement and their customer-oriented behaviors are among the key factors affecting business performance (BP) in this sector of the banking industry. The purpose of this paper is to improve management decisions to enhance BP through examining the relationship between the frontline employees’ engagement and BP while taking into account the mediating effect of customer-oriented behaviors on this relationship.
Design/methodology/approach
A quantitative approach was adopted to conduct the present study, and the respondents were sampled from a large commercial bank in Iran using a structured questionnaire. Overall, 50 branch managers and 90 frontline employees were selected using random sampling. A confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to ascertain the validity and reliability of the observed items and a structural equation model was used for testing the proposed hypotheses and research framework.
Findings
The findings showed that customer-oriented behaviors mediated the relationship between the frontline employees’ engagement and bank’s branches’ BP. Higher levels of the frontline employees’ engagement enhance the customer-oriented behaviors. It was revealed that the frontline employees are engaged in their job and organization. Moreover, the engaged frontline employees listen carefully to customers, the customer’s problem is important to them and they complete their tasks precisely for customers. It has been confirmed that customer-oriented behaviors enhance branches’ BP. The bank frontline employees’ engagement and customer-oriented behaviors, in turn, affected the bank’s branches’ financial performance, process performance and employee performance compared with the bank’s key competitors.
Research limitations/implications
This study highlights the value of empirically establishing how employee customer-oriented behaviors are affected by employee engagement as an integrative construct bringing together BP.
Practical implications
This study can help improve BP by increasing the frontline employees’ engagement and their customer-oriented behaviors. This study suggests that organizations using the findings of this study could effectively assess their frontline employees’ engagement and their customer-oriented behaviors and then plan for improving them.
Social implications
This study offers a customer-oriented initiative as a social responsibility to be considered by retail banks. In light of the social exchange theory, the banks valuing customer-oriented can provide employees with knowledge, skills, values and support to develop motivation and abilities to demonstrate customer-oriented organizational citizenship behaviors.
Originality/value
Previous studies demonstrated that the employees’ engagement affects their customer-oriented behaviors. In addition, studies have referred to the effect of employees’ customer-oriented behaviors on BP. However, to the best of the knowledge, key questions regarding how the employees’ engagement at the branch level fosters customer-oriented behaviors and, in turn, the bank’s branches’ BP, remain unanswered. Hence, this study contributes to the investigation of the mediating role of the frontline employees’ customer-oriented behaviors in the relationship between their engagement and branches’ BP in the retail banking sector.
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