Search results

This study aims to explore how not-for-profit organisations (NFPs) adopt service innovation and improve their employee resilience capabilities as a response to environmental changes arising from marketisation of public services.

Using a multiple case-study research design, this study involved 32 interviews with frontline employees working in a not-for-profit care-providing organisation.

This study finds that the development of absorptive capacity can facilitate service innovation adoption in NFPs and improve employee resilience in times of transition.

This study offers theoretical insights on service innovation, absorptive capacity and employee resilience in NFPs. It makes practical recommendations that will enable NFPs to help frontline employees better adopt service innovation practices in business models endorsed by the private sector.

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.

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).

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.

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.

Based on the resource conservation theory, this research paper aims to evaluate the positive impact of customer orientation on frontline employees' emotional exhaustion and the moderating effects of customer incivility and supervisor monitoring.

Two-wave data from 484 frontline employees in power supply business halls were analyzed. This study used AMOS 23.0, SPSS22.0 and PROCESS macro for data statistics and analysis.

Our empirical research demonstrates that customer orientation has a significant positive impact on frontline employees' emotional exhaustion. At the same time, supervisor monitoring moderates the relationship between customer orientation and emotional exhaustion. The higher the interactional or observational monitoring, the stronger customer orientation's effect on frontline employees' emotional exhaustion. Moreover, a three-way interaction model exists between customer orientation, customer incivility and supervisor monitoring.

This study yields practical implications for helping the frontline employees of service-oriented organizations alleviate multiple interpersonal workplace pressures.

Based on resource conservation theory, this paper used a novel approach to focus on customer orientation, customer incivility and supervisor monitoring as interpersonal stressors.

This article aims to build on the insights from the systematic reviews included in this special issue (SI) on frontline service employees (FLE) by adding practitioner perspectives. Its purpose is to gauge knowledge, awareness and practices from industry and government regarding topics related to frontline workers and to offer critical and, in places, provocative insights on the relevance of scholarly focus in serving the needs of industry.

Insights were developed through consultation with managers who are responsible for leading frontline employees, who offered insights on the important issues affecting their workforce as well as direct comments on each of the key topics covered in this SI articles. Additional insights were gathered through a review of policy document reviews with relevant government agencies and trade publications, a review of a body of conference topics and speakers and personal reflections developed over decades of consulting work.

This paper presents insights from industry about looming challenges facing managers of frontline service employees, including a forecasted worsening of labor force availability to perform many frontline jobs; growing competition for workers from other sectors; a relatively shallow understanding by industry of academic research topics on workforce in service; the emerging increased cooperation between industry and governments to address these challenges and a clear deficit in necessary frontline skills.

This paper provides rare and direct insights from industry practitioners about current and critical topics investigated by academic researchers and offers opportunities for further collaboration and collective thought on addressing global challenges faced by frontline service employees.

Based upon social exchange theory, this study investigates the mediating effect of consumers' trust in banking industry frontline employees on two relationships: (1) the relation between consumers' perceptions of frontline employees' empathy and consumers' perceptions of frontline employees' performance, and (2) the relation between consumers' perception of frontline employees' customer orientation and consumers' perceptions of frontline employees' performance.

The authors used a time-lag research design to collect data through online questionnaires distributed in two waves. The sample comprises 375 respondents having experience and interaction with banking frontline employees.

Results confirm the mediating effect of consumers' trust in the banking industry on the relationships between their perceptions of frontline employees' empathy and consumer orientation on the one hand and their perceptions of frontline employees' performance on the other hand.

Results may be helpful to policymakers and managers in the service industries, prompting them to adopt approaches and strategies designed to build strong relationships with consumers, thus increasing consumers' trust and frontline employees' performance.

This study confirms the relevance of social exchange theory in understanding the role of consumers' trust and perceptions of frontline employees' empathy and consumer orientation in understanding their perception of frontline employee performance in the banking industry.

This study aims to test the relationship between emotional labor and service quality of the frontline employees of Chinese restaurants during the coronavirus disease pandemic (COVID-19). This study further investigated the mediating role of work fatigue (WF) and the moderating role of supervisor–subordinate Guanxi (SSG).

The authors used a time-lag approach to gather data from a sample of 365 frontline staff members working in Chinese restaurants. All hypotheses were tested using SPSS and AMOS.

First, restaurant frontline employees’ deep acting was associated with higher service quality, whereas surface acting leads to lower service quality. Second, WF mediated the relationship between emotional labor and service quality. Third, SSG moderated the impact of emotional labor on WF during COVID-19.

All variables measured in this study were self-reported by restaurant frontline employees, which may increase the risk of common-method bias. However, this study enriches the literature on emotional labor, WF and SSG during COVID-19.

COVID-19 has severely affected the hotel, restaurant and catering sector and especially the psychological state and the work performance of frontline employees. Restaurant managers should implement some measures to improve employees’ service quality during COVID-19.

The present findings show that restaurant frontline employees adopted various emotional labor strategies when they were faced with higher than usual job demands and the risk of infection during COVID-19.

This paper aims to examine the association between supervisor support, servicing efficacy and job satisfaction among frontline hotel employees in Turkey. Specifically, the mediating role of servicing efficacy was examined in the link between supervisor support and job satisfaction.

Data were collected from 421 frontline employees in 4- and 5-star hotels located in the South and South West of Turkey. The authors proposed a conceptual model in which servicing efficacy mediates the link between supervisor support and job satisfaction after controlling for demographic information. Data were analyzed through the structural equation modeling (SEM) framework.

Results showed that supervisor support positively predicted servicing efficacy and job satisfaction reports of the employees. Those reporting higher servicing efficacy were more likely to report increased job satisfaction. In addition, servicing efficacy partially mediated the link between supervisor support and job satisfaction.

The current study provides new evidence on the link between supervisor support, efficacy beliefs and job satisfaction in the hotel industry. This is the first study investigating the mediating role of servicing efficacy in the association between supervisor support and job satisfaction. Moreover, most previous studies separately focusing on supervisor support, efficacy beliefs and job satisfaction in the hospitality industry were conducted in developed, Western countries. In contrast, research examining work-related constructs and outcomes in Turkey’s hospitality industry has been limited. Thus, both replicated and original findings would contribute to the generalizability of cumulative knowledge in tourism and hospitality.

This paper aims to investigate the effect of top management’s customer interactions (TMCI) on customer satisfaction. This study argues that TMCI’s overall relationship with customer satisfaction follows an inverted-U shape due to its positive and disruptive effects on the customer relationship efforts of frontline service/sales employees (FSEs). This paper further investigates the frontline competence of both FSEs and the top management team (TMT) as moderators of the impact of TMCI on customer satisfaction.

The conceptual model was tested empirically using data from managers, frontline employees and customers of microfinance firms. A multilevel structural equation modeling approach was used to test the hypothesized model.

The results show that TMCI has a curvilinear relationship with customer satisfaction. The results also show that frontline employees’ collective efficacy attenuates this relationship by shifting the turning point of the curvilinear effect to the right. Furthermore, TMT frontline competence amplifies both the positive and negative effects of TMCI on customer satisfaction.

This study advances knowledge on the effects of TMCI on customer satisfaction and highlights the nuanced relationship between top management involvement and indicators of firm performance.

The findings show the importance of considering the frontline competence of both top management and frontline employees when encouraging TMCI in organizations.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is one of the first to examine TMCI’s direct impact on customer satisfaction and propose the frontline competence of both top management and frontline employees as boundary conditions on this relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate a special type of unethical behaviors among frontline service employees – unethical pro-organizational behaviors (UPB). Building on social identity theory, the paper examines how social identifications with the organization and customers interactively affect employees' engagement in UPB. The paper also explores the underlying psychological mechanisms that explain this effect.

This study uses a multistage, sequential research design to test the hypothesized model. Studies 1A and 1B use scenario-based experiments with a randomized between-subjects design. Study 2 uses a survey design to replicate and expand the findings from Study 1 by collecting survey data from frontline service employees in various service sectors.

The results across two studies reveal that high organizational identification will motivate employees to engage in UPB when the opportunity arises, while employees who also identify with customers will more likely abstain from committing UPB. Findings from the survey study also show that this interactive effect on UPB is achieved by devaluing customers as tools or placing fault upon them.

This research provides a deeper exploration of the UPB at the organizational frontline. From a social identity theoretical perspective, this research examines how identification with customers and with the organization jointly shape frontline employees' engagement in UPB. In doing so, this research provides insight into the contextual limitations of existing UPB research while also offering practically relevant implications for managing UPB in frontline service contexts.

This study aims to develop a measurement scale for employee aesthetic labor (AL) in hospitality from the perspectives of frontline employees of international tourist hotels and airlines.

The authors utilized both qualitative and quantitative methods to develop the AL scale. Participants were frontline employees of international tourist hotels and airlines in Taiwan. The authors’ analysis incorporated both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses to examine the results.

A four-factor, 21-item hospitality AL scale with satisfactory validity and reliability was created. The four AL factors are appropriate voice and response, pleasant appearance, corporate aesthetic image delivery and polite and elegant demeanor.

The developed AL scale can serve as a useful tool for the hospitality industry in terms of employee recruitment and training to align with the corporation's aesthetic image and reduce the potential burden of AL on employees.

Based on dramaturgical theory, this study focuses on the AL practices that are performed during service encounters with customers. It is potentially the first AL scale to be constructed using rigorous scale development procedures.