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Research on the service–profit chain (SPC) provides important insights regarding how organizations attain service excellence. However, this research stream does not shed light on the mechanisms by which service organizations sustain such excellence, despite the struggles of many organizations to do so. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to develop the SPC as a more dynamic system characterized by feedback loops, accumulation processes, and time delays based on the service operations, human resources, and marketing literatures.

The authors posit the feedback loops operate as virtuous cycles, such that increases in customer perceptions of service quality and in profit margins lead to subsequent increases in the quality of the internal working environment, which ultimately reimpacts performance in a positive way, and so on. The authors test the hypotheses using five years of archival data on 417 full-service US hotels. The unique data set combines longitudinal data from multiple functions, including employee assessments regarding their tools, practices, and abilities to serve customers, customer perceptions of service quality, and objective measures of financial performance.

The authors find support for the idea that some organizations provide customers with high-quality service over time by reinvesting in the inputs responsible for generating the initial success, i.e., in various aspects of the internal working environment.

The analysis of 417 hotels from a single firm may influence the extent to which the findings can be generalized.

By expanding the boundaries of previous conceptual and empirical models investigating SPCs, the authors offer a deeper understanding of the cross-functional character of modern operational systems and the complex dynamics that these systems generate.

Everybody Works in many ways, indoors, outdoors, at home, at an office, by traveling from place to place, to earn income, or as a hobby. This book is a photographic essay looking at the many ways in which people work and sometimes use animals in work. The learning cycle lesson helps young children construct a deeper understanding of work as varied and an important part of each person’s life.

The high failure rate for expatriate leaders is well documented. One major cause of these failures has been identified as the incongruencies in the perceptions of expatriate leaders and the host members that they manage. This article describes theory and research which suggests that a potential explanation for at least some of these perceptual incongruencies is that they are a result of culturally‐based attributional biases interacting with self‐serving and actor‐observer attributional biases. Although not all of the interactions of these biases result in incongruent perceptions, some interactions appear to be particularly prone to result in incongruent perceptions such as when leaders from highly individualistic and low context cultures interact with members from highly collectivistic and high context cultures. Suggestions for research and interventions designed to reduce incongruent attributions between leaders and members are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a classroom negotiation exercise. A case involving controversy over the naming of a sports stadium containing a university football field and track is described. A local municipality, representing veterans groups, negotiates with university officials over a university plan to rename “Veteran's Memorial Stadium” after a recently‐retired football coach.

The negotiation activity is adapted from an actual case. It requires little advance preparation and can be used with either pairs or small groups of participants. “Teaching notes” provide instructions for using the activity.

The “Teaching Notes” examine how this controversy illustrates several concepts related to conflict, integrative bargaining, power and negotiating on behalf of constituents.

The case differs from many published cases in that one side's position is apparently rooted in values and matters of principle whereas the other side's position is interest‐based. The student must grapple with these dynamics, while seeking an integrative solution to the issues.

This paper aims to explore consumer envy in the context of service encounters. Envy-elicited cognitive appraisals, emotions, interpersonal and organizational consequences were examined.

An online survey was used to collect 311 actual episodes of consumer envy. Both qualitative and quantitative analyses were used to answer the research questions.

This research identified five different triggers of consumer envy during service encounters, each associated with distinct cognitive appraisal patterns. Moreover, envious customers might experience three qualitatively different shades of envy labeled as “blue envy”, “red envy” and “green envy”. Actions taken by service providers are found to be a major cause of consumer envy, and they elicit emotions associated with complaining, negative word of mouth, lower encounter satisfaction and lower repurchase intention.

While significant contributions are made, this study relied on self-reported data. Given that envy is considered a private and sensitive emotion, participants may have withheld from sharing some of the more socially undesirable details of their envy episodes.

The results stress the importance for service providers to avoid a perception of unfair preferential treatment. This perception of service unfairness is associated with hostility directed at service employees and negative organizational consequences.

This study is among the first to examine consumer envy in the context of service encounters.

The purpose of this paper is to identify types of service failures in a double deviation scenario within the contexts of online retailing.

Critical incident technique; customer complaints to online third parties; and four‐factor justice dimensionality.

Findings of this paper show distinctive sets of service failures in two separate service failure stages of double deviation (i.e. the initial service failure and recovery failure stages) within online retailing. Initial service failures mainly reflect cognitive issues generated from an online‐specific store atmosphere and threaten distributive or procedural justice perceptions. In comparison with distributive and procedural justice perceptions still being dominant, service failures in the recovery failure stage consist of interpersonal and emotional issues generated from customer‐company interactions, threatening interpersonal justice perceptions.

This paper contributes to broadening the current understanding of the dynamics of online customer dissatisfaction, by first identifying types of service failures that occur in both stages of online double deviation. This paper also introduces customer complaints to online third parties as a useful data resource for the study of service failure/recovery.

The purpose of this paper is to develop the concepts of supply chain leadership (SCL) and supply chain followership (SCF) from the literature, and propose a theory of leadership in supply chains using a strategy‐structure‐performance theory framework.

Constructs are defined and valid and reliable scales are developed for SCL, SCF, and three structural elements (information availability, communication, and rewards). Proposed SCL and SCF theoretical relationships are tested using data collected from an interactive simulation and analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Transformational SCL and SCF are inter‐related constructs that can be linked to the creation of the three forms of supply chain structure examined in this research to varying degrees. A finding of significance is that supply chain follower organizations may actually have greater influence over operational performance than the supply chain leader.

This research presents an initial test of supply chain‐related constructs not tested in previous research. These represent significant organizational constructs that may benefit future supply chain research efforts.

Transformational supply chain behaviors of leaders and followers can be perceived and measured. Managers may utilize this knowledge to better understand the type of supply chain relationships their organization should most effectively pursue.

The paper introduces the concepts of SCL and SCF and empirically tests these concepts and the structural constructs of information availability, communication, and rewards.

Strategic outsourcing has swept virtually every industry—especially those rightsized down to their core, value‐creating processes. Here's a report from the field.

Focusing on hotel managers’ service recovery efforts to service failures, this study aims to explore effects of different types of service recovery strategies on customers’ trust, satisfaction and behavioral intentions in the context of consumer-generated media.

This study conducted a 2 × 2 × 2 between-subjects experimental design to examine effects of hotels’ sincere apology, compensation and existing relationship with customers on customers’ subsequent psychological behavior. An online self-administered survey was used to recruit participants who posted their experiences with a hotel on consumer-generated review sites.

Results of this study identified that when managers incorporated authenticity and compensation components, customers were more likely to show a higher level of trust, satisfaction and behavioral intentions.

Derived from the justice theory and the relationship investment theory, this study identified the main effects of three treatments and their interaction effects on customers’ subsequent behaviors.

Results of this study suggested that service recovery communication processes, in particular, authenticity and compensation, be an integral part of the service recovery strategies in the social media context.

This paper investigated the importance of hotel managers’ service recovery communication strategies in the social media context.