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The purpose of this study is to investigate mentorship practices during the COVID-19 pandemic and to consider how mentorship could be improved to support students of educational leadership (EDLE) during crises.

Participants in this collective self-study were four faculty members (i.e. the authors) within an EDLE program in one public, research-intensive university in the southern USA. Data sources were memos, email correspondence, reflective dialogue, course evaluations and meeting notes. Analysis involved dialogic engagement among the research team to identify emergent themes.

Analysis revealed five themes that reflect our collective experiences as mentors during the pandemic. These themes were challenges created by dismantled systems; meeting students' needs for understanding, flexibility and meaningful learning experiences; evolving personal–professional boundaries; grappling with our own sense-making and well-beingness; and clarifying values and priorities.

The pandemic exemplifies the need for a deeper conceptualization of mentorship that stimulates more intimate, compassionate relationships between mentors and mentees. When mentorship is grounded in compassion, intimacy and mutual vulnerability, it demonstrates a genuine ethic of care and concern for others that is supportive of well-being and serves as a model for mentees entering the profession.

This paper extends disciplinary knowledge by focusing on the mentorship of EDLE students during crises and provides insights on how mentorship could be enacted to mutually support mentor–mentee well-being.

Graduate students of the University of New England (U.N.E.) during the period 1970–1984 wrote one hundred dissertations on morale in a wide variety of educational institutions. The Staff Morale Questionnaire (S.M.Q.) developed and progressively refined at U.N.E. was extensively used in these and other studies in Australia. The project's greatest value lay in the way it enabled external (i.e. off‐campus) students to develop their academic critical abilities in a guided research effort, and in the ripple effect which has enabled numerous administrators in Australian schools to gain some sensitisation to and understanding of the importance of organisational morale.

This study aims to increase the understanding of the emergence of a values-based (VB) premium private label (PL) brand reputation within a multiple-tier PL brand portfolio in retailing.

By building on the research on PLs, brand image, brand reputation and consumer values, this study creates a conceptual foundation for the emergence of VB PL brand reputation within a multiple-tier brand portfolio among consumers and examines the emergence of such reputation empirically using interpretive exploratory qualitative laddering interviews in the context of fast-moving consumer goods.

The findings of this study illustrate that the VB reputations of the premium PL product brand and the PL brand store intertwine, ultimately relating to two terminal values: pleasure and doing good. These reputations differ remarkably from the VB reputations of the economy PL brand and the umbrella brand of the retail chain (not doing good and financial security).

This study explains the emergence of VB brand reputation within a multiple-tier brand portfolio and introduces the use of the laddering technique in such research.

This study reminds brand managers to carefully design the relevant brand strategy for brands and their relationships under a brand umbrella.

Although much is known about PL brands and brand reputation, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study might be the first to increase the understanding of how a VB premium PL brand reputation emerges and accumulates from brand images within a multiple-tier brand portfolio.

This study aims to provide more insight into how customer voice is captured and used in managerial decision-making at the marketing-finance interface. This study’s focus is on understanding how the customer voice, often communicated through online and social media platforms, is used in high-performing hotels.

This research is based on a case study of four high-performing Irish hotels. For each case, multiple informants, including marketing managers, general managers and finance managers, were interviewed and shadowed. Twenty seven decisions across the four cases were analysed to assess the use of customer voice in managerial decision-making.

Social media provides a stage that has empowered the customer voice because of the public nature of the interaction and the network effect. Customer voice is incorporated in managerial decision-making in three distinct ways – symbolically as part of an early warning system, for action-oriented operational decisions and to some extent in the knowledge-enhancing role for tactical decisions. While there is a greater appreciation among senior managers and the finance and accounting managers of the importance of customer voice, this study finds clear limits in its utilisation and more reliance on traditional finance and accounting data, especially in strategic decision-making.

The cases belong to a highly visible open environment of hotels in an industry where customer voice has immediate and strong effects. The findings may not directly apply to industries characterised by a relatively more closed context such as banking or insurance. Moreover, the findings reflect the practices of high-performing hotels and do not necessarily capture the practices used in less successfully operating hotels.

While marketers need to enhance their ability to create a narrative that links the customer voice to revenue generation, finance managers also need to develop a skillset and adopt a mindset that appropriately reflects the influential role for customer voice in managerial decision-making.

Despite the linkage of marketing performance to business performance, there is limited research on the impact of customer information on managerial decision-making. This research provides insight into how customer voice is considered at the critical marketing-finance interface.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether agreement between frontline employee self-ratings and supervisory ratings of service performance functions as an indicator of healthy supervisor-subordination relationships above and beyond what might be indicated simply by either supervisory ratings or self-ratings.

Research hypotheses were tested using a sample of 220 matched pairs of frontline service workers and their immediate supervisors from nine full service hotels in the USA.

The results show that higher levels of agreement in service performance ratings between employees and supervisors is associated with higher levels of leader-member exchange (LMX) and organizational commitment.

Senior managers can refer to the level of performance rating agreement between customer service employees and their supervisors in assessing supervisors’ competency to manage their work relationship with their subordinates.

This study examined rating agreement in a service performance context and found rating agreement between subordinates and their supervisor may have a unique effect on service worker effectiveness, producing a unique incremental effect on LMX and organizational commitment. This is important given that few attempts have been made to examine service performance from both subordinates’ and supervisors’ perspectives and the implication that rating agreement may have for improving employee service performance.

The purpose of this study is to enhance understanding of service quality at major spectator sports events by developing a conceptual framework and measurement scale specifically designed for assessment of spectators' perceptions of event quality.

Utilising a comprehensive literature review and detailed qualitative preliminary procedures, a comprehensive model of event quality for spectator sports (MEQSS) and a measurement scale of event quality in spectator sports (SEQSS) are developed. The models are then tested using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling using data from a quantitative survey of a convenience sample of spectators at a major league baseball game in the United States.

The proposed model is shown to fit the data well. Reliability and validity of the SEQSS are established through a pilot test and the substantive survey.

The findings of the study are limited by the sample being restricted to a single sports event in the United States. Further studies in other settings using larger samples are desirable.

The study provides a valid and reliable conceptual framework and measurement tool that can be used to ascertain the quality perceptions of consumers of major spectator sports events. Managers can use this framework and measurement scale as a diagnostic tool to identify strengths and weaknesses in their services, this providing guidance for potential areas of improvement.

This study extends the literature on service quality by providing a unique conceptual framework and measurement scale for major spectator sports events.

This study is a micro-level perspective of value co-creation in spectator sport. By examining sport through the value co-creation lens, the dual role of the customer as both a contributor to and a beneficiary of value is acknowledged and the importance of stakeholder interactions is emphasized. This study analyzes the extent to which two theoretically and managerially important factors—attendance frequency (i.e. first-time attendee vs repeat attendee) and resident type (i.e. local resident vs domestic traveler)—impact value creation in the recurring live sporting event setting.

Data were collected from spectators who attended a National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) sanctioned racing event. Multigroup structural equation modeling was performed to examine the proposed pathways, and multigroup t-tests were used to compare the model across both groups for each moderating variable. Corresponding path coefficients were then compared using Chin's (2004) recommended equations and procedures.

The study found organization-related value propositions to be the more common antecedents of value, while customer appearance had a strong negative association with hedonic value, and attendance frequency and resident type influenced certain value perceptions. Sport organizations should consider the expectations and motivations of various customer groups and provide offerings designed to meet the specific needs of different fan segments based on the spectator's experience with the sport product and the distance traveled to attend the sport event.

This paper advances the authors’ understanding of value creation in sport by showing how customer perceptions of value associated with the sport organization and other customers can be moderated by certain behavioral and geographic factors.

This study examines how various characteristics of the discount retail environment and the overall attitude towards a discount retail store, considered to be an abstract and global image component, influence consumers’ satisfaction and how consumers’ satisfaction, in turn, affects store loyalty. The data, collected from a sample of 517 discount retail customers in Daegu, Korea, indicate that: (1) forming the overall attitude is more closely related to in‐store services: atmosphere, employee service, after sales service and merchandising, (2) store satisfaction is formed through perceived store atmosphere and value, (3) the overall attitude has strong influence on satisfaction and loyalty and its impact is much stronger on loyalty than on satisfaction, (4) store loyalty is directly affected by most significantly location, merchandising and after sale service in order, (5) satisfaction is not related to customers’ committed store revisiting behavior. The applications in management and implications for future research are discussed.