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In times of open and distributed innovation, many innovation activities that are important for firms' products and services take place beyond the boundaries of the firm and thus beyond firms' direct control. A prime example for this phenomenon is open source software (OSS) development, where multiple actors contribute to a public good, which is also integrated into company-owned software products. Despite the importance of aligning community work on the public good with own in-house development efforts, firms have limited options to directly control the OSS project or the project's outcome. This research reflects on resource deployment control, a control mode in which firms assign own developers to work for an OSS project to influence the OSS project, and tests hypotheses on individual developer levels.

This research tests the effect of perceived resource deployment control on opinion leadership by analyzing employed Linux kernel developers.

The findings show that developers who perceive being assigned to an OSS project to enact control also exhibit opinion leadership. This research also investigates boundary conditions such as the OSS business model a firm operates and the reputation developers assign to the developers' employer.

This research is the first that is devoted to resource deployment control, and the research closes with a discussion of implications for control theory and the management of innovation beyond firm boundaries.

An increasing number of retailers is trying to stimulate customers by embedding augmented reality (AR) features such as video try-on into the online shopping experience. As such AR-based online services require customers to actively participate in the service provision, this paper aims at investigating fairness perceptions and customer responses associated with AR-enabled customer participation.

The conceptual framework of this study is based on equity theory. To compare customer responses after an in-store service encounter as opposed to AR-enabled customer participation involving video try-on, this study contains a between-subject online experiment. The effective sample comprises N = 215 participants.

The data analysis demonstrates that AR-enabled customer participation leads to significantly lower levels of distributive, procedural and price fairness as well as lower engagement intentions than in-store service encounters. Simultaneously, participants in the video try-on scenario report higher negative word-of-mouth (WOM) intentions than in the in-store scenario.

The extra mile customers go when using AR-based online services is reflected in less favorable fairness evaluations.

Service managers should design AR applications in a manner that requires minimum customer participation.

This study contributes to service research by linking AR-enabled customer participation to evaluations of distributive, procedural and price fairness and their outcomes. This is vital to fully exploit the potential of AR in services.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how the implementation of digital interfaces into service encounters is transforming demands toward frontline service employees. In addition to having the potential to enhance employee–customer interactions, changes related to new technologies can be perceived as stressful by employees and might foster deviation from prescribed processes.

Using the transactional theory of stress and coping as a theoretical framework, this paper aims to develop and test a research model to investigate the influence of technology-induced role ambiguity on constructive and destructive process deviance. Data were collected via an online survey of 123 frontline service employees in restaurants that have online reservation systems in use.

The results confirm that employee resistance to change fosters role ambiguity, while self-efficacy reduces the latter. Technology-induced role ambiguity leads to both constructive and destructive process deviance.

By revealing the above relationships, this study contributes to research in services marketing by examining two types of employees’ deviance from customer-facing processes.

This paper aims to increase understanding of how the strength of the relationship between service failure-induced customer anger and revenge intentions might be influenced by attitudinal moderators that are both within and outside the realm of the service firm’s control. Drawing on past research, the authors hypothesize that customers’ perceptions of the corporate reputation and silent endurance constitute boundary conditions of the relationship between service failure-related customer anger and revenge intentions.

In line with past service failure research, the authors test the hypotheses using a scenario-based online experiment with 243 participants.

This research reaffirms the positive relationship between anger and revenge intentions and finds support for the hypothesized boundary conditions; customers with better corporate reputation perceptions and higher levels of silent endurance express weaker revenge intentions than those with poor corporate reputation perceptions and lower levels of silent endurance.

This research offers unique insights into how service organizations can buffer the detrimental effects of service failure-induced customer anger.

Many booking services in traditional people-processing service areas such as gastronomy were recently transformed into online reservation services. While advantages for platform providers (i.e. a share of the respective business) and merchants (i.e. increased operational efficiency) seem obvious, it is less known about how customers respond to these new forms of online services. This paper aims to illustrate how booking traditional people-processing services online is different from booking it via phone.

This study conceptualized a 2 × 2 experimental survey design by manipulating users’ booking channel (online vs low) and the service complexity of different, less digitized people-processing services (high: dentist vs low: restaurant). After conducting several pretests, the authors surveyed 282 respondents familiar with online booking and reservation.

The results show that the booking channel (online reservation vs phone reservation) affects associated perceived booking risk and negatively affects users’ intention to use the reservation service. Additionally, users’ attitudes toward online reservation moderate the influence of booking channel on perceived booking risk.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research that investigates adoption of online reservation in people-processing services.

Given the strategic importance of firm reputation because of its potential for value creation, extant reputation research focuses on favorable customer outcomes. This study proposes and tests a model that relates the customer-based corporate reputation (CBR) of fashion retailers to customer-perceived risk and two relational outcomes – trust and commitment. In addition, this study aims to test whether or not the hypothesized paths are equally strong for male and female shoppers.

Data for this study were collected through an online survey approach. Using a sample of more than 300 retail customers and structural equation modeling, the authors tested the hypotheses.

Drawing on previous research, the commitment–trust theory of relationship marketing and signaling theory, the authors find support for direct and indirect links between retailers’ reputation and relational outcomes, the intervening role of perceived risk and the partially moderational role of gender.

The findings of this research suggest that a retailer’s positive reputation can reduce customers’ risk and engender trust, which in turn promotes customer commitment.

A growing number of examples suggests that retailers (specially fashion retailers) need to manage their reputation, which can come under threat in myriad ways, and its outcomes. However, so far, no individual study empirically investigated any of these reputation outcomes simultaneously or considered gender differences. Thus, the authors address an important research gap by examining the mechanism through which CBR affects relevant customer outcomes and by considering contextual factors.

Service providers leverage their corporate reputation management efforts to increase revenues by shaping customer attitudes and behaviours, yet the effects on customer innovation adoption and customer value remain unclear. In an extended conceptualisation of customer-based corporate reputation (CBR), the purpose of this paper is to propose that customer perceived risk, perceived value, and service separation are contingencies of the relationship between CBR and two key customer outcomes: customer new product adoption proneness (CPA) and recency-frequency-monetary (RFM) value.

Using a predictive survey approach, 1,001 service customers assess the online or offline operations of six multichannel retailers. The hypothesised model is tested using structural equation modelling and multigroup analysis.

The analysis reveals significant linkages of CBR with perceived risk and perceived value, as well as between perceived risk and perceived value and from perceived value to CPA and RFM value. These linkages vary in strength across unseparated (offline) and separated (online) services.

This study uses cross-sectional data to contribute to literature that relates CBR to relevant customer outcomes by considering CPA and RFM value and investigating contingent factors. It provides conceptual and empirical evidence that price appropriateness represents a new CBR dimension.

The results reveal that CBR reduces customers’ perceived risk and positively affects their perceived value, which drives CPA and RFM value. Multichannel retailers can create rewarding customer relationships by building and nurturing good reputations.

This study is the first to link CBR with customer product adoption proneness and value, two important customer measures. It proposes and tests an extended conceptualisation of CBR.

Frontline service employees’ (FLEs) positive personality traits enhance service experiences, for both employee and customer outcomes. Yet, limited research addresses negative personality traits. Drawing on the emotion regulation framework, the purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual model in which three negative personality traits – Machiavellianism, psychopathy and narcissism (the so-called dark triad (DT)) – represent antecedents, and FLE emotion regulation strategies (surface and deep acting) are mediators, all of which predict job satisfaction.

The test of this model includes occupationally diverse samples of FLEs from an individualistic (the USA) and a collectivistic (Japan) country, to assess the potential moderating role of culture.

The findings suggest that Machiavellianism relates more positively to surface and deep acting in Japan, whereas psychopathy relates more negatively to surface acting than in the USA. Unexpectedly, narcissism exhibits mixed effects on surface and deep acting in both countries: It relates positively to surface acting in the USA but prompts a negative relationship in Japan. The positive narcissism–deep acting relationship is also stronger for Japanese than for US FLEs. These findings help specify the effects of negative personality traits on important employee outcomes.

This is the first study that relates service employees’ DTs with emotional labor resulting in new avenues for further research. The findings are managerially relevant because they help specify the effects of negative personality traits on important employee outcomes.

Service firms increasingly hire employees that work two or more jobs. Drawing on conservation of resources (COR) theory and the notion that employees have finite emotional resources, the purpose of this paper is to examine the consequences of emotional labour among employees who simultaneously work in two service jobs. The authors posit that emotional labour requirements from the primary job (PJ) and secondary job (SJ) interact to emotionally exhaust employees through a process of resource depletion. Specifically, building on extant work, this research tests a theoretical mediation model of surface acting predicting organizational commitment through emotional exhaustion.

Employing a predictive survey approach, 171 frontline-service employees with two jobs from a variety of service industries are surveyed in two waves. The hypothesized model is tested using a bootstrap procedure for testing indirect effects. In addition, the authors investigate first- and second-stage moderation.

Results confirm full mediation of the relationship between surface acting and organizational commitment by emotional exhaustion, confirming that the effect of surface acting on organizational commitment is indirect through emotional exhaustion. In addition, results reveal that surface acting in the SJ moderates the link between surface acting in the PJ and emotional exhaustion, and that employees low on organizational identification congruence display lower levels of organizational commitment with the PJ.

This study contributes to the literature that relates emotional labour to organizational commitment by investigating contingent factors. The key contribution thus pertains to identifying contingent factors based in COR theory and social identity theory that influence the triadic relation between surface acting, emotional exhaustion, and organizational commitment.

Results reveal that surface acting in a second job not just simply adds to the level of employee emotional exhaustion. Instead levels of surface acting in a first and second job interact with each other to affect emotional exhaustion. This finding suggests service managers must take into account if and how employees are enforced to perform surface acting in the other job to prevent high exhaustion.

This study is the first to investigate emotional labour among dual job holders, a growing segment of the service workforce that poses unique challenges to organizations.