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The purpose of this paper is to extend Zablah et al.’s (2012) findings regarding the proper way to treat customer orientation (CO) to the study of CO among B-B salespeople in one of the most important emerging economies, India.

The authors of this study hired a professional market research firm based in Chennai, a large metropolitan city in Southern India, to manage data collection. The authors used a competing models approach to test the relationship between constructs.

CO among frontline employees operating in one of the largest emerging economies is best treated as a psychological construct that is both directly and indirectly related to performance via its ability to reduce stress and improve engagement. This finding strengthens the view of CO as a universal human work value and, more broadly, that such values operating across different cultural setting do exist. In addition, external customer mindset appears to offer a superior means to measure CO than does the widely used CO component of the SOCO scale. This conclusion is based not only upon the fact that it conceptually corresponds with the psychological nature of CO, but also that in this initial examination it exhibits a greater ability to explain employee job performance.

Managers who are able to screen and hire employees with greater CO work values should experience improved performance outcomes and also less customer ambiguity and greater satisfaction among their frontline employees. Since CO proscribes the proper way to deal with customers, greater levels of CO beliefs would counteract customer ambiguity among frontline employees operating in any environment. Accordingly, when filling frontline positions, managers should actively seek out employees who earnestly embrace the role of taking care of customers. Managers are advised to not only emphasize on salespeople whose foremost role is to take care of their customers but also to find ways to familiarize them with their products and to provide them with information regarding customer characteristics such as their background, the relationship history (especially past service and product failures), and unique preferences.

The purpose of this article is to examine the relations between important sales presentation skills and salesperson job performance.

Data on each construct in the model was gathered and the relations analyzed using LISREL software.

Salesperson experience, and to a lesser degree training, underlie sales presentation skills. Salesperson skill at using adaptive selling techniques and closing are related with increased performance.

Additional sales skills need to be considered and salespeople other than those in the B‐B environment should be studied.

Sales managers are urged to ensure their B‐B salespeople develop their skills in adaptive communication and closing as one means to improve sales performance.

The findings highlight the importance of salesperson experience and training in developing the skills that contribute to sales performance.

Owing to their growing numbers and importance, both managers and researchers are increasingly concerned with the work experiences of boundary‐spanning employees. Employee perceptions of organizational support (POS) may be particularly relevant to this crucial employee group. Thus reports a study of the relations between two individual‐level and two organizational‐level antecedents to boundary‐spanner POS. The results indicate that employee gender, amount of formal organizational recognition received, and the quality of task‐related training are associated with POS. However, type of employee pay plan is not. Concludes with a discussion of these findings and their implications for effectively managing boundary‐spanning employee POS.

The purpose of this study is to develop and test a model of the antecedents and outcomes of one aspect of customer mind-set (CMS) – external CMS (ECMS) — among front-line employees. The goal of this paper is to help managers address customer-level orientation by further investigating the external dimension of CMS (referred to as ECMS).

Data were gathered from a sample of front-line employees of a variety of firms located in a mid-sized southeastern US city.

The results indicate that greater amounts of job autonomy and job satisfaction are positively associated with front-line employee ECMS, while the employee’s global role ambiguity, customer-specific ambiguity and role conflict are negatively associated with ECMS. In turn, front-line employee ECMS is associated with increased work motivation and sales performance.

The data are cross-sectional in nature; so, strictly causal relations cannot be inferred from these results. Also, the sample primarily consists of younger females with less work experience and who are employed at smaller organizations. Therefore, future research should further test these relations in different samples to increase the robustness of the results.

This research utilizes a rich description of the front-line employee’s job attitudes and work characteristics to build a model describing their association with the extent to which the ideas of market orientation have taken hold at the operational level and their relationship with the employee’s motivation and subsequent performance. It shows that both internal and external characteristics are associated with front-line employee ECMS, which itself is very strongly related to desirable job outcomes.

The firm’s financial performance is most directly affected by how well it serves its external customers. However, there has been no research on the role and the consequences of employee ECMS. There are only a few studies (less than five) that have empirically explored the CMS. Therefore, the many potential benefits from a deeper understanding of a market orientation culture and behaviors at the level of the front-line employee remain unclear, particularly in regards to its ECMS dimension.

The purpose of this study is to examine when perceived organizational support (POS) may be more likely to play a mediator versus moderator role in stressor and strain relationships by considering POS relative to challenge and hindrance stressors, cognitive/emotional and physical strains.

This cross‐sectional survey research was conducted in two samples (n=720, 829) of employees working for a large retail organization in the USA. Hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling.

As hypothesized, results indicate POS mediates relationships between hindrance stressors and cognitive/emotional strains, but does not mediate relationships between challenge stressors and physical strains. POS does not moderate any of the relationships examined.

This paper is one of few studies to examine challenge and hindrance stressors and to examine POS relative to physical strains.

This chapter provides an updated review of research examining the relationship between occupational stressors and job performance. We begin by presenting an eight-category taxonomy of workplace stressors and we then review theories that explain the relationships between workplace stressors and job performance. The subsequent literature review is divided into two sections. In the first section, we present a summary of Jex's (1998) review of research on the job stress–job performance relationship. In the second section, we provide an updated review of the literature, which includes studies that have been published since 1998. In this review, we evaluate how well the contemporary research has dealt with weaknesses and limitations previously identified in the literature, we identify and evaluate current trends, and we offer recommendations and directions for future research.

Focused on multicultural service encounters, this paper aims to argue that the interplay between customer language preference, employee choice and use of language affects perceived interaction quality, which in turn influences loyalty, customer brand identification and positive word-of-mouth.

Using Mexican Americans (Spanish) as the focal ethnic group (language), a 3 (contexts: Fast food-English; Post office-English; Post office-Spanish) × 4 (scenarios: customer language preference adhered to; adapted to; mixed; ignored) between-subject scenario-based experiment was conducted.

Customers perceive a higher, or at least equal, level of interaction quality when the employee choice of language adheres to their preference than when the employee switches to their preferred language after missing it initially. Both of these scenarios lead to significantly higher interaction quality compared to when the employee ignores customer language preference or combines elements from two languages throughout the interaction. The adverse effects of ignoring customer preferred language or mixing it with another language are accentuated among customers with low ethnic identification and those with low level of bilingualism. Prior findings regard the interplay among interaction quality, and the remainder of outcomes variables were also corroborated.

The findings add to the literature that examines the dynamics of intercultural service encounters and draws attention to employee choice and use of language and its impact on a host of service outcomes, with interaction quality serving as a key mediator.

This study highlights the need for service firms to consider customer language preferences and train and empower employees to meet customer expectations. To the extent that the increasingly viable segments of minority customers remain underserved in most developed markets, this study provides insights into cultivating a profitable customer segment.

This study demonstrates the role of employee choice and use of language and its consequences.

Despite significant investment in capital improvements and training, a rod mill suffered from chronically low productivity. The authors conducted a survey to measure employee satisfaction and to determine the correlation between employee satisfaction and productivity. The study found a correlation between average job satisfaction, low motivation and the resulting low productivity. A direct correlation was also found between low productiity and poor communication between management, supervisors and employees. The article offers recommendations to improve productivity by increasing employee involvement and communication.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between gender and the individual and social aspects of expatriate work, emphasising how issues external to the organisation impact on the experience of female expatriates.

In total, 102 male respondents and 44 female respondents were surveyed in order to test the perceived organisational support, career satisfaction, and expatriate social support.

Significant gender‐related differences were identified in all three areas with notable contradiction in the perception and practice of how multinational corporations (MNCs) manage their expatriates. While earlier research suggested that organisations perceived their treatment of female expatriates to be equivalent to that of men, the results indicate that female international managers do not perceive equal treatment on international assignments.

Although based on a smaller sample than other international studies, the gender breakdown was sufficient for moderated regression testing.

As the expatriate social support construct is largely exploratory in nature, future research could examine the effect of perceived expatriate social support on other related workplace behaviours, both domestically and internationally, including work‐life balance and diversity management.

While other studies have provided a rich descriptive picture of the gendered nature of expatriation, little research has attempted to quantify the reasons behind the phenomenon. This paper addresses this gap in the literature through exploration of the issues, which impact upon the experience of female expatriates in foreign MNCs in China.

An analysis of the factors and reasons for collaboration, partnerships, and mergers in the profit sector is undertaken in this chapter. All terms used are defined, particularly as they apply in the world of for-profit enterprises. Through a thorough review of the literature, the authors provide an outline of historically significant successes and failures of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the corporate world and derive lessons from them as they might apply to the nonprofit sector. The reasons that drive both sectors toward such initiatives are discussed with an analysis and comparison of similarities and differences. Both successful mergers and failures are described, primarily through case studies. In addition, human aspects and implications are addressed. Issues such as fear, trust, processes, and psychological challenges of M&A are examined in depth. The influence of communication—the good, the bad, and the ugly—are analyzed from the perspective of clients, regulators, employees, and stakeholders, with reflections on the importance of communication and careful management of change processes. The chapter concludes with a summary of the lessons which can be derived from the literature with a view to providing guidance for similar efforts for information and library organizations.