Search results

Conversational agents (chatbots, avatars and robots) are increasingly substituting human employees in service encounters. Their presence offers many potential benefits, but customers are reluctant to engage with them. A possible explanation is that conversational agents do not make optimal use of communicative behaviors that enhance relational outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to identify which human-like communicative behaviors used by conversational agents have positive effects on relational outcomes and which additional behaviors could be investigated in future research.

This paper presents a systematic review of 61 articles that investigated the effects of communicative behaviors used by conversational agents on relational outcomes. A taxonomy is created of all behaviors investigated in these studies, and a research agenda is constructed on the basis of an analysis of their effects and a comparison with the literature on human-to-human service encounters.

The communicative behaviors can be classified along two dimensions: modality (verbal, nonverbal, appearance) and footing (similarity, responsiveness). Regarding the research agenda, it is noteworthy that some categories of behaviors show mixed results and some behaviors that are effective in human-to-human interactions have not yet been investigated in conversational agents.

By identifying potentially effective communicative behaviors in conversational agents, this study assists managers in optimizing encounters between conversational agents and customers.

This is the first study that develops a taxonomy of communicative behaviors in conversational agents and uses it to identify avenues for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the impact of persistent racial bias, discrimination and racial violence is facilitated by otherwise well-intentioned individuals who fail to act or intercede. Utilizing the aversive racism framework, the need to move beyond awareness raising to facilitate behavioral changes is discussed. Examining the unique lens provided by the aversive racism framework and existing research, the bystander effect provides important insights on recent acts of racial violence such as the murder of Mr. George Floyd. Some promise is shown by the work on effective bystander behavior training and highlights the need for shared responsibility in preventing the outcomes of racial violence and discrimination to create meaningful and long-lasting social change.

This paper uses literature based on the aversive racism framework together with the literature on the bystander effect to understand the factors, conditions and consequences for lack of intervention when the victim is African American. This paper also provides evidence and theory-based recommendations for strategies to change passive bystanders into active allies.

The use of the aversive racism framework provides a powerful lens to help explain the inconsistencies in the bystander effect based on the race of the victim. The implications for intervention models point to the need for behavioral and competency-based approaches that have been shown to provide meaningful change.

Several different approaches to address incidents of racial aggression and violence have been developed in the past. However, given the principles of aversive racism, a unique approach that considers the inconsistencies between self-perceptions and actions is needed. This sets a new agenda for future research and meaningful behavioral intervention programs that seek to equip bystanders to intercede in the future.

The need to address and provide effective strategies to reduce the incidence of racial aggression and violence have wide-ranging benefits for individuals, communities and society.

By connecting the aversive racism framework to the bystander effect, the need for different models for developing responsive and active bystanders can be more effectively outlined.

Many service industries are facing severe labor shortages. As a result, service providers are turning to new sources of labor, such as service robots. Critics however often point out that service robots lack emotional communication capabilities without which they cannot be expected to truly replace human employees and fill the emerging labor market gaps. Here, a research agenda for the investigation of the role of emotional communication by service robots and its effects on customers and their service experience are laid out. This paper aims to propose that research in this area will further understanding of how service robots can add value to service frontlines, engage customers, increasingly replace service employees and ultimately help overcome pressing labor shortages.

A research agenda structured around the three-step emotional communication process (i.e. read, decide and express) and the four emotional communication strategies crucial for service interactions (i.e. mimicking, alleviating, infusing and preventing) are conceptualized.

Three contributions are made. First, the importance of emotional communication by service robots during service interactions is highlighted. Second, interdisciplinary research priorities and opportunities in this emerging field are mapped out. Third, a theoretical structure to connect the findings of future studies is provided.

Service research investigating the role and implications of emotional communication by service robots is scarce. A research agenda to guide the exploration of this crucial, yet underresearched component of customer-robot service interactions is structured and mapped out.

This paper focuses on the orientation of the economy expressed in the communication of the Central Economic Work Conference (CEWC) of China and its relation with the stock market. This study seeks to explore which orientation of the economy may have a stronger impact on the rise of the stock market. It proposes words connoting orientation of the economy (WOE) that is closely related to the stock market, and different WOE has different impacts on the stock market in terms of intensity. The study aims to provide investors with better investment strategies by identifying the stronger developmental WOE.

The paper opted for an exploratory study using the textual analysis approach, based on a corpus of 28 CEWC communications spanning from 1994 to 2021. The raw corpus amounted to 50,754 words in total that are treated with noise reduction method and record an effective corpus of 39,591.

The paper provides empirical insights into the close relationship of the WOE of the CEWC to the stock market, and different WOE has different impacts on the stock market in terms of intensity. It suggests that WOE connoting development may forecast a rising stock market if it is nearly 40% higher than the other two WOEs by impact index.

As WOE is only proven in the CEWC, this paper has its limitations in the scope of samples. It is necessary to apply WOE to more Central Bank communication (CBC) and countries. It is desirable to apply the Gunning–Fog index.

The paper includes implications for investors to read out the orientation of the economy and the degree of different WOEs. Investors are keener to know “what” degree of the CEWC leads to the rise/fall of the stock market. The impact index can be an indicator of a tendency of the stock market, which upgrades the rationality of investment decisions.

This paper fulfills words connoting the orientation of economy as an identified linguistic feature, which the impact of CEWC on stockmarket can be measured.

Previous academic research studies mostly focus on the impact on stock market from the language features of CBC, rather than that from the more influential body, CEWC communication. This study seeks to provide the relationship of CEWC communication and the time length of the impact on the stock prices.

The purpose of the paper is to examine how media synchronicity facilitates the emergence of social exchange (i.e. trust and reciprocity) in organizations’ information and communication technology (ICT)-mediated interactions. A model of media synchronicity in organizational social exchange (MSiOSE) is proposed.

The paper has a design and review approach. The theoretical analysis is based on social exchange theory (SET) and media synchronicity theory (MST).

The authors propose that, in general, social exchange benefits from both asynchronous and synchronous communication processes. However, media synchronicity has different boundary conditions (i.e. pros and cons) in relation to the emergence of social exchange, determined in accordance with the mutually interacting patterns of trust and reciprocity predicted by SET. The authors provide testable theoretical propositions to support the analysis.

Social exchange is a critical business factor for organizations due to its well-known positive outcomes, such as the strengthening of social ties. The need for successful social exchange in remote work conditions is particularly emphasized. However, with regard to the communication and behavioral patterns that lead to social exchange via ICT, the theoretical understanding is limited. The study reveals previously unmapped heuristics between social exchange and physical media capabilities. Thus, the study's propositions can be used to study and analyze social exchange in the ever-changing media landscape. As a practical contribution, the study helps organizations to improve their communication strategies and use of ICT.

This study aims to propose and test a model that examines the potential connections between two teacher situational variables (teacher immediacy and credibility) and three learner affective factors (motivation, attitudes and communication confidence) and to examine how such associations predict learners’ L2WTC (Foreign/second language willingness to communicate) in a language class via a comprehensive communication model to structurally verify the theoretically based associations among these variables.

In total, 214 females and 198 males took part in the study with age range between 19 and 38 years. Participants filled in a verified, translated Arabic version of the questionnaires using an online questionnaire. Data were gathered using questionnaires and were analyzed using descriptive statistics, confirmatory factor analysis, path analysis and sequential mediation analysis using bootstrapping methods to identify and verify direct and indirect paths in the model.

The initial L2 communication structural model showed acceptable goodness of model fit. Teacher credibility and immediacy behaviors only indirectly predicted L2WTC through the mediation of affective variables. Motivation and communication confidence mediated the relationship between credibility and L2WTC, while the association between immediacy and L2WTC was mediated by communication confidence.

The findings of this study have important pedagogical implications globally for professions related to communication instruction, especially with regard to teacher credibility behaviors and particularly for practitioners and beneficiaries in EFL contexts where learners are widely acknowledged for their unwillingness to communicate in foreign language classes.

The purpose of this study is to understand the perceptual differences toward smiling behaviors with head inclinations displaying by the human-like robot staff and human staff in a service setting.

This study adopted a 2 (staff: robot/human personal personnel) × 3 (head tilt: left/right/straight) full factorial design, while cross-examining participants’ cultural dimensions 2 (power distance: high/lower) × 2 (gender: male/female) during the service encounter.

Overall, it was found that male and female customers with different cultural background would perceive robot and human personnel with varying degrees of head tilt very differently, namely, regarding interpersonal warmth but not customer satisfaction.

Nonverbal cues serve as important elements in the interaction. This paper provides new directions on the design of anthropomorphic robot and gives insight to people’s perceptual differences. All in all, the present study is useful in facilitating human–robot interactions.

The authors systematically review empirical dyadic service encounter research published in top-tier journals between 1972 and 2022.

The authors employed bibliometric techniques, co-citation analysis and bibliographic coupling analysis to map schools of thought and research frontiers within the dyadic service encounter literature. In total, the authors analyzed 155 articles. To ensure inclusion of high-quality research, the authors screened articles from 139 journals with “4” or “4*” ratings on the 2021 Chartered Association of Business Schools (ABS) journal list, in addition to articles published in three service sector-specific journals: Journal of Service Management, Journal of Services Marketing and Journal of Service Theory and Practice.

The authors' co-citation analysis identified four distinct clusters within the dyadic service encounter literature: (1) shaping and explaining service encounters; (2) emotions in service work; (3) modeling, manipulating and measuring encounter service quality and (4) emotional labor and regulation in dyadic service encounters. Furthermore, the authors' bibliographic coupling analysis generated three research clusters: (1) service encounter characteristics; (2) emotions and emotional labor and (3) service encounter interaction content.

The authors' comprehensive review synthesizes knowledge, summarizing similarities among research clusters within the service encounter realm. Noteworthy are research clusters that clarify the emotion-based underpinnings and reciprocal nature of behaviors and emotions within dyadic encounters. By conducting complementary bibliometric analyses, the authors trace the evolution of the service encounter literature, providing an overview of the present state of dyadic service encounter research. These analyses offer valuable insights into the current landscape of the field, identifying future dyadic service encounter research opportunities.

A major paradigm shift focusing on the dark side of leadership has generated lots of concern for organizations as leadership has cascading effects on employees’ behaviour. This study aims to understand negative behaviours in the organization as a system of interrelated interaction initiated from the top which trickles down to employees.

Drawing on the theories of social exchange and norms of reciprocity, social learning and displaced aggression, this study models how and when abusive supervision relates to employees’ task performance. The model is empirically tested and extended to cover mediation and moderation processes. Drawing data from 218 bank supervisors and employees, this study uses the structural equation modelling to analyse a trickle-down model of abusive supervision.

Results from multi-waved, multi-sourced data indicated a mediating effect on the abusive supervision–performance relationships and provided support for employees’ guilt proneness and emotional dissonance as moderators. Overall, the results provided support for a moderated mediation relationship in the trickle-down model.

This study provides new knowledge into the potential boundary conditions of employees’ guilt proneness and emotional dissonance in affecting the relationship between abusive supervision, counterproductive work behaviour and task performance.

The assessment of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) in childhood has two essential aspects: the identification of the risk (under 30 months of age) and the definition of a diagnosis that takes into account its core areas as well as further non-specific aspects. The purpose of this paper is to present an approach that considers the combination of clinical evaluation with the use of tools that analyse the various levels of the child’s functioning as fundamental.

The comprehensive assessment at the Institute of Ortofonologia in Rome provides the ADOS-2 and the Leiter-R for the evaluation of the symptomatology, the severity level, the non-verbal cognitive functioning and the fluid reasoning; the TCE and the UOI are used to identify, respectively, the child’s emotional skills and the ability to understand the intentions of others, as precursors of the theory of mind. Within this assessment, the Brief-P, the Short Sensory Profile and the RBS are also included for the evaluation of executive functions, sensory pattern and of restricted and repetitive behaviours, as observed by parents.

How to define a reliable development profile, which allows to plan a specific intervention calibrated on the potential of the child and on his development trajectory, is described. Two clinical cases are also presented.

The entire process is aimed both at a detailed assessment of the child’s functioning and at identifying a specific therapeutic project and predictive factors for achieving an optimal outcome.