Search results

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of frontline service employees (FSEs) motivation (enjoyment of work and driven to work) and ability (customer service ability) in the relationship between TFL and employee service performance.

This is a survey-based study which involves 534 FSEs and 135 supervisors in a hair salon setting. Hierarchical regression analysis was used to test the proposed hypotheses.

Results show that TFL is significantly related to employee service performance; this relationship is enhanced with the presence of driven to work; yet, it is neutralized with the presence of enjoyment of work. Further, the three-way interaction of TFL, enjoyment of work and customer service ability as well as TFL driven to work, and customer service ability are negatively associated with employee service performance.

The results advance service managers’ understanding of the importance of FSEs motivation and ability if they are to fully reap the benefits from their FSEs. The role of leader is not always effective in all situations. FSEs with high level of enjoyment of work and customer service ability would least rely on the guidance and support from the supervisors.

This research is one of the first to examine the role of subordinate’s characteristics (motivation – enjoyment of work and driven to work and ability – customer service ability) as the key moderators in the relationship between TFL and employee service performance.

Business-to-business (B2B) firms increasingly have a need for frontline sales employees who can both sell and service customer account, a task known as sales-service ambidexterity which may pose significant challenges to frontline sales employees. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to show that one has to be cognizant of the potential negative consequences brought about requiring frontline sales employees to engage in sales-service ambidexterity and find a way to mitigate such negative consequences.

The multisource data for this study was collected from frontline sales employees and their respective supervisors working across multiple B2B pharmaceutical companies in a Southeast Asian country. The data were analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) and PROCESS Macro.

The results reveal a negative indirect effect of sales-service ambidexterity sales performance through role overload. This negative indirect effect is fully neutralized when information exchange is high but not when it is low.

This study underscores the importance of not only the negative consequence of sales-service ambidexterity but also offers insights into how this negative consequence is neutralized so that sales performance is maximized.

Prior studies have mainly advanced the understanding of a linear relationship between leadership humility and employee work outcomes, mediated and/or moderated by various individual, team and organizational variables. This study attempts to advance prior knowledge by investigating a potential curvilinear relationship between leadership humility and frontline service employee (FSE) performance and the role of FSE's psychological capital (PsyCap) in attenuating this curvilinear relationship.

Survey data were drawn from a survey sample of 273 FSEs working in the hospitality industry of the United States of America. Hierarchical linear regression analysis was used to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results uncover the existence of a tipping point in the relationship between leader humility and FSE performance; that is, humble behaviors expressed by leaders positively influence FSE performance up to the tipping point beyond which FSE performance starts to diminish. However, this curvilinear effect is attenuated when FSE's PsyCap is high but not when it is low.

The findings provide service managers with insights into the importance of balancing their humble behaviors to yield optimal FSE performance. Furthermore, the paper points to the need for FSE's PsyCap cultivation within service firms so that FSEs are less dependent on their supervisors and can deliver highly satisfactory results.

This research is one of the very first to investigate the curvilinear relationship between leader humility and FSE performance and the moderating role of PsyCap in attenuating the curvilinear effect.

The literature establishes complex relationships between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and performance, with mixed findings suggesting the variability of the magnitude of the relationship between the two. Some studies report a positive relationship, some negative, while some report an insignificant relationship between EO and performance. These conflicting findings suggest that the EO-performance relationship is more complex than a simple main-effects-only relationship. The literature offers two distinct approaches – integrating moderating or mediation variables in advancing the EO-performance relationship. The purpose of this paper is to extend current knowledge by examining underlying processes through which EO contributes to performance and the specific conditions under which this process is facilitated.

To test the hypotheses the authors chose small service firms in Australia. Industry representation included: accommodation and food services; health care services; rental, hiring and real estate services; transport, postal and warehousing; arts and recreation services; retail trade; construction and training services; and professional, scientific and technical services. The services sector offers a unique opportunity to analyze variances in entrepreneurial engagement and organizational outcomes given the competitive intensity within the service sector which requires firms to engage in venturing, renewal and innovation. The proposed hypotheses were tested through a hierarchical regression analysis.

This study finds the support for the mediation effect of marketing capability on the EO-performance relationship. Critically, this study also finds that marketing resources moderates on the indirect effect of EO on performance via marketing capability. The findings supporting both the mediation and moderation effects of marketing capability and marketing resources on the EO-performance relationship (moderated mediation model) suggests that greater insight into how EO influences small service firm performance can be achieved through considering in combination with other firm-level constructs (marketing capability and marketing resources in this study).

It addresses the call by prior studies to link the EO construct to theory by embedding marketing resources and marketing capabilities in the EO-performance relationship. Importantly, by accounting for both mediation and moderation effects the authors provide a more complete picture of the EO-performance relationship that highlights the mediating role of marketing capability and the moderating role of marketing resources. This approach helps to reconcile the critical but separate directions proposed by prior studies in advancing the EO-performance relationship.

Recent branding failures (e.g. Kodak and Krispy Kreme) have cast considerable doubt on the widely accepted contention that to develop a strong brand, firms must continuously strive to be brand oriented or innovation oriented. This study aims to examine the curvilinear and interactive effects of brand orientation and innovation orientation on brand performance.

Survey data were drawn from a sample of 181 firms operating in the consumer goods sector (i.e. fashion, consumer electronics and automobile) and tested through a hierarchical regression analysis.

This study finds that the sole and exclusive focus on either brand orientation or innovation orientation is detrimental to the realisation of superior brand performance because increased levels of this focus lead to diminishing returns. Critically, this study finds that the key to achieving superior brand performance lies in the extent to which the firm integrates both brand orientation and innovation orientation.

This study extends current knowledge by showing that focusing on either brand orientation or innovation orientation in isolation is actually detrimental to the firm’s realisation of superior brand performance. The integration of brand orientation and innovation orientation is the key to achieving superior brand performance because the inherent limitations associated with each are overcome by their integration.

Organizational ambidexterity is argued to be a prerequisite for successful new product development, especially for firms operating in highly competitive emerging markets. Despite growing attention to the importance of ambidexterity, the conditions under which specific forms of ambidexterity are more or less beneficial to new product performance (NPP) remain unclear. This study aims to investigate the contingent value of two specific resource conditions that favor the pursuit of the balanced dimension versus combined dimension of ambidexterity to achieve superior NPP.

Survey data were drawn from a sample of 156 high-tech large firms operating in the Middle East and tested through a hierarchical regression analysis.

This study highlights the important role of slack resources and social networking capability in enhancing the benefits of the combined dimension of ambidexterity over the balanced dimension of ambidexterity to drive NPP.

This study extends prior research which has mainly examined organizational characteristics that facilitates organizational ambidexterity and sheds light on the specific resource conditions under which high-technology firms operating in an emerging economy should pursue balanced dimension of ambidexterity or combined dimension of ambidexterity to achieve superior NPP.

While extant research highlights the importance of both market orientation and brand orientation in brand success, it is still unclear how they actually combine to contribute to brand performance. Grounded in the theoretical perspectives of the resource-based view and dynamic capabilities, this study unpacks how, and when, brand orientation and market orientation link systematically to influence brand performance.

In testing the research hypotheses involving mediation and moderation effects, survey data were gathered from a sample of business firms in the manufacturing sector and analyzed through regression analysis.

The results suggest brand orientation manifests through market orientation to influence brand performance via the intervening mechanism of brand management capability. The results also suggest at high levels of competitive intensity, the systematic combination of market orientation and brand orientation is critical in facilitating brand management capability enhancement and subsequent brand performance.

This study extends current literature by providing a more detailed account of how brand orientation and market orientation systematically combine to yield superior brand performance via the mediating role of brand management capability. This study also provides further insights into how, in response to different levels of competitive intensity, the systematic combination of brand orientation and market orientation is managed to facilitate brand management capability enhancement and subsequent brand performance.

Performing emotional labour is required of customer-contact employees (CCEs) to regulate their emotions through acting to conform to organisational display rules. Prior research is focused on investigating the detrimental outcomes of CCEs engaging in emotional labour acting to meet these display rules and organisational-related antecedents. This study takes a fresh perspective to propose how acting deriving from job engagement is related to employee burnout. Emotional intelligence is modelled as a moderator in these relationships.

The current study focuses on customer contact employees who are currently employed within the banking industry located in the United States of America. Participants of the study were recruited using panel data through Qualtrics both symmetrical and asymmetrical methods were employed in this study to test the proposed relationships.

The findings show that, prior to including EI in the analysis, job engagement was negatively related to surface acting but positively related to deep acting. However, when EI was entered in the equation, the relationship between job engagement and deep acting became negative. EI was also negatively related to both surface and deep acting. EI significantly strengthens the emotional labour process of engagement towards emotional labour strategies as well as lessening burnout. The asymmetrical analysis offer more insights to the proposed relationships.

This study employs both symmetrical and asymmetrical methods to examine emotional labour, emotional intelligence and employee burnout. In particular, job engagement proposed as an antecedent to acting strategy is novel. The study offers some novel insights into emotional labour and emotional intelligence research. The findings have practical implications for HR practitioners and management in the service organisations.

Service industries increasingly have a need for frontline employees (FLEs) who are both adept and versatile at providing excellent customer services whilst exploring cross-/up-selling opportunities, known as service-sales ambidexterity (SSA). However, engaging in SSA poses various challenges. The purpose of this paper is twofold: First, the authors argue that the resilience of FLEs is a critical factor of their SSA and its effect is mediated by cognitive flexibility. Second, the authors propose a boundary condition – leadership humility – that affects this indirect relationship.

Survey data was drawn from two independent studies (N = 547). Study 1 was conducted via an online survey of FLEs involved in both service and sales roles in the insurance industry in North America. Data for Study 2 was collected from FLEs working in several branches of a commercial bank operating in Southeast Asia. The data was analysed using Hayes’ PROCESS Macro and SPSS.

Results from these studies reveal that resilience fosters cognitive flexibility, which, in turn, drives SSA. Additionally, leadership humility was found to moderate the indirect effect of resilience on SSA through cognitive flexibility.

The sample for this study is cross-sectional. Further research could replicate this study using longitudinal data to extract more in-depth information on developmental changes in FLEs. Additionally, the scope of this research is limited to an analysis of employees. However, the phenomenon of SSA is essentially a multi-level subject. Future research could extend the findings of this research by testing other organisational factors that would present a more inclusive framework to explain the SSA phenomenon.

The findings offer managers a new perspective of achieving the alignment between the service and sales goals of their operations.

This study contributes to the growing stream of literature on FLE’s resilience and SSA in particular and shows the role resilience plays in FLEs’ dealing with and navigating a constantly changing workplace where SSA has become a norm rather than an exception.

A strong brand is one that consumers know and perceive as differentiated from competing brands. Building brands with high levels of awareness and uniqueness is critical to ensuring brand strength and sustained competitiveness. To this end, the roles of brand management capability and brand orientation are highlighted. However, given the significance of consistency in branding, firms’ brand management capability and brand orientation alone may not be sufficient, and a mechanism that facilitates branding consistency is required. In the integrating marketing control theory with the resource-based view (RBV) and dynamic capabilities (DC) theory, this study aims to examine how a firm’s brand orientation, when supported by formalisation, contributes to building brands with high levels of awareness and uniqueness through the intervening role of brand management capability.

In testing the hypotheses proposed in this study, survey data were drawn from a sample of firms operating in the consumer goods sector and examined through hierarchical regression analysis.

This study finds that firms are more likely to build brands with high levels of awareness and uniqueness in the market when their brand orientation is supported by formalisation, because this combination (brand orientation and formalisation) facilitates branding consistency and brand management capability development.

In weaving together the theoretical perspectives of marketing control, RBV and DC, this study extends current knowledge by showing that brand management capability and brand orientation alone are insufficient for building brands with high levels of awareness and uniqueness. Instead, maximising their performance effects requires the support of formalisation.