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Researchers, with the widespread acceptance of Web-based technologies by companies, have recently discovered a new type of social capital through these mass communication tools, but there is still limited knowledge about its formation. Therefore, this study specifically aims to conceptualize and validate brand social capital (BSC) by analyzing the role of the online brand community’s social media capital (OBCSC).

Research data was collected using a questionnaire with 39 closed-ended questions. Participants, among the 220 questionnaires distributed, only returned 140 acceptable questionnaires, indicating a response rate of 64%. The statistical population of the study included managers and employees of e-commerce companies active in social media in the field of B2C who introduce and sell their products and services on various types of social networking websites. This study performed data analysis using structural equation modeling with partial least squares.

The results showed that OBCSC has a positive and significant effect on the integration of brand knowledge, branding co-creation and sense of belonging to the brand community, and in addition, using the mediating role of these three variables, it also has a positive effect on BSC. This study rejects only hypothesis 8 among all the hypotheses formulated, which shows that the sense of belonging to the brand community has no significant effect on branding co-creation.

By conceptualizing a new phenomenon called BSC and how its conversion mechanism is, this research defines a specific and formulated path to better identify the results of the organizational use of social media. In addition, it significantly contributes to increasing managers’ understanding of the importance of online brand community activities in internalizing customer brand knowledge within the company and turning it into wealth.

This paper aims to examine how leadership style in audit firms influences audit quality. The paper further explores the mediating role of knowledge sharing in the relationship between leadership style and audit quality.

The present paper studies the effects of transformational and servant leadership styles on audit quality through knowledge sharing. Data are collected from 396 Iranian external auditors via a questionnaire.

The results show that both transformational and servant leadership style significantly influence audit quality through knowledge sharing. Moreover, the impact of transformational leadership style is stronger than the impact of servant leadership style.

In audit quality literature, little attention has been devoted to both leadership style and knowledge sharing. This paper develops a parsimonious model which shows how leadership style improves audit quality, and how knowledge sharing strengthens the impact of leadership style on audit quality. The results have important implications particularly for audit industry.

本文探討審計公司內的領導風格會如何影響審計質量; 本文亦進一步探索、在領導風格與審計質量的關聯上、知識共享所扮演的調節角色。

本文旨在研究透過知識共享、轉型領導風格和僕人式領導風格會如何影響審計質量。數據取自396名伊朗外聘審計員，方法是透過一份調查問卷而進行的。

研究結果顯示、轉型領導風格和僕人式領導風格兩者均會透過知識共享、影響著審計質量，而且，這影響是頗為顯著的。就影響的程度而言，轉型領導風格的影響則較僕人式領導風格的更為強烈。

在研究審計質量的文獻裡，學者對領導風格和知識共享這兩個課題均沒多大關注。本文建立了一個簡約模型，去顯示領導風格如何能改善審計質量，以及知識共享如何能增強領導風格對審計質量的影響。研究結果給予我們重要的啟示，尤對審計行業而言。

The authors' research examines how negative electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) alters focal customers' post-recovery justice perceptions and attitudes to determine their future behavior with the service provider. Specifically, this paper develops and tests a conceptual model to investigate how negative e-WOM alters focal customers' perceptual and attitudinal outcomes after the service recovery experience. It also examines the post-recovery effect of negative e-WOM on focal customers’ willingness to patronize the service after their recovery experience.

To test the hypotheses, two pretests and two experimental studies with created scenarios in the retail context were conducted.

The authors' findings reveal that services are judged during and well beyond failure and recovery occurrences. To maintain a loyal customer base, service managers should develop processes that address service complaints both within and beyond the service consumption stage. The authors also find that despite a favorable recovery, focal customers gravitate toward the failure experience and develop unfavorable attitudes toward the service provider, leading to likely defections.

The authors' research demonstrates the persuasive power of negative e-WOM at the post-service recovery stage, making a unique contribution to the service recovery literature. This research also contributes to the persuasive effect of negative e-WOM, demonstrating message context as a boundary condition of negative e-WOM effects. In general, the authors' work highlights the importance of understanding the psychological processes involved in eliciting the persuasive influence of negative e-WOM in the post-service recovery stage that may lead to the defection of “so-called” successfully recovered customers.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the effects of innovation, specialisation, qualifications and sectoral structure on the resilience of German regions (municipal level) facing the Great Recession in 2008/2009.

To calculate the effects of various variables on the resilience of German regions against the Great Recession, the authors use quantile regressions. To measure resilience, the authors create a number of indexes representing different parts of the economy: resistance performance index, recovery performance index, shift-share resistance index, shift-share recovery index, manufacturing resistance index, manufacturing recovery index, service resistance index and service recovery index.

The results of this study confirm that locations with employment growth before the crisis and with a good industry structure show better employment dynamics during and after the crisis. The authors find evidence for positive relationship between innovativeness, qualification, the share of the service sector, specialisation and resistance. The authors obtain positive results for related variety and both resistance and recovery. The share of the manufacturing sector only shows a positive relationship with recovery.

The authors expand the existing literature in three aspects: First, instead of using regions as observation units, the authors conduct the analyses on the basis of municipalities and their surroundings. By doing so, the authors reduce the modifiable area unit problem because the authors do not rely on regions defined for administrative reasons. Second, the authors apply quantile regressions to detect nonlinear effects. Third, in addition to the resilience of the whole economy, the authors also study the resilience of the manufacturing and service sectors separately and examine the resilience of the local shift effect.

This research investigates the role of customer forgiveness as the result of online service recovery transparency in predicting customer engagement. It also examines the moderating roles of timeliness and personalization in this proposed model.

An online survey study using retrospective experience sampling and a scenario-based experimental study were conducted to test the proposed hypotheses.

Customer forgiveness positively influences customer engagement and plays a mediating role in the relationship between service recovery transparency and customer engagement. Additionally, timeliness and personalization moderate the positive influence of service recovery transparency on customer forgiveness. The positive influence of service recovery transparency on customer forgiveness is more apparent when levels of timeliness and personalization decrease.

To retain focal customers' engagement after a service failure, firms must obtain their forgiveness. One of the firm's online complaint handling strategies to increase the forgiveness level of focal customers is to provide a high level of service recovery transparency (i.e. responding to their complaints in a public channel), especially when the firm is unable to respond to online complaints quickly or provide highly personalized responses.

This research provides new insights into the underlying mechanism of customer engagement by applying the concept of customer forgiveness. It also contributes to the social influence theory by applying the essence of the theory to explain how other customers' virtual presence during the online complaint handling influences the forgiveness of focal customers in order to gain their engagement. Additionally, it provides insight into the conditions under which the role of service recovery transparency can be very effective in dealing with online complaints.

The purpose of this research is to investigate the effects of service recovery experiences on customer engagement in negative word-of-mouth (WOM) in the hotel industry and explore the psychological motives and mediating mechanisms driving consumer behavior.

A scenario-based experimental design on Qualtrics was used, with a pre-test (N = 200). The main study data were collected using Amazon's Mechanical Turk platform.

Findings reveal that negative service experiences lead to higher engagement in negative WOM compared to positive and satisfactory recovery service experiences. Even well-executed recovery efforts may not completely eliminate negative WOM. The mediating role of emotional responses is substantiated, as heightened negative service experiences result in more intense negative emotional responses, leading to increased engagement in negative WOM.

The study emphasizes the importance of service recovery strategies and the need for businesses to consistently strive for exceptional service quality. It also highlights the complexity of customer reactions to service experiences, suggesting that further research is needed to explore the factors that minimize negative WOM across various service contexts.

With the increasing use of robots in service scenarios in hospitality industries, service failure frequently occurs during the service process, and consumers may react differently toward humanoid vs. nonhumanoid robots due to different performance expectancies. This study focuses on consumers' reactions to service failures by humanoid vs. nonhumanoid robots and the different impacts on brand forgiveness and revisit intentions through performance expectancy for different genders.

The study used a sample of 280 participants to test the moderated chain mediation model. The participants were instructed to report their performance expectancies for humanoid/nonhumanoid robots and imagine a hotel check-in scenario in which a service failure occurs. Brand forgiveness, brand revisit intention and other demographic information were assessed.

The results show that consumers have higher performance expectancy for nonhumanoid robots. This performance expectancy generates brand forgiveness and revisit intentions for male consumers but does not affect female consumers' forgiveness and revisit behaviors.

This study contributes to the literature by taking a long-term perspective to investigate the outcomes after service failure, providing evidence for pending questions in previous studies and enriching studies of gender differences. Additionally, this study provides practical implications to consider the use of anthropomorphism in robots, advocate for functional confidence in robots and target consumers across genders.

Service–sales ambidexterity (SSA) offers sales managers crucial information about dealing with customer service failures through an effective management control system. This study aims to scrutinize the relationships among SSA, salesforce control system, salesperson’s role stressors and service recovery performance (SRP) in the business-to-business (B2B) context.

An analysis is conducted based on survey data collected from 586 B2B sales employees participating in an extensive survey. Structural equation modeling is used to analyze the proposed hypotheses.

Empirical findings suggest that behavior-based control harms SSA. On the other hand, outcome-based control has a positive impact on SSA. The research outcomes further disclose that SSA positively impacts salesperson role conflict and emotional fatigue, whereas emotional fatigue negatively impacts SRP. Salesperson resilience notably moderates the association between SSA and emotional fatigue.

The study addresses there is a dearth of research on SSA applying the sales management control system. When studying about ambidexterity in sales context, many supervisory styles have been explored; however, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first systematic attempt to understand how sales management control systems play a role in SSA.

Grounded in dynamic capabilities theory, this study aims to examine how dynamic capabilities and a transactive memory system (TMS) can build the resilience of service organizations and improve their financial performance. Limited studies examine the link between a TMS and organizational resilience.

The authors test a theoretical model on a sample of 350 UK service firms that were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and analyze the data using partial least square structural equation modeling.

Results highlight the positive effects of a TMS and dynamic capabilities on organizational resilience. Only a TMS and organizational resilience have direct positive effects on financial performance.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to ascertain the influence of a TMS on organizational resilience in service firms following adversity.

Prior research has advanced several explanations for social media influencers' (SMIs’) success in the burgeoning computer-mediated marketing environments but leaves one key topic unexplored: the moderating role of SMIs in service failure and recovery strategies.

Drawing on a social constructivist perspective and an inductive approach, 59 in-depth interviews were conducted with millennials from three European countries (Italy, France and the United Kingdom). Building on social influence theory and commitment-trust theory, this study conceptualises four distinct pathways unifying SMIs' efforts in the service failure recovery process.

The emergent model illustrates how source credibility and message content moderate service failure severity and speed of recovery. The insights gained from this study model contribute to research on the pivotal uniqueness of SMIs in service failure recovery processes and offer practical explanations of variations in the implementation of influencer marketing. This study examines a perspective of SMIs that considers the cycle of their influence on customers through service failure and recovery.

The study suggests that negative reactions towards service failure and recovery are reduced if customers have a relationship with influencers prior to the service failure and recovery compared with the reactions of customers who do not have a relationship with the influencer.