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The purpose of this paper is to highlight both the contribution and the present need to reconfigure the literature on “queue culture” as a precursor of the sociology of waiting.

The study employs a legal-structural lens in comparing the initial conceptual treatment of the archetypal “waiting line” with the “line” modifying sociology of waiting that results in waiting rooms, number and telephone queues and in the experience of online waiting.

The initial conception of the culture of the queue understates the importance of three factors: first, the role of third parties in the design, management and inculcation of rules binding those experiencing thick time; second the degree to which communication technology and its attachment to the “mobilities” paradigm has thinned the experience of thick time and lastly the degree to which the increasing commodification of the wait has resulted in the creation of waiting time as a form of pay as you go flexitime.

The social construction of waiting and the experience of thick time are shown to be increasingly part of the privatized market experience where queue management innovations not only are commercialized but have strong implications for the egalitarian social assumptions imbedded in the initial queue culture based sociology of waiting. Policy implications support the present pay for use philosophy increasingly applied in the transition from public to private management of space.

The self-policing “fairness” of the waiting line is now open to scrutiny given the proliferation of the newly shaped distributional logics imbedded in the management, design and use of waiting spaces.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Examines sociological aspects of queue culture and the nature of people’s responses to it. Sees the importance of certain conventions attached to queue culture but, more importantly, considers the “thick” time in which it is experienced. Examines the way the nature of this time is changing, as both those who queue and those ultimately responsible for creating the process find ways in which this time can be explored.

The paper provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world’s leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

Extant literature on queuing has identified service queues as social systems where social justice is an important factor for service evaluation. First-order justice, defined as a first-come first-served (FCFS) process, has been found to be a necessary condition of social justice and positive evaluation. Second-order justice, defined as equal waiting time, has been found to be an additional factor which comes into play only when first-order justice is met. This paper aims to show that in the emerging market situation, the above definitions of justice and the order mentioned above does not work.

Instead of equal wait, the study has focused on equitable wait, i.e. waiting duration is in sync with the service needs. Three experiments have been performed to establish the hypotheses suggested.

FCFS is found not to be the necessary condition as it was in the extant literature and can be relaxed sometimes to get higher service evaluation by ensuring justice from the equitable wait. The study also portrays the interaction effects of the two types of social justice on service evaluation. Moreover, the impact of justice from equitable wait on service evaluations is found to be moderated by perceived personal connect of the service provider and the consumer, perceived importance of system and process and perceived ability of the service provider of capacity improvement and mediated by perceived control of service provider on providing the justice of equitable wait.

The study contributes toward the understanding of social justice in service queues. It also contributes to the literature of attribution theory and consumer betrayal.

The study provides suggestions to retail managers in emerging markets to choose queue management strategies depending on the size of the retail shops and consumers’ expectations from them.

The study introduces the concept of justice from the equitable wait, which is original in the queuing literature to the best of the author’s knowledge. The study also finds a new order of justice in the emerging market scenario.

Recent decades have witnessed a rise in food charity provided by faith-based and other charitable agencies. Previous research has noted that besides material assistance, these occasions provide a social and communal event for many participants. The purpose of this paper is to examine this notion by exploring how the social organization of breadlines contributes to the social relationships between the food recipients and their experiences of these places as communities, and what qualities these communities eventually develop.

The study is based on ethnographic data from four breadlines in one Finnish city. The study approaches the breadlines as queues, that is, social systems that govern waiting, mutual order and access.

The social organization of queue practices mirrors the users’ experiences of the breadlines as communities with many concurrent faces: as communities of mutual surveillance and as demanding communities that call for skills and resources from the participants, as well as socially significant communities. The findings show how the practices of organizing charitable assistance influence the complex social relationships between charitable giver and recipient, and how the food recipients accommodate themselves to the situations and social roles available on a given occasion.

Analysing breadlines as queues and using qualitative data from the everyday assistance events gives voice to the experiences of food charity recipients and allows a more nuanced picture to be painted of the breadline communities than studies based merely on surveys or interviews.

Waiting in services commonly reduces customer satisfaction and has a considerable and enduring negative effect on the overall evaluation of a service. Waiting may even lead consumers to abandon a service or to avoid that service on future occasions. This paper aims to advance the understanding of the role played by culture in shaping the perceptions of waiting in services. In doing so, the study aims to demonstrate that solutions for managing waiting in services should be culturally appropriate.

This study uses in-depth interviews and consumer diaries. The sample includes expatriates from most continents living in Catalonia, Spain.

The study confirms existing theories on cultural differences in time orientations in a services marketing context. It uncovers a range of culture-bound rules of waiting and differences in cultural interpretations of what it means to wait and even whether waiting is occurring or not.

This study questions the applicability of some standard waiting solutions across cultural contexts. Companies that operate in different cultures should consider their approach to managing waiting times according to the cultural time orientations of their customer base. The cultural aspects of time-based service guarantees and time-rationing strategies are considered.

This paper takes an innovate approach to “uncovering” the implicit rules of waiting by asking expatriate consumers about their waiting experiences while living abroad. Expatriates are in a unique position to identify these differences, as they have a cultural point of comparison with their home countries.

In my article, I put forward the thesis that today's consumer attitudes promoted and practiced as the pursuit of sustainable development have their genealogy in the everyday life of Polish women and their savings and inventiveness resulting from living conditions in a socialist state. Polish women's life stories under communism, which I conducted as a part of international research project, contain a kind of instructions on how to use modest resources frugally, inventively, and creatively to ensure a decent life for yourself and your family. What's more, many resource-saving practices developed by our generational grandmothers and mothers are experiencing a renaissance, such as the production of organic food at home or the re-circulation and remaking of second-hand clothes. So, when it comes to sustainable development, old everyday practices of saving resources through their ingenious and creative use are returning to favor. With the awareness of contemporary civilization threats, their usefulness may once again turn out to be salutary for humanity.

Although there are more primarily undergraduate institutions (PUIs) than research-oriented institutions (ROIs) in the United States and more professors work at PUIs than ROIs, most research on gender inequality among faculty has focused on ROIs. Do patterns of women’s numeric scarcity, gender-hostile work climates, and difficulties with work-life balance found at ROIs hold true for PUIs? This chapter examines one PUI to address this question.

We analyze data from four sources: an archival database of all professors at the institution, interviews with full and associate professors, and two surveys.

Similar to ROIs, our study found women were less likely to achieve higher ranks, and take longer than men to do so. However, we find greater numbers of women and few gender differences in perception of climate, so numeric scarcity and gender-hostile climate cannot explain persistent lags in women’s advancement. Instead, we find women struggle with work-life balance more than men, especially in science disciplines. Thus, gender parity in advancement has yet to fully emerge, despite more women in the faculty and a more equitable climate than at ROIs.

Differences between faculty cohorts are intensified at the PUI because of changes to the institution’s mission, but our research demonstrates that not all gendered patterns found at ROIs apply to PUIs.

PUIs that increasingly emphasize scholarly output should enact family-friendly policies to support all professors, including on-campus or subsidized childcare, flexible scheduling, family leave, and dual-career hiring policies.

This chapter demonstrates that there are important differences between ROIs and PUIs that must be taken into account if we are to understand and remedy gender inequality in academia.

Critical realism is an increasingly popular “lens” through which complex events, entities and phenomena can be studied. Yet detailed operationalisations of critical realism are at present relatively scarce. This study's objective here is built on existing debates by developing an open systems model of reality, a basis for designing appropriate, internally consistent methodologies.

The authors use a qualitative case study examining changing practices for client contact management in professional services firms during restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 crisis to show how the model can be operationalised across all stages of a research study.

This study contributes to the literature on qualitative applications of critical realism by providing a detailed example of how the research paradigm influenced choices at every stage of the case study process.

More importantly, this model of reality as an open system provides a tool for other researchers to use in their own operationalisation of critical realism in a variety of different settings.

Although preferential treatment has been considered a positive relationship marketing tactic, this research aims to examine how perceived harm to others as a result of preferential treatment invokes consumers’ negative moral emotions and negative attitudes towards the service provider.

Four studies are presented in this research. A pilot study first provides empirical evidence that customers who receive preferential treatment are aware of potential harm caused to other customers. Three experimental studies then test the hypothesis that shame and embarrassment mediate the effect of perceived harm to others on consumers’ responses to earned and unearned preferential treatment, respectively.

The present studies demonstrate that consumers naturally scan the environment and seek out information about others when judging their own experience; consequently, when preferential treatment is perceived to cause harm to others, it can trigger negative moral emotions. In particular, the authors show that shame mediates the effect of perceived harm to others when preferential treatment is earned, whereas embarrassment mediates this effect when preferential treatment is unearned.

The results of this research contribute to the literature on earned and unearned preferential treatment and negative moral emotions. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research to show that negative moral emotions may arise because of perceptions of harm to other customers, particularly in the context of earned preferential treatment. The authors demonstrate that ordinary shopping contexts have the potential to elicit these negative emotions, raising concerns about ethical and moral practices in service environments.

When designing relationship marketing programs incorporating preferential treatment, firms need to consider both the ethics of justice and the ethics of care. Guidelines considering ethics of care should be developed for employees to ensure appropriate training to deliver preferential treatment effectively and avoiding situations causing potential harm to others. Strategies could include encouraging employees to better scan the servicescape to identify if other customers’ needs should be attended first, and providing clearer justifications when administering preferential treatment. The provision of choices such as delayed redemption and passing on benefits to others can help minimise harm and potentially enhance customer service experience.

The studies presented here are the first to examine the role of perceived harm to others as an antecedent of consumers’ negative responses to preferential treatment. In particular, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to show that negative moral emotions may arise in the context of earned preferential treatment, calling into question some basic principles of relationship marketing.

The purpose of this paper is to propose and test a model which defines the psychological processes that mediate the relationship between perceived wait duration (PWD) and satisfaction. This model will provide a framework for evaluating the impact of situational and environmental variables in the servicescape on customer reaction to the wait experience.

The approach included one field study and two laboratory experiments in which subjects participated in a service with a pre‐process wait and evaluated their experience on a survey.

Perceived wasted time, perceived control, perceived boredom, and perceived neglect mediated the relationship between PWD and wait experience evaluation. When tested using filled versus unfilled wait time as the situational variable, the model showed that having something to do during the wait decreased perceived boredom, resulting in a more positive wait experience.

The services used in this paper were functional (as opposed to hedonistic) in nature and wait durations were a maximum of ten minutes.

The framework established in this paper can be used to evaluate customer reaction to the elements of the waiting environment design, which will help managers design waiting environments that maximize customer satisfaction, and help researchers to understand changes in the relationship between PWD and satisfaction under different environmental conditions.