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Article
Publication date: 1 July 2003

Carol C. Bienstock, Carol W. DeMoranville and Rachel K. Smith

What is the best way for service organizations to evaluate and motivate service employees so that customers are retained and new customers are attracted? What motivates service…

15722

Abstract

What is the best way for service organizations to evaluate and motivate service employees so that customers are retained and new customers are attracted? What motivates service employees to deliver high quality service? Are there actions a service organization can take, e.g. way of evaluating, training, and rewarding employees, which encourage them to perform to the organization’s advantage? Answers to these questions would enable a service organization to formulate a system that links human resource management policies to desired service employee performance, thus enhancing customer perceptions of service quality and organizational financial outcomes. This research investigated organizational citizenship behavior, with its framework of organizational rights and responsibilities, to explore these issues. The research shows that service employee perceptions of how they are treated by the service organization, i.e. what organizational rights they receive, are positively associated with organizational citizenship behaviors. Furthermore, it demonstrates that these behaviors result in more effective service delivery to organizational standards and enhanced customer perceptions of service quality.

Details

Journal of Services Marketing, vol. 17 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0887-6045

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 27 January 2012

John E. Cicala, Rachel K. Smith and Alan J. Bush

This exploratory research aims to examine the commonalities and differences in how buyers and sellers perceive and characterize an effective sales presentation in an attempt to…

6776

Abstract

Purpose

This exploratory research aims to examine the commonalities and differences in how buyers and sellers perceive and characterize an effective sales presentation in an attempt to present issues/themes that may help start a dialogue into the theoretical underpinnings of effective sales presentations.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper consists of a qualitative study involving both salespeople and buyers.

Findings

The study uncovers three common themes of an effective sales presentation – knowledge, adaptability, and trust – but exposes a gap between buyer and seller expectations and perspectives of these themes.

Practical implications

The findings provide insight for business‐to‐business (B2B) salespeople and managers as to what buyers and sellers consider characteristic of an effective sales presentation.

Originality/value

By focusing on how the two main parties to an exchange – the buyer and seller – define what makes an effective sales presentation, this paper adds knowledge to the area of B2B sales research.

Details

Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, vol. 27 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0885-8624

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 20 November 2017

Colette Rabin and Grinell Smith

The purpose of this paper is to explore social studies from the moral perspective of an ethic of care. Care ethics considers not only the cognitive skills but also the affective…

1806

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore social studies from the moral perspective of an ethic of care. Care ethics considers not only the cognitive skills but also the affective dimensions of educative experiences for how they might forward an ethical ideal of caring.

Design/methodology/approach

This case study was conducted in a second-grade classroom at a small, diverse, urban, independent K-8th grade elementary school. Data were gathered from six sources: notes from the participating second-grade teacher’s planning meetings over the course of a two and a half month unit of instruction about genealogy; lesson plans and observation notes; interviews of participating teachers; interviews with participating students; surveys of students; and the second-grade teacher’s reflective journal. The authors took a phenomenological approach to data analysis, examining the entire data set and conducting inductive interpretive coding to identify emergent themes.

Findings

The authors found that adopting the theoretical perspective of care ethics helped a novice elementary teacher revise his/her approach to social studies instruction. Care ethics led to the teacher coming to see himself/herself as a teacher of care ethics, focusing on dialogue over stories to teach caring in diverse contexts, and highlighting social aspects of the curriculum. The students’ descriptions of their learning indicate that they perceived a larger purpose for their social studies lessons – in this case, participation in social life – and that this perception contributed to their engagement.

Research limitations/implications

The study was conducted at one school site where the teachers enjoyed the intellectual freedom to infuse new perspectives such as care ethics into their curriculum. More research needs to be done to explore the feasibility of application of these ideas elsewhere.

Practical implications

Implications include how adopting an ethic of care provides a larger purpose for social studies that may deepen the educative experience, both for the teacher and for the students. Adopting an ethic of care in social studies might help cultivate students’ inclination to act in more caring ways toward one another.

Originality/value

This paper addresses the overlooked ethical purposes of teaching social studies from a care ethics perspective.

Details

Social Studies Research and Practice, vol. 12 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1933-5415

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 18 January 2022

Ron P. Smith

This chapter examines the effect of changes in the public debt–gross domestic product (GDP) ratio on long, 10 year, interest rates in a panel of 17 countries over the period…

Abstract

This chapter examines the effect of changes in the public debt–gross domestic product (GDP) ratio on long, 10 year, interest rates in a panel of 17 countries over the period 1870–2016 controlling for other variables, in particular the world interest rate. Over this long period, one can argue that most of the big changes in public debt were the product of factors largely exogenous to national interest rate determination, such as war, depression or financial crisis. The issue is of current relevance since the Covid-19 pandemic has caused large increases in the ratio of public debt to GDP in many countries. The estimates suggest that it is the change in debt, rather than the level of debt or the deficit that matters for long interest rates. World interest rates have long- and short-run effects on interest rates which are very well determined and close to one. Current inflation has a small but significant effect.

Details

Essays in Honor of M. Hashem Pesaran: Prediction and Macro Modeling
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80262-062-7

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 19 March 2024

Uma Mazyck Jayakumar

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision to effectively end race-conscious admissions practices across the nation, this paper highlights the law’s commitment to…

Abstract

Purpose

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision to effectively end race-conscious admissions practices across the nation, this paper highlights the law’s commitment to whiteness and antiblackness, invites us to mourn and to connect to possibility.

Design/methodology/approach

Drawing from the theoretical contributions of Cheryl Harris, Jarvis Givens and Chezare Warren, as well as the wisdom of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissenting opinion, this paper utilizes CRT composite counterstory methodology to illuminate the antiblack reality of facially “race-neutral” admissions.

Findings

By manifesting the impossible situation that SFFA and the Supreme Court’s majority seek to normalize, the composite counterstory illuminates how Justice Jackson’s hypothetical enacts a fugitive pedagogy within a dominant legal system committed to whiteness as property; invites us to mourn, to connect to possibility and to remain committed to freedom as an intergenerational project that is inherently humanizing.

Originality/value

In a sobering moment where we face the end of race-conscious admissions, this paper uniquely grapples with the contradictions of affirmative action as minimally effective while also radically disruptive.

Book part
Publication date: 30 April 2024

Kimberly M. Baker

This study is a radical interactionist analysis of family conflict. Drawing on both a negotiated order perspective and Athen's theory of complex dominative encounters, this study…

Abstract

This study is a radical interactionist analysis of family conflict. Drawing on both a negotiated order perspective and Athen's theory of complex dominative encounters, this study analyzes the role that domination plays in conflicts among intimates. As the family engages in repeated conflicts over roles, the family also engages in negotiations over the family order, what role each party should play, interpretations of past events, and plans for the future. These conflicts take place against a backdrop of patriarchy that asymmetrically distributes power in the family to determine the family order. The data from this study come from a content analysis of mothers with substance use problems as depicted in the reality television show Intervention. The conflicts in these families reveal that these families develop a grinding family order in which families engaged in repeated conflict but also continued to operate as and identify as a family. These conflicts are shaped by and reinforce patriarchal expectations that mothers are central to family operation. The intervention at the end of each episode offered an opportunity for the family to engage in a concerted campaign to try to force the mother into treatment and reestablish the family order.

Article
Publication date: 15 November 2019

Rachel Martin

This paper synthesizes existing experimental research in the area of investor perceptions and offers directions for future research. Investor-related experimental research has…

Abstract

This paper synthesizes existing experimental research in the area of investor perceptions and offers directions for future research. Investor-related experimental research has grown substantially, especially in the last decade, as it has made valuable contributions in establishing causal links, examining underlying process measures, and examining areas with little available data. Within this review, I examine 121 papers and identify three broad categories that affect investor perceptions: information format, investor features, and disclosure credibility. Information format describes how investors are influenced by information salience, information labeling, reporting and accounting complexity, financial statement recognition, explanatory disclosures, and proposed disclosure changes. Investor features describes investors’ use of heuristics, investor preferences, and the effect of investor experience. Disclosure credibility is influenced by external and internal assurance, management credibility, disclosure characteristics, and management incentives. Using this framework, I summarize the existing research and identify areas that would benefit from additional research.

Details

Journal of Accounting Literature, vol. 43 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0737-4607

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 12 March 2019

Rachael L. Lewis, David A. Brown and Nicole C. Sutton

The purpose of this paper is to reframe the debate about the tension between management control and employee empowerment by drawing on a theory of paradox. Reframing the problem…

6378

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to reframe the debate about the tension between management control and employee empowerment by drawing on a theory of paradox. Reframing the problem in this way draws attention to the variety of ways in which organisations can attend to both control and empowerment simultaneously.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors undertake a conceptual examination of the relationship between empowerment and control using a paradox theory lens. First, the authors bring together two dimensions of empowerment – structural empowerment and psychological empowerment – and combine them to produce three new empowerment “scenarios”: illusory empowerment, obstructed empowerment and authentic empowerment. For each of these three scenarios, the central tenets of paradox theory are applied in order to explain the nature of the paradoxical tension, anticipated behavioural responses and the resulting challenges for ongoing management control.

Findings

The authors find that neither structural nor psychological empowerment alone can account for variation in behavioural responses to management control. The conceptual analysis highlights the interplay of socio-ideological control and systems of accountability in generating psychological empowerment and demonstrates that this does not come at a cost to management control but instead results in a reduction in the scale and scope of ongoing challenges.

Originality/value

This paper contributes a new theoretical perspective on the classic problem of tension between management control and employee empowerment. Rather than positioning control and empowerment either as a managerial choice or dialectic, the authors identify three different ways in which organisations can engage with both paradoxical elements simultaneously.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 32 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 28 March 2023

N.T. Khuong Truong, Susan J. Smith, Gavin Wood, William A.V. Clark, William Lisowski and Rachel Ong ViforJ

The purpose of this paper is to consider one test of a well-functioning housing system – its impact on wellbeing. Exploring one indicator of this, this study aims to track changes…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to consider one test of a well-functioning housing system – its impact on wellbeing. Exploring one indicator of this, this study aims to track changes in mental and general health across a mix of tenure transitions and financial transactions in three jurisdictions: Australia, the UK and the USA.

Design/methodology/approach

Using matched variables from three national panel surveys (Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia, British Household Panel Survey/Understanding Society and Panel Study of Income Dynamics) over 17 years (2000–2017) to capture the sweep of the most recent housing cycle, this study adopts a difference-in-difference random-effects model specification to estimate the mental and general health effects of tenure change and borrowing behaviours.

Findings

There is an enduring health premium associated with unmortgaged owner-occupation. Mortgage debt detracts from this, as does the prospect of dropping out of ownership and into renting. A previously observed post-exit recovery in mental health – a debt-relief effect – is not present in the longer run. In fact, in some circumstances, both mental and general health deficits are amplified, even among those who eventually regain homeownership. Though there are cross-country differences, the similarities across these financialised housing systems are more striking.

Practical implications

The well-being premium traditionally associated with owner occupation is under threat at the edges of the sector in all three jurisdictions. In this, there is cross-national convergence. There may therefore be scope to introduce policies to better support households at the edges of ownership that work across the board for debt-funded ownership-centred housing systems.

Originality/value

This paper extends the duration of a previous analysis of the impact of tenure transitions and financial transactions on well-being at the edges of ownership in the UK and Australia. The authors now track households over nearly two decades from the start of the millennium into a lengthy (post-global financial crisis) era of declining housing affordability. This study adds to the reach of the earlier study by adding a general health variable and a third jurisdiction, the USA.

Details

International Journal of Housing Markets and Analysis, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1753-8270

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 9 August 2016

Gretchen Vogelgesang Lester, Meghna Virick and Rachel Clapp-Smith

One of the biggest challenges facing global organizations is the ability of leadership and International Human Resource Management (IHRM) professionals to capture the positive…

Abstract

One of the biggest challenges facing global organizations is the ability of leadership and International Human Resource Management (IHRM) professionals to capture the positive outcomes of a diverse workforce while fostering inclusion amongst its workers. New theory based upon optimal distinctiveness theory has challenged researchers to approach inclusion in a holistic manner, transcending political boundaries and cultural meanings of diversity to instead promote the uniqueness of individuals within-group belongingness. This chapter proposes a theoretical model that suggests leader capabilities such as global mindset can foster inclusiveness while reaping the benefits of unique backgrounds and diverse ideas. Two important individual-level outcomes of inclusiveness are presented: creativity and psychological safety. Also discussed are implications for strategic IHRM through recruitment, selection, talent management, and performance management activities.

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