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The purpose of this paper is to link firms’ strategic archetypes as formulated by Miles and Snow (1978) to the more recent literature on organizational ambidexterity. Examining these obvious linkages, the paper also addresses how these firms address their entrepreneurial, engineering and administrative problem domains in relationship with the firm’s strategic archetype.

Data were collected from 503 firms across the US. Measures previously validated were used to collect information related to the strategic archetype as well as the three problem domains. Multiple discriminant and regression analyses were used to test the hypotheses.

Most of the hypotheses relating the entrepreneurial (exploration and exploitation), engineering (radical and incremental innovation) and administrative problem (adaptation and alignment) to the four strategic archetypes (defender, prospector, analyzer and reactor) were supported. Additionally, the authors found that the firms that had the closest alignment along the three problem domains outperformed the other firms.

Although the Miles and Snow typology has received considerable research attention, the obvious links with more contemporary research on organizational ambidexterity has been neglected. Through this integration, with more recent key strategic management concepts, this paper shows the utility and current relevance of the Miles and Snow archetypes.

With increasing competition in the marketplace, there is a greater push for exceeding customer expectations and delivering customer delight to ensure firm’s success. The main reason for this push is the beneficial outcomes for the firm. More recently, hidden benefits have been identified (i.e. elevated customer emotions can positively impact other customers and employees in the service environment). Adding to this developing literature, the current research develops a model that links antecedents and outcomes to employee perceptions of customer delight.

Both field and panel data, as well as multiple statistical methods, were utilized to test the hypothesized relationships. The field data were collected from employees of a national specialty retailer.

Service climate and interpersonal influence have a positive impact on customer delight and employee perceptions of customer delight. In turn, employee perceptions of customer delight positively impact harmonious passion and job dedication. In addition, accountability for pleasing customers is a significant moderator of the relationship between employee perceptions of customer delight and harmonious passion, but not between employee perceptions of customer delight and job dedication.

This research contributes to the ongoing debate on the viability of customer delight as a service standard by investigating the under-studied perspective of the frontline employee.

This research contributes to the debate on the value of customer delight as a service standard by investigating the under-studied perspective of the frontline employee. A key takeaway for practitioners is how to create and manage the delight spirals that can occur when customers are delighted.

This is the first study that evaluates antecedents and outcomes of employee-perceived customer delight in a single model. This is also the first study to measure the impact of employee perceptions of customer delight with field data.

The unprecedented dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic has forced firms to re-envision the customer experience and find new ways to ensure positive service encounters. This context has underscored the reality that drivers of customer delight in a “traditional” context are not the same in a crisis context. While research has tended to identify hedonic need fulfillment as key to customer well-being and, ultimately, to invoking customer delight, the majority of studies were conducted in inherently positive contexts, which may limit generalizability to more challenging contexts. Through the combined lens of transformative service research (TSR) and psychological theory on hedonic and eudaimonic human needs, we evaluate the extent to which need fulfillment is the root of customer well-being and that meeting well-being needs ultimately promotes delight. We argue that in crisis contexts, the salience of needs shifts from hedonic to eudaimonic and the extent to which service experiences fulfill eudaimonic needs determines the experience and meaning of delight.

Utilizing the critical incident technique, this research surveyed 240 respondents who were asked to explain in detail a time they experienced customer delight during the COVID-19 pandemic. We analyzed their responses according to whether these incidents reflected the salience of hedonic versus eudaimonic need fulfillment.

The results support the notion that the salience of eudaimonic needs become more pronounced during times of crisis and that service providers are more likely to elicit perceptions of delight when they leverage meeting eudaimonic needs over the hedonic needs that are typically emphasized in traditional service encounters.

We discuss the implications of these findings for integrating the TSR and customer delight literatures to better understand how service experiences that meet salient needs produce customer well-being and delight. Ultimately, we find customer delight can benefit well-being across individual, collective and societal levels.

Little is known regarding joiners (i.e. early-stage non-founder entrepreneurial employees) and their commitment to joining a new venture vs pursuing a more rational and stable career path. The purpose of this paper is to bring an understanding to this phenomenon, while adding to various management theories of organizational commitment and entrepreneurship.

The authors examine how current employment situations and alternative job prospects impact the relationship between joiner perceptions of distributive justice and organizational commitment by utilizing the equity ownership distribution decided upon by the founding team. The hypotheses are tested using data gathered from 117 joiners.

The findings confirm for traditional organizational research, a positive relationship exists, even in a new venture context, between perceptions of distributive justice and organizational commitment. However, when joiners report having a second (or primary) job, in addition to the new venture, the direct relationship is weakened. In contrast, higher levels of alternative employment options strengthen the relationship between justice and commitment.

Although the authors’ measure of employment options only included a single-item measure, there is precedent in the literature for this approach. Yet, the authors realize this remains a limitation due to the lack of additional information surrounding each joiner’s “other job” characteristics, such as tenure, title, and salary.

Perceptions of fairness and justice appear to provide valuable implications for founders concerned about organizational commitment and employee buy-in when seeking to bring on joiners. Job alternatives and additional employment also provide interesting takeaways for practitioners. The authors suggest that founders take caution when hiring joiners, who have a second (or primary) job, in addition to working for the new venture. Levels of commitment will likely be reduced, to the possible detriment of the new venture.

Although the baseline hypothesis exists in prior literature with respect to established firms, it has not been tested in a new venture context. Furthermore, prior studies within the entrepreneurship literature have yet to examine these issues from the perspective of the joiner and certainly have not taken into account additional employment and employment prospects among these individuals.

This paper aims to study the effects of widespread stress and uncertainty that is characteristic of organizational crises on service employees and to explore the extent to which organizations may proactively use supervisors’ positive humor and discretionary organizational support that goes above and beyond service employee expectations to mitigate the pandemic’s negative impact on work engagement.

Cross-sequential survey-based data was collected from 172 service employees during the height of the pandemic to assess service employees’ perceptions of both their supervisors’ use of positive humor and their employers’ discretionary organizational support in response to the emotion-laden stress and uncertainty surrounding COVID-19. PROCESS analysis was used to test the hypotheses and to conduct supplementary analyses.

Results suggest employee perceptions of supervisors’ use of positive humor positively impact dimensions of work engagement at Time 1. This engagement then positively impacts extra-role behavior, innovativeness and pride at Time 2. The impact from supervisor humor to the outcomes is fully mediated through work engagement. From a moderation perspective, discretionary organizational support was shown as a substitute for creating work engagement at low levels of supervisor humor suggesting that the two “resource builders” can act as substitutes in creating engagement.

This paper provides unique insights into both the valuable role of positive workplace humor for service workers’ work engagement during times of widespread crisis and the moderating role discretionary organizational support plays when perceptions of humor are relatively low. Moreover, the supplemental examination of the multidimensional work engagement construct as a mediator between humor and the service outcomes of extra-role behavior, innovativeness and organizational pride provides unique insights into how a crisis context may deferentially affect the experience and implications of engagement for other service worker outcomes. Understanding the proactive, ameliorative role in service effectiveness played by supervisor humor and discretionary organizational support during crises is an emerging question for service research.

The purpose of this paper is to conceptually demonstrate that the relationship between turnover and innovation is not direct as some research suggests, but rather indirect, with organizational learning as the prerequisite social mechanism that ties the two phenomena together.

This paper integrates research across a number of related areas to develop a model of the immediate and indirect organizational consequences of different rates of knowledge worker turnover.

The paper finds that certain conditions and mechanisms must first be in place to pave the way to innovation. Grounded in social capital theory, this paper describes how turnover rates and organizational learning can be curvilinearly related with respect to ambidextrous learning; how betweenness centrality and learning culture can moderate this relationship; and why organizational learning should mediate the turnover‐innovation relationship.

Faulty decisions based on simplified beliefs place organizational performance in a precarious position. Studies must consider how changes in personnel affect activities where interpersonal relationships are critical. Turnover that beneficially breathes diversity, critical evaluation, and creativity should result in benefits that more than offset its costs.

By taking an in‐depth look at previously disconnected research, the paper offers a unified model that more accurately depicts the processes and outcomes that intercede and explain how knowledge worker turnover rates come to influence innovation.

The purpose of this study is to explore the role of “overtime norms” as a mediator between performance-driven work climates and employee burnout. This study also examines in-role performance and work engagement as moderators between high-performance climates and burnout.

A snowball sample of 214 full-time working adults from the United States participated via an online survey. Data were analyzed using SmartPLS and conditional process analysis.

Results from conditional process analyses suggest (1) performance-driven climates are positively related to burnout, (2) overtime norms mediate the relationship between performance-driven climates and burnout, and (3) in-role performance and work engagement moderate that relationship such that highly competent and engaged employees are less prone to stress and burnout.

These results highlight the dangers of performance-driven work climates on employee well-being. Trends toward extended work hours which can be exacerbated by technological advancements inevitably come at a cost. Managers and organizations should be careful not to prioritize work life over non-work life.

This study contributes to the literature by identifying overtime norms as a mediator in the performance-driven work climate–burnout relationship. This study also identifies in-role performance and work engagement as resources that can reduce burnout.

This paper brings in relevant entrepreneurial behavior theory to understand the ownership decisions founders make during the nascent stage of new venture creation, and how such decisions impact the viability of the firm.

The authors examine the behavior and decision making of 137 lead founders during the nascent stage of new venture creation. Psychological ownership and environmental uncertainty are measured of lead founders when dividing up firm ownership among the founding team. Using a longitudinal approach, these nascent-stage decisions are then analyzed to understand the impact on the new venture one year later.

Counter to prior research suggesting teams are better off with identical wages and ownership, the authors find such harmony (i.e. “kumbaya”) pursuit to be a detriment to new venture emergence. Specifically, this study finds that nascent ventures are better off with an unequal ownership split among the founding team members. These findings suggest that nascent firms with an unequal split are more likely to move beyond the nascent stage and launch a functional business.

Although the results of this study offer a valuable contribution to lead founders and new businesses, the study looked at each startup independent of another and is therefore not able to draw any conclusions related to competitiveness.

Lead founders and founding teams frequently divide ownership evenly among the founders. This paper shows that, while convenient, the decision to divide ownership equally can hamper a nascent firm as it moves toward the launch phase of the startup process. These results should motivate founders to think deeply regarding the ownership structure decision and, at the very least, consider the possible negative costs associated with the pursuit of founding team unity.

While scholars have brought attention to the nascent stage, few have identified and analyzed the decisions that take place during this critical time of the new venture development process. Furthermore, even is less is known of the impact nascent decisions have on startup launch. This study sheds light on these areas.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how employees’ perceptions of their supervisor’s use of four types of humour relate to employee job satisfaction, organisational pride, organisational commitment and self-esteem. Supervisor favourability is also examined as a mediating variable in these relationships.

An online survey of 216 working individuals provided data on the effect of supervisor use of humour on employee attitudes.

Perceptions of positive forms of humour (affiliative and self-enhancing) positively related to employee various attitudes, while aggressive humour was negatively associated with those attitudes. Results also support the intervening role of supervisor favourability in the relationship between supervisors’ positive use of humour and employees’ job satisfaction, affective commitment and organisational pride.

Studies of the effects of workplace humour can benefit from using more fine-grained operationalisation of positive and negative humour. Research can also benefit from considerations of intervening mechanisms to the humour–work outcome relationship.

The results underscore the benefits of affiliative and self-enhancing humour on employee attitudes in the workplace. While negative humour can have an undesirable effect, there may be circumstances under which self-defeating humour is not negatively received.

This paper fulfils an identified need to better understand supervisors’ use of different, more discriminating forms of humour on employee attitudes.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and quantify the factors determining the prices of organic and conventional cheese. For a market with a high degree of product differentiation, i.e. the German cheese market, price premiums of various cheese attributes are examined. Thereby, special attention is paid to country of origin (CO) effects, geographical indications (GIs) and organic claims.

The analysis is based on homescan panel data of 13,000 representative German households provided by the GfK consumer research association. The data set combines actual purchase and demographic data for a five-year sample period from 2004 to 2008. Applying the hedonic technique, the cheese price is modelled as a function of a wide range of consumer, store and product characteristics. Effects are analysed in detail by distinguishing between supply- and demand-side effects and by estimating price regressions not only for the whole sample but also for different shop types.

The estimated organic price premiums range between 18 per cent in discount shops and 26 per cent in hypermarkets. The impacts of the CO and GIs are considerably smaller in magnitude and limited to special shopping venues like super- and hypermarkets.

The German cheese market is currently evolving from a staple product market to a highly differentiated market where increasing attention is paid to quality indicators such as organic claims or GIs. The data are remarkable, both in sample size and information content. Furthermore, the estimation of shop type-specific price premiums offers new and detailed insights in consumer valuation and producer costs of a wide range of cheese attributes.