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This paper aims to combine the social–technical systems and social exchange theories with the resource-based view of the firm, to investigate how business-to-business (B2B) service firms manage their social and technical resources to manage customer relationships.

An online survey-based study with 321 managers working in Australian small and medium (SME) firms is used to test hypotheses about the sequential and substitutional impact of four social and technical resources (service quality, satisfaction, trust and commitment) on customer loyalty, using both offline and online platforms.

The findings show that both social and technical chains of effects are viable channels for B2B service firms to build customer loyalty; however, mixing of both social and technical resources results in the weakening of both these chains.

The results based on B2B service relationships between Australian SME firms and their banks may not be generalizable to other contexts.

This research would help managers in B2B service firms understand the pitfalls of combining their social and technical resources because it may hamper their ability to build customer loyalty. Hence, they need to learn how to synergize their marketing resources across both offline and online platforms to achieve optimal results.

This research introduces social and technical chains of effects as a novel way to examine the ability of B2B service firms to optimize their social and technical resources in a synergistic manner to build and nurture stronger customer relationships.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of service separation on the ability of service firms to build and maintain customer relationships, by exploring the differences in the strength of interrelationships among key relational constructs between separated and unseparated service delivery modes.

A field survey was conducted with retail banking customers in Saudi Arabia (n=592) using a structured self-administered questionnaire consisting of well-established scales. Data were analyzed using AMOS 24.

Service separation negatively moderates (weakens) the ability of the service firms to leverage their social benefits, relational trust and affective commitment to increase customer loyalty and to strengthen overall customer relationships.

This study uses retail banking customers in Saudi Arabia to test the impact of service separation in their relationship with the bank; hence, its findings may not be generalizable to other types of services and cultural settings.

Service firms using online and mobile technologies should be aware that trust and commitment remain key to building customer loyalty. Hence, the trade-off between the benefits of these technologies and their negative impact on customer relationship needs to be factored into managerial decision making.

The paper highlights the importance of maintaining face-to-face interactions with service customers to create robust relationships that yield loyalty, despite the growing popularity of online and mobile technologies.

This paper aims to investigate the individual and combined effects of three types of psychological contracts between customers and service employees (i.e. transactional, relational and communal), resulting from the service organizations’ relational marketing efforts, on their customers’ service brand evaluations in terms of their satisfaction, trust and commitment toward the brand.

This study uses a field-survey of 303 regular customers of beauty salons and hairdressers in Auckland, New Zealand. All the constructs were measured using adapted versions of well-established scales and data was analyzed using SmartPLS due to the relatively smaller sample size and the primary research objective being the prediction of the three outcome variables (i.e. satisfaction, trust and commitment).

Transactional and relational contracts have a negative and positive impact, respectively, upon communal contracts. Communal contracts mediate the impact of transactional and relational contracts on trust and commitment but not on satisfaction. Trust also mediates the relationship between satisfaction and commitment.

This paper collected data from female customers of beauty salons and hairdressers in New Zealand, which may affect the generalizability of the results.

This study provides practical insights into the differences in the roles of psychological contracts between the customers and service employees, which may help managers in service firms improve their customer relationship outcomes.

This paper extends the relationship and services marketing literature to reveal the individual and combined effects of the three types of psychological contracts on customer satisfaction, trust and commitment toward their service brand.

The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of relationship comfort and relationship proneness on the ability of service firms to build and maintain customer relationships in emerging markets (EMs).

A field-survey was conducted with retail-banking customers in India (n=300) using a structured self-administered questionnaire with well-established scales.

Relationship comfort positively affects key relationship marketing (RM) constructs (e.g. customer satisfaction, trust, commitment and loyalty) and relationship proneness positively moderates (strengthens) the impact of relationship comfort on customer commitment and loyalty.

The findings may not be generalizable to all customer types using bank services as well as other types of services and in other EMs.

Service firms in EMs can build and maintain robust customer relationships by using relationship comfort and relationship proneness to strengthen key RM constructs, such as customer satisfaction, trust, commitment and loyalty.

The paper highlights the importance of maintaining RM as a tool to build valuable customer relationships but also reveals the importance of relationship comfort and relationship proneness in building trust-based customer relationships in the EMs.

The purpose of this paper is to extend the “Happy-Performing Managers” thesis to show that managers’ job-related affective well-being and affective job satisfaction mediate the impact of their role stressors (ambiguity, conflict and overload) on their contextual job performance.

Results from an online survey of 305 managers from the private, public and third sectors in Western Australian support most of the hypotheses. The psychometric properties of all the scales were analysed using confirmatory factor analysis and the conceptual model was tested using structural equation modelling.

Role stressors have a direct negative effect on the managers’ affective well-being and affective job satisfaction, which, in turn, mediate the negative effects of the three role stressors on the managers’ contextual performance.

Conceptual and managerial contributions along with methodological limitations and future research directions are discussed.

Contemporary managers face a wide range of intrinsic and extrinsic role and environmental stressors. This research suggests that organisations may need to redesign manager roles to reduce their role stressors (ambiguity, conflict and overload) in order to optimise their contextual performance.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of four types of acculturation behaviors of frontline service employees (assimilation, separation, integration, and marginalization) on customer satisfaction and customer commitment.

In total, 377 ethnically diverse customers of a retail bank in New Zealand participated in this study. SmartPLS3 was used to test all the hypotheses.

Assimilation and integration have positive effects on both customer satisfaction and commitment. Marginalization has a negative effect on both customer satisfaction and commitment but separation has a negative effect only on customer satisfaction and not on customer commitment.

Future research may validate and extend the authors findings in diverse cultural settings and use experimental method to explore the socio-psychological mechanisms underlying the influence of frontline service employees’ acculturation behaviors on customer satisfaction and commitment.

This study will help managers understand the importance of service employees’ acculturation behaviors and develop suitable recruitment strategies and training programs to improve their impact on customer satisfaction and commitment.

This study extends current research on intercultural service encounters by looking beyond the moderating effects of four types of service employees’ acculturation behaviors, to explore their direct effects on customer satisfaction and commitment.

The purpose of this paper is to use “positive organizational behavior” and “transformative service research” paradigms to introduce “employee well-being” as a focal construct in the process by which internal service quality (ISQ) drives employee satisfaction, commitment and performance.

A field-survey using a structured questionnaire is employed to test all the hypotheses with 250 employees and their 25 supervisors in a manufacturing unit in Guangdong province of the People’s Republic of China.

All the eight hypotheses are supported. ISQ has a positive effect on employee satisfaction, commitment and employee well-being, which in turn positively influence employee performance. Employee well-being also positively moderates (strengthens) the effects of employee satisfaction and commitment on employee performance.

This paper uses data from a single factory in China and focuses on a few key constructs, which may restrict the generalizability of its findings. Moreover, no significant differences were found among the supervisor-workers units.

Managers in non-service industries should focus on improving ISQ and employee well-being in their organizations because both these constructs have significant direct and indirect effects on employee performance.

This paper extends past research on ISQ by showing that it affects employee performance via satisfaction and commitment, and that employee well-being moderates the effects of employee satisfaction and commitment on performance.

This exploratory study aims to analyse the influence of organisational resources and capabilities on relationship quality and firm performance in the context of high-technology offshore outsourcing service vendors.

Using a qualitative case study design, data from four offshore business process and information technology outsourcing firms were analysed.

Findings highlight that resource dependence, cultural orientation and the vendor’s resources and capabilities strengthen relationship quality and affect firm performance.

The distinctive contribution of this study lies in identifying key organisational mechanisms that improve relationship quality and firm performance, as well as help to understand the adverse effects of ethnocentricity and power faced by vendors and subsidiaries within diverse intercultural contexts. Study limitations and future research directions, along with implications for theory and practice, are also discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to transformative service research by drawing on self-determination, elicitation of emotions framework and feelings-as-information theories to explore how customer participation, task-related affective well-being, customer knowledge, task complexity and service outcomes relate with each other.

A synthesis of relevant literature on customer participation and customer well-being reveals a conceptual model with 11 testable propositions.

The conceptual model shows that task-related affective well-being mediates the link between customer participation and service outcomes. Moreover, customer knowledge and task complexity moderate these links.

An empirically testable conceptual model models the roles of task-related affective well-being, customer knowledge and task complexity in the process by which customer participation influences service outcomes.

Service managers can use the model to design services based on the effects of different types of customer participation on task-related affective well-being.

This paper is one of the first to study the mediating role of task-related affective well-being in the relationship between customer participation and service outcomes. It does so by revealing the differential impact various types of participation have on service outcomes and the moderating role of customer knowledge and task complexity.

The nurturing of trust within firm‐customer relationships highlights the significance of social exchange theory in helping to explain the relational paradigm. By focusing upon this theory it was hypothesized that psychological contracts also play an important role in helping manage customer relationships. The principal purpose of this study is to explore the role of the psychological contract within the firm‐customer relationship, and its effects on trust.

A sample of 343 distributor firms within the motorized vehicle industry was used to test a model developed on the basis of social exchange theory.

Psychological contracts are perceptual in nature and encompass reciprocal obligations stemming from the relational marketing efforts between suppliers and distributors. This construct was shown to have a positive impact upon the level of trust and commitment within the relationship; however, perceived violations of the contract terms were found to reduce the distributor's level of trust.

Given that trust was found to increase commitment, these findings have important managerial implications as they show that psychological contracts will erode important customer relationships if not factored into the customer decision‐making processes within the firm.