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The purpose of this paper is to revisit discussions on managerial work, seeking to re-examine the front-line service manager’s position within the service triangle, and bring forward questions of agency that remain under-developed by scholars. Challenging the assumed unitarist and “consensus” standing point in organizations it recognizes that front-line managers, similarly to their subordinates, resist corporate demands and unveils stories of “battles” and disengagement towards their role, providing a rich empirical agenda regarding managerial misbehaviour. In order to explore front-line managers’ agency issues, the paper adopts the framework of the dimensions of misbehaviour, as developed by Ackroyd and Thompson (1999), to capture and to better describe and understand the recalcitrant agential practices by front-line managers.

The paper calls on qualitative data from two case study organizations in the Cyprus food-retail sector. In total, 46 interviews took place with participants across different departments and different management levels. This aimed for a better and deeper understanding of the research problem through understanding of the different perspectives.

The evidence reveals the intensification of FLSMs’ work and their feelings of pressure. FLSMs, however, did not stay apathetic and have utilized tactics to oppose the increasing workload and the expansion of their role. The paper classifies these tactics using the four dimensions of misbehaviour (Ackroyd and Thompson, 1999), namely, appropriation of time; work, product and identity. It shows that FLSMs not only resist corporate demands, like their subordinates, but also devised practices which are similar to workers. The data also reveal a variety in actions of misbehaviour between FLSMs depending on the level of customer interaction and their mobility on the shop floor.

Students of managerial work overlooked the political realities of management and the contested nature of (front-line service) management work. As this study has shown FLSMs across the shop floor strongly identify more with “front-line employees” than senior management, protecting their own interests within the employment relationship via oppositional actions and disengagement. FLSM is, of course, in an agency relationship with capital; however, this neglects the heterogeneity in interests at different levels of management. This paper shifts the focus of management research away from the traditional agency argument and discusses FLSMs as “misbehaving agents”. It challenges the assumed unitarist and “consensus” standing point for FLSMs in organizations and calls HRM scholars to embrace a pluralist analysis in line management research.

This research shows that FLSMs misbehave as an expression of discontent towards the expansion and intensification of their role. Yet, the data reveal variation in the organization of FLSMs’ work across the shop floor and consequently variation in their actions of misbehaviour. This suggests that it is erroneous to presume a similar labour process for these managers and/or over-generalize their battling actions. HR practitioners will need to re-examine the roles of FLSMs in organizations, recognize the variety of interests within management, step away from rhetoric discourses of unproblematic devolvement of HR and managerial tasks to the front-line and appropriately review, redesign and re-organize front-line managerial work.

Although research has fruitfully located the powerlessness of front-line managers as a central theme in their analysis, the complexity of the front-line management position within the social relations of interactive service work and their “logic of action” within their labour process remains a relatively marginal theme in research. Indeed, FLSMs’ position within the triangle, where managerial work is subject to degradation and trilateral conflicting dynamics and their battles within their own labour process, still remains under-explored. This study addresses this research lacuna focusing on the FLSMs’ experiences on the front-end and their actions of misbehaviour within their labour process.

The paper brings forward questions of agency that remain under-developed by scholars and unveils “stories of battles”. It discusses FLSMs as “misbehaving agents” a question that is only superficially addressed in resistance and managerial studies. This paper challenges the embedded HRM unitarist assumption that FLSMs are conscientiously agents of the capital and reveals evidence suggesting the plurality of interests across management. HRM scholars, especially those discussed line managers as HRM partners, have overestimated FLSMs’ identification with senior management and the strategic goals of the organization. As this study has shown FLSMs across the shop floor strongly identify with “front-line employees”, protecting their own interests within the employment relationship via oppositional actions and disengagement.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the need for the service line management approach in health care. Service line management is increasingly utilized by US health care organizations as an innovative method for providing the needed stimulus to increase viability and profitability for the ailing health care sector.

Using current literature, this study describes a paradigm shift from traditional health care management approaches to focus on the importance of a service line management approach with its specific emphasis on competencies of leaders.

Four essential competencies – conceptual, participation, interpersonal, and leadership – must be gained by leaders to bring about organizational growth.

Health care managers must understand and practice these four key competencies to become effective health care leaders.

This paper provides useful information on the need for the service line management approach in health care.

The present study is specifically designed to accomplish two objectives: to validate the SERV*OR scale in an emerging oriental market; and to test empirically the effect of service orientation on front-line employees ' service performance in various service skill areas.

The whole research involved a triangulation process, which involved in-depth interviews, pilot test, and survey interviews, to collect both qualitative and quantitative information to validate the measurement scales and test the hypotheses. The major objective was to validate the measurement scales and test the relationship between service orientation and front-line service employees ' performance in various skill areas.

The results from measurement scale development show that service orientation was represented by service leadership, service contact, human resources management, and service system, whereas service skills were embodied by functional skills and technical skills. Results from structural equation model (SEM) analysis show that various dimensions of the service orientation have differential positive effects on different types of the service skills.

Although the model is supported by empirical findings, only through replication in other service industries can it enhance its generalizability. Such factors as investment in service training, quality of training program, employee learning attitude may mediate or moderate the effect of service orientation on performance in different skill areas and future research should include them for a better explanation of the effect of service orientation on service skills.

Based on the results of this study, firms can strengthen the service orientation as an effective strategy to improve service skills and this broad strategy can be decomposed into more workable tactics like building service leadership, service contact, human resources management and service system improvement.

The present study bridged the macro and micro perspectives by developing a framework that provides a deeper and richer portrait of what kind of front-line employees engage in good service performance and, at the same time, what kind of service orientation component will be more effective in facilitating service performance. The findings contribute to the explanation of significant variance in employees ' service performance. The present study is thus a compelling extension of the previous approach to research on service behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to test and measure the outcome of a community hospital in implementing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) through a co-management arrangement. RQ1: do the benefits of a co-management arrangement outweigh the costs? RQ2: does physician alignment aid in the effective implementation of the ACA directives set for hospitals?

A case study of a 350-bed non-profit community hospital co-management company. The quantitative data are eight quarters of quality metrics prior and eight quarters post establishment of the co-management company. The quality metrics are all based on standardized national requirements from the Joint Commission and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services guidelines. These measures directly impact the quality initiatives under the ACA that are applicable to all healthcare facilities. Qualitative data include survey results from hospital employees of the perceived effectiveness of the co-management company. A paired samples difference of means t-test was conducted to compare the timeframe before co-management and post co-management.

The findings indicate that the benefits of a co-management arrangement do outweigh the costs for both the physicians and the hospital (RQ1). The physicians benefit through actual dollar payout, but also with improved communication and greater input in running the service line. The hospital benefits from reduced cost – or reduced penalties under the ACA – as well as better communication and greater physician involvement in administration of the service line. RQ2: does physician alignment aid in the effective implementation of the ACA directives set for hospitals? The hospital improved in every quality metric under the co-management company. A paired sample difference of means t-test showed a statistically significant improvement in five of the six quality metrics in the study.

Previous research indicates the potential effectiveness of co-management companies in improving healthcare delivery and hospital-physician relations (Sowers et al., 2013). The current research takes this a step further to show that the data do in fact support these concepts. The hospital and the physicians carrying out the day-to-day actions have shared goals, better communication, and improved quality metrics under the co-management company. As the number of co-management companies increases across the USA, more research can be directed at determining their overall impact on quality care.

The article challenges the narrow view in scholarship which presents disengagement as passive and simply the absence of condition of engagement and explores how food retail employees articulate their disengagement within the intensified customer-centric service work. The article adopts the term “active disengagement”, as presented by Ackroyd and Thompson (2016) and empirically examines this as a form of oppositional voice towards managerial norms and behavioural expectations.

The article draws on qualitative data from two case study organisations in the Cypriot food retail sector. Forty-six interviews took place with participants across different departments, including front-line employees and front-line and senior managers, to better understand the research problem through different perspectives.

The data show that disengagement is an integral part of organisational life and it is expressed in an individual and less-risky way. The data also reveal a variation in disengagement actions across departments, depending on employees' mobility on the shop floor and the intensity of interaction with the customers and the line manager. Shop floor employees enjoyed a wider “space of disengagement”, in comparison to those working on the front-end/checkouts. Nevertheless, checkout employees have developed sophisticated actions to express disengagement.

This research provides a refined understanding of active disengagement in organisations. It empirically contributes to the existence of a spectrum of engagement and expands Ackroyd and Thompson's (2016) “active disengagement” framework, discussing it as a form of oppositional voice towards corporate values and the customer-centric work intensification.

The research provides empirical evidence that employee disengagement is not merely the absence of engagement, as HRM scholars and practitioners have argued, but entails further social meanings. This article will be useful for practitioners to rethink, revisit and revise employee engagement programmes in organisations, as well as to re-write corporate values, mission and vision, to also consider employees' experiences within the workplace. This will allow the provision of social support by management to address active disengagement in service organisations.

The study provides an important insight in employees' individual actions to express disengagement towards corporate values and managerial expectations related to customer service. It highlights the variation of dynamics across the food retail shop floor, which has been treated as a contextual periphery within the disengagement debate. Applying a broader lens on retail work heterogeneity, it provides further understanding of the diversity of how frontline service workers express disengagement within the triadic employment relationship. This study offers ground for future research to examine active disengagement in various contexts for better conceptual and practical understanding of this behaviour in organisations.

This paper aims to identify the problem situations leading financial firms to kick off the elimination decision‐making process for financial products in their line, measure the importance of problem situations, and assess the effects of a set of contextual variables on the above importance.

The study took place in the UK; data were collected through 20 in‐depth interviews with managers of financial firms and a mail survey to a stratified random sample of financial firms, which yielded 112 returns.

Eight problem situations are identified and their importance is measured. The results indicate that the importance of problem situations is highly situation‐specific: it varies in relation to the degree of a financial firm's market orientation, the intensity of competition, the austerity of the regulatory environment, and the rhythm of technological change.

From a theoretical standpoint, future research on the investigation of the importance of decision variables pertaining to line pruning must always take into consideration the internal and the external context of the firm. From a practical standpoint, this study has important policy implications, since it provides managers with a first picture of the effects of selected contextual forces on the importance of the problem situations triggering line pruning in services settings. The limitations of the study provide useful avenues for future investigation.

This study represents the first attempt to measure the importance of different problem situations triggering line pruning in financial services and relate that importance to a set of contextual variables. As such, it makes a clear theoretical contribution.

ELEVEN YEARS have passed, we were reminded at the Hague Congress last month, since a handful of people met a few kilometres away and agreed to bring together all concerned with work study through the medium of a European Federation. The tenth assembly of that body gave at least one member of that original group an opportunity to consider the present position.

Alternative hypotheses for the personnel function are presented, based on findings from four case study organisations which have devolved personnel responsibilities from a designated personnel department to line managers. The views of line managers and employees are sought to assess the effects of these changes. The study finds that devolved responsibilities of personnel are formally geared to securing commitment from employees by promoting an integrative culture of employee management through line managers. In practice, though, we find little evidence that personnel has succeeded in catalysing such changes. The case study findings do not point to any clear evidence of a general increase in influence for personnel practitioners following devolution. Tensions exist between line managers and personnel and the function appears to be vulnerable to further contraction. The study concludes that prospects for personnel following devolution are at best uncertain.

Following a critical review of current literature on the role of line managers in career development, the article reports on research which examined the extent to which employee participation in voluntary career activities is affected by differing levels of management support. Using data from 281 service company employees, this longitudinal study investigated the relationship between three variables ‐ management attitudes towards career development, management support for voluntary career development interventions and employee career satisfaction ‐ in relation to participation in a career programme. The results revealed that, counter to that predicted by the literature, high levels of management support did not encourage greater participation by employees, while negative management attitudes did. Career satisfaction was also shown to be significantly correlated to both management support and management attitudes. The consequences for practitioners designing and implementing career development programmes are highlighted.