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1 – 10 of over 240000Abstract This article looks at the benefits of and obstacles to using a whole systems approach to plan and deliver personality disorder services. It does so using the example of…
Abstract
Abstract This article looks at the benefits of and obstacles to using a whole systems approach to plan and deliver personality disorder services. It does so using the example of the Leeds Managed Clinical Network, a community pilot service that employs whole system working to support people with personality disorder.
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Charlotte Arkenback and Mona Lundin
This paper aims to examine how instructional videos produced by retail employers and tech companies have modelled cashier roles and skills in service encounters over time…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine how instructional videos produced by retail employers and tech companies have modelled cashier roles and skills in service encounters over time, providing insights into cashier training and job responsibility evolution across different retail eras.
Design/methodology/approach
Online video research is used, with YouTube as data source and the theory of practice architectures and related concepts as analytical framework, to examine 50 instructional video narratives produced between 1917 and 2021.
Findings
Cashiers’ selling practice comprises transactions and customer service, which are often taught separately. Technology has explicitly influenced changes in cashier work and training at three points in history: mechanised checkout (1917), computerised checkout (1980) and connected checkout (2010). “New technology” involves a combination of arrangements with the potential to transform the semantic, physical and social dimensions of cashiers’ selling practice. However, despite technological advancements, employers’ cashier training videos have not evolved significantly since the 1990s and still focus on emotional labour skills.
Practical implications
The findings indicate a need for transforming training for service work in the connected service encounter.
Originality/value
The relationship between technological innovations and changes in frontline service work and workplace learning is examined through the lens of instructional videos produced by retail employers and tech companies, giving rise to insights into limitations of current training methods for service workers. This paper suggests the need for a more holistic perspective on service encounters to understand service work and workplace learning changes.
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Mahesh Subramony and Mark S. Rosenbaum
The purpose of this study is to address United Nations’ sustainable development goals (SDGs) 8 and 9 from a service perspective. SDG 8 is a call to improve the dignity of service…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to address United Nations’ sustainable development goals (SDGs) 8 and 9 from a service perspective. SDG 8 is a call to improve the dignity of service work by enhancing wages, working conditions and development opportunities while SDG 9 calls upon nations to construct resilient infrastructures, promote inclusivity and sustainability and foster innovation.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses a bibliometric review to extract important themes from a variety of scholarly journals.
Findings
Researchers tend to investigate policy-level topics, such as national and international standards related to working conditions, while ignoring the experiences or well-being of workers occupying marginalized and low-opportunity roles in service organizations. Service researchers, educators and practitioners must collaborate to improve the state of service industries by conducting participatory action research, promoting grassroots organizing/advocacy, implementing digitized customer service and addressing workforce soft skills deficiencies.
Research limitations/implications
The authors consider how service work can be transformed into respectable employment and present four specific ways nations can enhance their service industries.
Practical implications
Economic planners can view SDGs 8 and 9 as a framework for understanding and promoting the well-being of service employees and accelerating the productivity and innovation levels of the service sector.
Originality/value
The United Nations’ SDGs are examined from a services perspective, which increases their significance in service-dominated economies.
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The purpose of this paper is the justification of a new conception of the marketing of works. The paper supports this new conception of the marketing of goods, works, and services…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is the justification of a new conception of the marketing of works. The paper supports this new conception of the marketing of goods, works, and services instead of the existing conception of the marketing of goods and services. The paper also introduces new concepts of hybrid offerings.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper develops hypotheses on the basis of a hypothetical-deductive method, the application of analysis and synthesis for justification of the proposed concepts, and interviews with top marketing managers of shipyards to substantiate the necessity of marketing of works.
Findings
Marketing of works is a new line of marketing activity and a source of new hybrid offerings. A widened marketing of goods, works, and services must replace the existing marketing of goods and services, which does not apply completely in the sale of works. The main difference between works and services is an ability to change the market value of objects. “Goods+works” and “works+services” are the new particular hybrid offerings and “goods+works+services” is the new general hybrid offering.
Practical implications
Marketing of works plays a key role in many branches of industry, including house building, airplane production, the repair of vessels, the reclamation of land, and so on. Works are elements of the new hybrid offerings and the new marketing of goods, works, and services.
Originality/value
Initially, the new marketing of works appeared as a part of the marketing of industrial services. Conceptions of the marketing of works and the marketing of goods, works, and services are new results that develop the existing marketing of goods and services. The particular hybrid offerings “goods+works” and “works+services” and the general hybrid offering “goods+works+services” are also new results.
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Jane Parker and James Arrowsmith
The purpose of this paper is to provide contemporary information and analysis of women's location within the service sector of New Zealand; to evaluate the responsiveness of two…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide contemporary information and analysis of women's location within the service sector of New Zealand; to evaluate the responsiveness of two major policy initiatives designed to ameliorate women's circumstances therein; and to reconceptualise and suggest possible approaches and measures which could inform future government and workplace policy and practice.
Design/methodology/approach
The study primarily employs a thematic analysis of publicly‐available reports, documentation and pertinent academic work. Secondary, independent statistical analyses of nationally‐representative data are used in order to provide the context and rationale for the policy analysis, and to overview key trends and “problem” areas in the service sector for working women in New Zealand.
Findings
New Zealand has a high female labour force participation rate, with more than eight out of 10 female workers employed in service work. Although women remain over‐represented in low‐paid work, they have benefited from service sector growth, higher penetration of professional and managerial work, and some reduction in the gender pay gap. State interventions are justified in equity, labour market and welfare terms, with an emerging focus on “decent work” and productivity. Yet, this analysis of key initiatives for working women reveals an inadequate regulatory and policy framework. The significance and “genderedness” of service work to the economy means that it is increasingly but still insufficiently the focus of economic and social policy.
Originality/value
This study responds to the absence of a contemporary and comprehensive assessment of the location and inequities experienced by different groups of women in New Zealand's service sector, particularly Māori and Pasifika women. It provides a springboard to further analysis of the key trends, themes and policy impacts that it highlights, as well as of a reconceived regulatory approach for women working in the service sector outlined in the Concluding section.
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Helen Masson, Nick Frost and Nigel Parton
In the context of current developments in children ' s services in the UK and increased emphasis on workforce development, the authors describe a survey of successful…
Abstract
Purpose
In the context of current developments in children ' s services in the UK and increased emphasis on workforce development, the authors describe a survey of successful completers of a Post-qualifying (PQ) Child Care Award Programme, one of 18 such programmes in England that ran between 2001 and 2006/7. The survey ' s aims were twofold: first, to gather the respondents ' overall evaluations of their PQ training and information about their past and current work circumstances; and second, to explore their knowledge and opinions on the latest developments in children ' s services in relation to their own work practices. The findings from the survey are outlined under four themes, which are then discussed in relation to other relevant studies, reviews on the role and tasks of social workers and current developments associated with the Every Child Matters agenda and the integrated workforce. Concerns are raised about whether social work professionalism is being effectively utilised within the current children ' s services arrangements.
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The main focus of this paper is upon the use of computers and other elements of Information Technology (IT) in the daily practice of social work, specifically in relation to the…
Abstract
The main focus of this paper is upon the use of computers and other elements of Information Technology (IT) in the daily practice of social work, specifically in relation to the impact which it has upon the service user and the social workers and upon the outcome of service delivery. But it is also necessary to stray into other territories; notably management uses of computing in social work agencies, and to the more abstract area of the relationship between service‐users, social work and society.
The purpose of this paper is to make a conceptual argument for considering interactive work – i.e. work made up of micro-level exchanges or social interactions with third parties…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to make a conceptual argument for considering interactive work – i.e. work made up of micro-level exchanges or social interactions with third parties such as customers, patients or citizens – as a distinct analytical category in employment-related research. The argument is underpinned by the core role played by interactive work in valorisation.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a conceptual paper, with its argument based on key findings from the debates on symbolic interactionism, service work and interaction work. These are merged and combined with a valorisation perspective.
Findings
“Social interactions” and “work” have mostly been considered separately by theoretical sociology and the sociology of work. The author contends however that the two concepts should be viewed together, as social interactions at work are a constitutive feature of many occupations, jobs and tasks. This implies studying both exchange and social relationships between the different parties and their embeddedness in specific (multi-level) contexts. Moreover, there are two reasons why interactive work relates to specific working conditions: first, it involves customers or similar groups as third parties; second, it is key to valorisation. To systematically study interactive work, context-sensitive approaches spanning multiple (analytical) levels are recommended.
Originality/value
The article contributes to advancing the understanding of interactive work as a distinct form of work as yet under-theorised but deserving to be considered as a separate analytical category.
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The numbers of psychologists employed in HM Prison Service have doubled in the past three years to over 600 staff. HM Prison Service is the largest single employer of applied…
Abstract
The numbers of psychologists employed in HM Prison Service have doubled in the past three years to over 600 staff. HM Prison Service is the largest single employer of applied psychologists. With a governmental focus firmly on ‘joined up’ services in the criminal justice field (Boateng, 1999), the launch of the National Probation Service (NPS) in April 2001 has set the scene for closer partnership working between the two organisations. There has not historically been a national structure for the employment of psychologists in the probation service. With the creation of the NPS and an increased emphasis on partnership working, a national integrated role for psychologists is ripe for development. This presents both organisations with some significant partnership challenges and opportunities (Towl, 2000).
Yijing Lyu, Hong Zhu, Emily G. Huang and Yuanyi Chen
The purpose of this paper is to propose a research model in which coworker service sabotage influences hospitality employees’ service creativity via work engagement. It also aims…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to propose a research model in which coworker service sabotage influences hospitality employees’ service creativity via work engagement. It also aims to test the moderating effect of sensitivity to the interpersonal mistreatment of others (SIMO).
Design/methodology/approach
A time-lagged questionnaire study was performed in hotels in China. The hypotheses were tested via hierarchical multiple regression.
Findings
Coworker service sabotage is indirectly associated with hospitality employees’ service creativity via work engagement. The trait of SIMO buffers the harmful effect of coworker service sabotage.
Research limitations/implications
Although our research design helps mitigate common method bias, it could still exist. Other coworker behaviors that might influence employees were not included in this research. The findings may also be biased due to the restricted sample from China.
Practical implications
Hospitality organizations should take measures to curb service sabotage. Organizations could also provide supportive resources to suppress the negative impacts of coworker service sabotage. Moreover, organizations should motivate those low in SIMO to care more about customers.
Originality/value
The research takes the lead in investigating the outcomes of service sabotage from a third-party perspective. Work engagement is identified as the mechanism for transmitting the impact of coworker service sabotage to employees. Moreover, a new moderator that attenuates the negative effects of coworker service sabotage is found.
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