Search results

To investigate the antecedents and contingencies of employee role enlargement.

The hypotheses were tested using hierarchical regression analysis on data obtained by surveying 186 line and administrative employees.

Results indicate that leader‐ and organization‐directed trust are positively related to employees' role enlargement toward individual‐ and organization‐directed citizenship behaviors (OCBOs). In addition, organizational justice moderated the above direct relationships. Specifically, interpersonal justice moderated the relationship between leader‐directed trust and role enlargement toward individual‐directed citizenship behaviors. Furthermore, procedural justice and distributive justice moderated the relationship between organization‐directed trust and role enlargement toward OCBOs, respectively.

Practitioners interested in interventions to enlarge the role perception of their employees can use organizational development interventions beyond the enhancement of social exchange factors such as leader‐ and organization‐directed trust. Depending on the desired individual or organizational focus of role enlargement, proper care should be given to fairness‐related components such as interpersonal, distributive and procedural justice.

The findings are valuable for those engaged in theory building and testing and for practitioners. From a theoretical perspective, the paper provides support for the interaction between trust and organizational justice and their impact on role enlargement. Practitioners can use these ideas to design organizational development interventions.

The purpose of this study is to validate, in an Italian sample, a multidimensional training motivation measure (T‐VIES‐it) based on expectancy (VIE) theory, and to examine the nomological network surrounding the construct.

Using a cross‐sectional design study, 258 public sector employees in Northeast Italy (participating in a range of employer‐sponsored training programs) filled out the T‐VIES‐it and questionnaires on goal orientation, job support for learning, and intention to transfer learning gained through training to the workplace. To validate the T‐VIES‐it and test its nomological network confirmatory factor analysis and structural equations models were used.

Results showed acceptable confirmatory factor analysis fit indices and psychometric properties of the T‐VIES‐it. Acceptable fit indexes were also found for the structural equations models tested. The modified model showed significant relations between learning goal orientation and the three dimensions of training motivation; and between the expectancy subscale and job support and intention to transfer.

The paper highlights that the T‐VIES‐it is a validated multidimensional assessment of training motivation, and the first its kind in Italian. The scale should provide value in training evaluations and in research related to training motivation.

This paper aims to build on the latest advances in cognitive computing techniques to systematically illustrate how unstructured data from users can offer significant value for co-innovation.

The paper adopts a general overview approach to understand how unstructured data from users can be analyzed with cognitive computing techniques for innovation. The paper links the computerized techniques with marketing innovation problems with an integrated framework using dynamic capabilities and complexity theory.

The paper identifies a suite of methodologies for facilitating company co-innovation via engaging with customers and external data with cognitive computing technologies. It helps to expand marketing researchers and practitioners’ understanding of using unstructured data.

This paper provides a conceptual framework that divides co-innovation process into three stages, ideas generation, ideas integration and ideas evaluation, and maps cognitive computing methodologies and technologies to each stage. This paper makes the theoretical contributions by developing propositions from both customer and firm perspectives.

This paper can be used for companies to engage consumers and external data for co-innovation activities by strategically select appropriate cognitive computing techniques to analyze unstructured data for better insights.

Given the lack of systematic discussion regarding what is possible from using cognitive computing to analyze unstructured data for co-innovation. This paper makes first attempt to summarize how unstructured data can be analyzed with cognitive computing techniques. This paper also integrates complexity theory to the framework from a novel perspective.

Robots are predicted to have a profound impact on the service sector. The emergence of robots has attracted increasing interest from business scholars and practitioners alike. In this article, we undertake a systematic review of the business literature about the impact of service robots on customers and employees with the objective of guiding future research.

We analyzed the literature on service robots as they relate to customers and employees in business journals listed in the Financial Times top 50 journals plus all journals covered in the cross-disciplinary SERVSIG literature alerts.

The analysis of the identified studies yielded multiple observations about the impact of service robots on customers (e.g. overarching frameworks on acceptance and usage of service robots; characteristics of service robots and anthropomorphism; and potential for enhanced and deteriorated service experiences) and service employees (e.g. employee benefits such as reduced routine work, enhanced productivity and job satisfaction; potential negative consequences such as loss of autonomy and a range of negative psychological outcomes; opportunities for human–robot collaboration; job insecurity; and robot-related up-skilling and development requirements). We also conclude that current research on service robots is fragmented, is largely conceptual in nature and focused on the initial adoption stage. We feel that more research is needed to build an overarching theory. In addition, more empirical research is needed, especially on the long(er)-term usage service robots on actual behaviors, the well-being and potential downsides and (ethical) risks for customers and service employees.

Our review focused on the business and service literature. Future work may want to include additional literature streams, including those in computer science, engineering and information systems.

This article is the first to synthesize the business and service literature on the impact of service robots on customers and employees.

The service sector is at an inflection point with regard to productivity gains and service industrialization similar to the industrial revolution in manufacturing that started in the eighteenth century. Robotics in combination with rapidly improving technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), mobile, cloud, big data and biometrics will bring opportunities for a wide range of innovations that have the potential to dramatically change service industries. The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential role service robots will play in the future and to advance a research agenda for service researchers.

This paper uses a conceptual approach that is rooted in the service, robotics and AI literature.

The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, it provides a definition of service robots, describes their key attributes, contrasts their features and capabilities with those of frontline employees, and provides an understanding for which types of service tasks robots will dominate and where humans will dominate. Second, this paper examines consumer perceptions, beliefs and behaviors as related to service robots, and advances the service robot acceptance model. Third, it provides an overview of the ethical questions surrounding robot-delivered services at the individual, market and societal level.

This paper helps service organizations and their management, service robot innovators, programmers and developers, and policymakers better understand the implications of a ubiquitous deployment of service robots.

This is the first conceptual paper that systematically examines key dimensions of robot-delivered frontline service and explores how these will differ in the future.

The authors test the proposition that there are dark sides to conscientiousness that are revealed when examining lower-level facets. The authors propose that potentially dysfunctional behavior is triggered by context cues that are relevant to duty versus achievement striving.

The authors conducted two laboratory experiments designed to test how context cues that are specific to duty and achievement striving influence the relationship between these facets and quality versus quantity dimensions of task performance.

In Study 1, the authors found that normative quality cues led to a stronger relationship between duty and discretionary quality performance. In Study 2, achievement striving was associated with lower levels of quality performance in the presence of competitive feedback cues.

The findings illustrate that the dark side of duty and achievement striving emerges in two ways. First, when there is normative pressure for quality, dutiful individuals are apt to sacrifice efficiency. Second, when there is competitive feedback, achievement striving individuals focus on performance standards at the detriment of quality.

The findings point to the importance of precision and specificity when using personality measures for staffing. Equally important is the informational content of cues conveyed by the social, task and organizational context, in leveraging the impact of personality in the workplace.

This paper clarifies the dark side and bright side contradiction of conscientiousness, adding to the growing literature on unique and often competing consequences of duty and achievement striving. The authors also draw attention to the importance of the content of contextual cues, in trait activation of personality.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse competitive advantage in relation to the formulation of competitive product marketing strategies in European Union (EU) firms. It considers how it is possible to gain a competitive advantage through different product strategies.

The analysis is based on 18 EU member States (14 founding States and four new States that joined in 2004). To investigate the range of strategies is used by EU companies in both old and new member States, cluster, discriminant analysis and multiple comparison procedures are used.

The results show some differences in strategies between old and new EU member companies. Although a balanced strategy is most widely used in both groups, companies from new member states are fond of a price and quality mix whereas companies from the old member states favour a quality and distribution mix.

A larger pool of competitive elements could provide more in‐depth insights. Thus, further research could include different internal and external factors that influence the choice of strategy.

To gain a more sustainable advantage in the new competitive milieu all EU member companies should be able to successfully integrate all marketing elements employed in the strategy.

This paper provides an insight into competitive strategies of EU member companies and a basis for monitoring the levels of competitiveness of member states and the competitive marketing practices of different companies within the EU.

The impact of frontline robots (FLRs) on customer orientation perceptions remains unclear. This is remarkable because customers may associate FLRs with standardization and cost-cutting, such that they may not fit firms that aim to be customer oriented.

In four experiments, data are collected from customers interacting with frontline employees (FLEs) and FLRs in different settings.

FLEs are perceived as more customer-oriented than FLRs due to higher competence and warmth evaluations. A relational interaction style attenuates the difference in perceived competence between FLRs and FLEs. These agents are also perceived as more similar in competence and warmth when FLRs participate in the customer journey's information and negotiation stages. Switching from FLE to FLR in the journey harms FLR evaluations.

The authors recommend firms to place FLRs only in the negotiation stage or in both the information and negotiation stages of the customer journey. Still then customers should not transition from employees to robots (vice versa does no harm). Firms should ensure that FLRs utilize a relational style when interacting with customers for optimal effects.

The authors bridge the FLR and sales/marketing literature by drawing on social cognition theory. The authors also identify the product categories for which customers are willing to negotiate with an FLR. Broadly speaking, this study’s findings underline that customers perceive robots as having agency (i.e. the mental capacity for acting with intentionality) and, just as humans, can be customer-oriented.

Drawing on social learning theory (SLT), this study aims to investigate how previous cross-cultural work experience influences individual adjustment in a foreign environment over time. For this purpose, the authors study foreign service employees who are characterized by permanent high mobility and frequent rotations.

Two cross-sectional surveys conducted in 2011 (analytical sample N = 1,097) and 2019 (analytical sample N = 1,431) amongst German Foreign Service (GFS) employees are used to analyse employees' adjustment, measured by self-perceived quality of life (QOL) and its development over time based on four time points. Locational adjustment trajectories serve as robustness checks.

Younger and therefore less experienced employees fit J-shaped patterns of adjustment, while more experienced employees show rather flat adjustment curves. Accordingly, work experience matters and “one curve fits all” approaches do not suffice to explain adjustment over time. Moreover, neither more nor less experienced employees experienced U-trajectories as proposed by previous literature on business expatriates.

The study findings are based on cross-sectional surveys, but longitudinal designs should be preferred in future research.

Sending institutions may develop special support systems for inexperienced expatriates prior to departure to weaken the negative impacts of culture shock.

Existing literature only sparsely analysed adjustment and QOL for foreign service employees/diplomats so far. To the authors’ knowledge, no study analysed trajectories of adjustment over time for this population. This study profits from the analysis across two surveys. Both samples benefit from a high diversity, among others, regarding gender, age, education and host countries.