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This paper examines several sources of support for contact employees in service encounters. These sources of support, including organization support, supervisory support, and customer's participation, are proposed to affect the attitudes and behaviors of employees, and consequently affect customer's perceptions of employees' service quality. This study, which combines perceptions from customers and their contact employees, shows that three sources of support for employees contribute significantly to job satisfaction and employee service quality, while perceived organizational support and customer participation affect service effort. Also, the empirical results indicate that both employee service effort and job satisfaction play strong, central roles in determining customers' perceptions of employee service quality. They were found to be effective mediators linking employees' cognitive appraisal of various sources of support to service quality.

The aim of this study is to study the relationships among: two types of managerial practices (“reward” and “support”), two types of emotional satisfaction (“positive” and “negative”), and employee‐perceived service quality.

The study presents a conceptual model of the aforementioned relationships. It proposed hypotheses regarding these relationships and collected data with a survey study of 1,076 frontline employees in service organizations. An analysis of the testing of the hypotheses follows.

The study has found that managerial reward and managerial support are both directly related to positive and negative emotions and to employee‐perceived service quality. In particular, positive and negative emotions appear directly related to employee‐perceived service quality. Moreover, it was found that emotional satisfaction partially mediates the relationship between managerial (reward and support) practices and employee‐perceived service quality.

The study takes place within a broad context of frontline employees in service organizations.

The study has demonstrated the importance for managers to consider how their practices influence the service quality their employees provide to customers. In particular, managers should take account of employees' emotions, whether positive or negative, because of their role in explaining employee‐perceived service quality. Consequently, one general and key implication from this study is the importance of measuring employees' emotions. Measuring these mental states (described as stable tendencies of feelings) which arise from cognitive appraisals of managerial practices can be a good predictor for employee‐perceived service quality. The study shows that employees are not isolated “emotional islands” and, consequently, it is important for managers to understand how emotions and the quality of service delivery are linked.

The paper enhances knowledge of how emotions are linked to the quality of service delivery and the role of emotional satisfaction in service‐quality management.

Smart-work has been attracting more attention since the COVID-19 outbreak hit the world in 2020. Smart-working practices do not always run smoothly despite the necessary infrastructure being in place. Taking the quality-value-loyalty chain and information system continuance model as the basis, this study aims to identify how “smart-work support service” leads to employees’ continuance intention toward smart-work. In this study, the smart-work support service refers to the infrastructure making smart-work possible and services needed to support smart-work.

Using data collected from a survey of 406 employees working in Korea, this study verifies the components of smart-work support service quality and dimensions of perceived value through partial least squares analysis and then tests the proposed conceptual model using structural equation modeling.

The results verified that the quality of smart-work support service consists of eight attributes while dividing the perceived value of smart-work into three dimensions and further revealed that the service quality influences the intention to continue smart-working by way of perceived value and satisfaction.

This study sought to explore the relationship among service quality, perceived value and satisfaction by clearly conceptualizing and measuring them in the context of smart-work, thereby ultimately understanding the impact they have on the intention to continue smart-work.

Applying social capital and the social exchange theories to customer-to-customer (C2C) interactions, this study aims to propose that interaction quality perceptions affect the customer-to-service provider’s interaction quality perceptions in a prolonged, close-proximity service setting. Examining this exogenous dimension, the study also tests socio-emotional support perception’s mediating effect and customer proactiveness’ moderating effect.

This study adopts and modifies existing general services of C2C interaction dimensions to fit the health-care context. An in-person survey of 192 neurosurgery inpatients and their care-giving companions (both considered health-care customers) provides data to validate the dimensions and test the model. Structural equation modeling and moderated regression test the hypotheses.

Results show that affirmative C2C interactions positively affect the customer’s perceived socio-emotional support, whereas negative C2C interactions show no significant impact. Greater socio-emotional support acuity improves customers’ assurance and empathy quality perceptions about the provider’s service. Customer proactiveness moderates C2C interaction dimensions.

This study extends the research of the C2C interaction to include their effect on service quality perceptions in a prolonged close-proximity service setting. Study results validate C2C interaction’s dimensions specific to an inpatient setting. Finally, this study extends the application of social capital theory and social exchange theory to C2C settings.

Findings emphasize the importance of managing C2C interactions during prolonged, close-proximity service delivery processes to improve customer perceptions of service quality. Results suggest that managers should monitor customer proactiveness to maximize positive C2C interactions’ positive effects while minimizing negative C2C interactions.

Prior service quality studies tend to focus on managing internal resources (staff, processes or physical environment); however, this study examines how the interactions among external resources create a halo effect and impact customers’ service quality perceptions. Results inform methods to improve their quality perceptions by better managing exogenous factors. The study also responds to calls for research on how C2C interactions affect functional service contexts (vs hedonic service contexts).

Explores the extent to which the construct service quality plays in an internal marketing setting. A conceptual model known as the “Internal Service Quality Model” was designed based on the original “GAP Model” developed by Parasuraman. The model evaluated the dimensions, and their relationships, that determine service quality among internal customers (front‐line staff) and internal suppliers (support staff) within a large service organisation, namely, Singapore Airlines. The dependent variable in this study was internal service quality (ISQ), while the independent variables were tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. The results suggest that the perceptions and expectations of internal customers and internal suppliers play a major role in recognising the level of internal service quality perceived. The acceptance of the postulated hypotheses has confirmed the importance of the internal service quality construct, thus acknowledging the usefulness of the INTSERVQUAL instrument and the conceptualised Internal Service Quality Model proposed in this research study.

The authors investigate how employee social support impacts children’s perceptions of service quality of a child helpline chat service and the chatters’ immediate well-being. Specifically, the purpose of this study is to examine how action-facilitating support, nurturant support and emotional reflections influence the children and to test whether this impact varies depending upon the controllability of the issues discussed.

The authors develop hypotheses about the influence of social support and controllability on children’s perceived service quality and well-being. Chat conversations are coded on the social support given by the employee and the controllability of the issue. Questionnaires are collected to measure children’s service quality and well-being. Using structural equation modeling, hypotheses are tested with a sample of 662 children and chat conversations of a child helpline.

The study reveals that for children chatting about controllable issues, nurturant support and negative emotional reflections negatively influence the immediate well-being of these children. Positive emotional reflections positively influence immediate well-being. For children chatting about uncontrollable issues, nurturant support and negative emotional responses positively influence the perceived service quality.

This study contributes to the services marketing literature by broadening the current understanding of the impact of social support on children’s service quality perceptions and well-being, and by showing how this impact is moderated by the level of controllability of the issue discussed.

This study's purpose is to propose an integrated model based on expectation-confirmation model (ECM), task-technology fit (TTF) model, and updated DeLone and McLean information system (IS) success model to examine whether quality factors and TTF as antecedents to physician beliefs can affect physicians' continuance intention of the cloud-based hospital information system (HIS) and performance impact.

Sample data for this study were collected from physicians at five hospitals in Taiwan. A total of 500 questionnaires were distributed, and 305 (61.0 percent) usable questionnaires were analyzed using structural equation modeling in this study.

This study verified that physicians' perceived information quality, system quality, general technical support service quality, and cloud storage service quality all positively caused their PU, confirmation, and perceived TTF in the cloud-based HIS, which together explained their satisfaction with the system, and subsequently led to their continuance intention of the system and performance impact.

First, IS-related and cloud-related quality factors are simultaneously taken into consideration within this study's research model, and empirical results reveal deep insights into quality evaluation in the field of physicians' cloud-based HIS continuance intention. Next, this study contributes to an understanding of TTF in explaining physicians' cloud-based HIS continuance intention that is difficult to explain with only their utilitarian perception of the system, and places emphasis upon physicians' perception of performance impact greatly driven by their perceived TTF and continuance intention of the system, thus the results can shed light on antecedents and outcome of physicians' cloud-based HIS continuance intention.

The ideas expressed in this work are based on those put into practice at the Okuma Corporation of Japan, one of the world′s leading machine tool manufacturers. In common with many other large organizations, Okuma Corporation has to meet the new challenges posed by globalization, keener domestic and international competition, shorter business cycles and an increasingly volatile environment. Intelligent corporate strategy (ICS), as practised at Okuma, is a unified theory of strategic corporate management based on five levels of win‐win relationships for profit/market share, namely: ,1. Loyalty from customers (value for money) – right focus., 2. Commitment from workers (meeting hierarchy of needs) – right attitude., 3. Co‐operation from suppliers (expanding and reliable business) – right connections., 4. Co‐operation from distributors (expanding and reliable business) – right channels., 5. Respect from competitors (setting standards for business excellence) – right strategies. The aim is to create values for all stakeholders. This holistic people‐oriented approach recognizes that, although the world is increasingly driven by high technology, it continues to be influenced and managed by people (customers, workers, suppliers, distributors, competitors). The philosophical core of ICS is action learning and teamwork based on principle‐centred relationships of sincerity, trust and integrity. In the real world, these are the roots of success in relationships and in the bottom‐line results of business. ICS is, in essence, relationship management for synergy. It is based on the premiss that domestic and international commerce is a positive sum game: in the long run everyone wins. Finally, ICS is a paradigm for manufacturing companies coping with change and uncertainty in their search for profit/market share. Time‐honoured values give definition to corporate character; circumstances change, values remain. Poor business operations generally result from human frailty. ICS is predicated on the belief that the quality of human relationships determines the bottom‐line results. ICS attempts to make manifest and explicit the intangible psychological factors for value‐added partnerships. ICS is a dynamic, living, and heuristic‐learning model. There is intelligence in the corporate strategy because it applies commonsense, wisdom, creative systems thinking and synergy to ensure longevity in its corporate life for sustainable competitive advantage.

Little research has focused on the quality and availability of interactive online support services retrieved through search engines. The purpose of this paper is twofold; first, to review and assess the availability and accessibility of interactive online support available to individuals in suicidal crisis. Second, to field test a new tool developed specifically to evaluate both the quality of online information and the quality of interactive support.

A collection of six terms relating to suicidal distress were generated and inputted across three major search engines (Google, Yahoo and Ask). Following initial exclusions, the remaining web sites were analysed using the SPAT (Site, Publisher, Audience and Timeliness) tool and recently developed COSAT (Crisis and Online Support Appraisal Tool) tool.

The quality of web sites retrieved was variable, with only 1.9 per cent deemed as high-quality interactive support resources. Google had the greatest precision of searching, but ease of access through search engines was generally limited. No significant difference was found in the quality of web sites located on pages 1 or 2 of search engine results. Overall, community and voluntary sector web sites averaged higher quality and interactive support rating's compared to publicly funded web sites.

The newly developed COSAT tool may provide a positive first step towards a standardised measure of online quality and interactive support, although further testing and validation is required with a larger sample size.

To the authors knowledge little research has focused on the quality and availability of interactive online support services retrieved through search engines.

System quality, information quality, user IS characteristics, employee IS performance and technical support are identified as important elements that influence service quality. A model interrelating these constructs is proposed. Data collected through a national survey of IS departments in electric utility firms was used to test the model using regression and path analysis methodology. The results suggest that system quality, information quality, user IS characteristics, through their effects on employee IS performance, influence service quality, while technical support influences service quality directly. The results also suggest that employee IS performance contributes more to service quality compared with technical support. Implications of this research for IS theory and practice are discussed.