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Team leaders play a vital role in achieving superior team performance. However, their role in implementing the organizational customer orientation strategy is not well understood. Drawing on social exchange theory, this study investigates how team leader customer orientation affects team customer orientation climate and team performance (i.e. customer satisfaction) as well as the moderating role of transformational leadership in such effect.

This study builds on survey data collected from matched team leaders, employees and customers nested in 81 service teams and employs hierarchical multiple regression analysis to test the hypotheses.

The findings indicate that team leader customer orientation increases team customer orientation climate, which leads to a higher level of customer satisfaction. Leaders' transformational leadership moderates the link between a leader customer orientation and team customer orientation climate in an unexpected way. When a team leader is transformational, the team customer orientation climate is enhanced, regardless of the level of team leader customer orientation. When a team leader's transformational leadership is low, the higher leader customer orientation is and the higher team customer orientation climate is.

This study contributes to the customer orientation, transformational leadership and service literature by unraveling team leaders' roles in boosting team customer orientation climate and team effectiveness.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the performance of salespeople when selling new products (namely, electronic goods) in a business-to-business context by incorporating the organizations’ perceived psychological climate into goal orientation theory.

The current study uses the goal orientation theory to examine the performance of 158 salespeople based on new electronic product sales. Organizational psychological climate perceptions (i.e. customer orientation, sales supportiveness and sales innovativeness) are included as variables that can moderate salespeople’s performance. This study used partial least squares to examine its proposed model.

This study found that the learning goal orientation and the performance-prove goal orientation positively affect salespeople’s self-efficacy to sell new products, whereas a performance-avoid goal orientation negatively affects efficacy. In addition, new product selling self-efficacy itself has a positive influence on new product sales performance. As for the moderator, sales supportiveness and customer orientation have the ability to moderate the relationship between self-efficacy and performance.

This study has implications for sales managers or product managers who are responsible for promoting new products. First, this study’s findings suggest that managers should consider employing performance-prove goal-oriented staff and learning goal oriented staff to sell new products. Second, management can attempt to develop a more supportive climate for the sales team, such as assisting the team in obtaining needed resources from other departments. Finally, management needs to let salespeople know that they are doing their best to understand what new products existing and potential customers will need in the near future.

This current research is one of the first to examine how the perceived psychological climates of organizations (i.e. sales supportiveness, sales innovativeness and customer orientation) may moderate salespeople’s performance when selling new products. Second, this research examines how different types of goal orientation affect salespeople’s self-efficacy when selling new products. Previous results have not always been consistent regarding the influence of a performance-prove goal orientation. Last but not least, this study tests how new product selling self-efficacy mediates the relationships between goal orientations and new product sales performance as scholars have suggested that more research into the mediating role of self-efficacy is needed.

This study aims to examine the effects of trait goal orientations (mastery, performance-prove and performance-avoid goals) on individual-level absorptive capacity (AC), ultimately adaptive performance. This study also explores the cross-level moderating effects of transformational leadership climate on these mediated relationships.

Data from 480 participants in 76 teams from accounting firms in Northeast Thailand were analyzed using the multilevel method.

Findings showed support for positive indirect effects from approach-related goal orientations (mastery and performance-prove) to adaptive performance via AC and a negative indirect effect from avoid goal orientation to adaptive performance via AC. Results showed that a transformational leadership climate strengthens the relationship between goal orientations and AC, but only when team members have a high level of approach-related goals.

This study extends previous work by providing an understanding of how a transformational leadership context and the differences in goal orientations interact to promote or impede an individual's AC. It also extends our understanding of the mechanism of how AC mediated the effects of trait goal orientations and transformational leadership climate on adaptive performance.

Drawing on the resource‐based view, we posit that the learning climate is an intangible, strategic resource that influences important outcomes. Data from 141 supply chain units within a multinational corporation reveal that four constructs (team‐, systems‐, learning‐, and memory orientations) function as first‐order indicators of the higher‐order phenomenon of the learning climate. In turn, learning is inversely related to supply chain cycle time. The results are robust across the 1994 and 1999 data, suggesting that learning offers a persistent tool for managing outcomes.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between the interaction of the social media manager’s customer orientation and the service climate perceived by supervisors, on the customer’s perception of brand authenticity and, through it, on the willingness to pay a price premium.

This study uses triadic data from 200 social media followers, 20 social media managers and 20 supervisors from a range of industries.

The findings show that the customer orientation of the brand social media managers interacts with their work context to influence social media followers’ perceptions of brand authenticity, and ultimately, their willingness to pay a premium price. Finally, product involvement moderates the relationship between brand authenticity and willingness to pay a premium price.

This study shows how and when the disposition of brand social media managers affects the attitudes and intentions of the social media followers. Further research should continue this novel line of research and explore in greater depth the impact of social media managers and their environments.

Social media managers’ values should fit those of their organization. This organization-person fit reflects on social media and improves social media followers’ perceptions of brand authenticity and, consequently, their willingness to pay a premium price.

Leveraging participation in social media is currently a key issue for firms. However, the internal determinants of successful social media usage have received limited attention from researchers. Therefore, this research contributes to the social media literature by suggesting the need to consider the characteristics of social media managers and their context to promote the outcomes of social media usage, specifically brand authenticity and willingness to pay a premium price.

In many contemporary service organizations, service teams or service units are the main engines used to deliver key services to customers, client or patients. However, it remains unclear how teamwork mechanisms (i.e. the ways team members work together) influence customer service outcomes, and whether these relationships vary across different service contexts. To advance knowledge on the nature of teamwork in service teams and to set an agenda for further work in this area, there is a need to integrate and synthesize findings across the diverse literature on service teamwork. This paper aims to discuss the aforementioned objectives.

Using a meta-analytic approach, the authors analyzed a substantial pool of relevant effect sizes (a total of 372 effect sizes from 82 studies, with 14,291 service teams/units) to examine the effects of affective, behavioral, cognitive, motivational as well as perceptual teamwork mechanisms on customer service outcomes. The authors also investigated two key service context variables (service climate and service type) as boundary conditions on these effects.

The authors found that cognitive teamwork mechanisms were more strongly positively associated with customer evaluative outcomes than other mechanisms, whereas motivational and perceptual teamwork mechanisms had stronger associations with financial outcomes. Further, four of the five teamwork mechanisms demonstrated stronger correlations under a high service climate. The strength of the correlations between the teamwork mechanisms and customer service outcomes also exhibited different patterns when considered for different service types.

As with all meta-analysis, the quality of the primary studies influences the quality of the insights obtained from summarized effects. As most studies are cross-sectional design, the relationships examined in this paper cannot be interpreted causally. The authors cannot rule out the possibility of reverse causality, for example, reciprocal effects of customer service outcomes on teamwork dynamics due to the reciprocal feedback loop between customers and service providers.

The results hold important practical implications for enhancing customer evaluation and financial performance. First, the overall findings point to the need for employers to emphasize on certain types of teamwork training in order to encourage employee collaboration within service teams. For instance, service organizations could plan team building activities for service teams to promote trust, strengthen interpersonal bonds and improve problem-solving.

The results of this study provide an integration of previous research on service teamwork and fill two important gaps in the knowledge: (1) which aspect of teamwork is more important in determining customer service outcomes? And (2) does the effect of teamwork on customer service outcomes differ across different service contexts?

This study aims to explore the formation and consequences of a cross-selling initiative climate, as well as how a service climate, which provides an important boundary condition, affects both its formation and its ultimate impact on service-sales performance. This article identifies two important predictors of a cross-selling initiative climate: frontline employees’ perceptions of supervisors’ bottom-line mentality and their own sense of accountability.

The multilevel data set includes 180 frontline staff and supervisors (team leaders) from 31 teams employed by a spa/beauty salon chain. Hierarchical linear modelling and partial least squares methods serve to analyse the data.

Supervisors’ bottom-line mentality disrupts a cross-selling initiative climate. A sense of accountability exerts a positive impact at both individual and team levels. A service climate at the team level weakens the impact of a sense of accountability on a cross-selling initiative climate. A cross-selling initiative climate has a positive effect on team-level service-sales performance, but this effect is weakened by the service climate.

This study conceptualises an important frontline work unit attribute as a climate. It offers an initial argument that a cross-selling initiative climate is a central factor driving a work unit’s service-sales performance, which can increase firms’ productivity and competitive advantages. With this initial attempt to explore the antecedents and consequences of a cross-selling initiative climate, the study also offers novel insights into the interplay between a service and a cross-selling initiative climate.

This paper reports on the impact of perceived resource adequacy (PRA) and competence (PRC) on new service development (NSD) teams’ internal performance (IP). This study aims to explore the indirect effect of internal market orientation (IMO) adoption, as a dynamic capability, on both PRA and PRC through the shaping of the emerging dynamics within NSD teams.

Using a hierarchical research design, the authors use a meso-theory approach to test a path-analytic framework against 116 NSD managers (offering data at the macro- or organisational level) and 543 NSD team members (offering data at the micro- or team level).

Both PRA and PRC are important in explaining NSD teams’ IP at the organisational level, though their explanatory power varies. The adoption of IMO is also an important antecedent to this factor through the (indirect) effect on the team climate and degree of integration.

IMO is an important dynamic capability that allows management to transform the mindset of employees, even if they do not directly interact with customers. In NSD efforts, this reflects on the team’s perceptions of the adequacy of the resources they have to deliver the project through the managerial interventions at the team level, which (mainly) explains the team’s IP.

Adopting an IMO allows the development of a dynamic capability that carries wider benefits for the service organisation, as this has positive implications not just for frontline employees. Specifically, NSD efforts are likely to become more resource-efficient as a result of IMO adoption because of the interventions of management during the development effort.

This empirical study is the first to test the impact of IMO adoption as a dynamic capability and in a context other than frontline employees from a meso-theory perspective. This allows considering the different effects at the appropriate levels (macro and micro), thus enabling a more accurate definition of the mechanism through which companies benefit from IMO adoption.

This paper aims to examine how team-level empowering leadership related to service performance through thriving at work and how shared organizational social exchange and customer orientation moderated the latter relationships.

The authors collected the data from 283 flight attendants and their supervisors working at a major Korean airline. Multi-level analyses were used to test the effect of empowering leadership on employee outcomes.

Both team-level empowering leadership and customer orientation were significantly and indirectly associated with service performance via thriving at work. Additionally, customer orientation significantly moderated the relationship between team-level empowering leadership and thriving at work such that the relationship was stronger when customer orientation was low rather than high. In addition, shared organizational social exchange augmented the influence of team-level empowering leadership on service performance but not on thriving at work.

The findings suggest that team-level empowering leadership is more effective in enhancing thriving at work of employees when their customer orientation is low rather than high. In addition, a shared high-quality organizational social exchange augments the effect of empowering leadership on employees’ service performance.

This paper provides initial evidence of the interaction of team-level empowering leadership and individual¬-level customer orientation on thriving at work and service performance. Additionally, it documents the differential augmenting effect of shared organizational social exchange on the relationship between empowering leadership and these outcomes. Collectively, the findings explain why and when team-level empowering leadership relates to service performance.

Develops and tests a model of team orientation in the global purchasing process of a Fortune 500 multinational services organization. Based on a sample of 179 domestic and 167 international strategic business units (SBUs), the results indicate that team orientation in a purchasing unit is influenced by transformational leadership behaviors and the SBU user’s flexibility in mental models, which, in turn, affects customer orientation, relationship commitment, and cycle time in the process. The results appear to be strategically robust across the domestic and international purchasing settings, while the tactical implications of the results differ somewhat depending on the purchasing scenarios.