Search results

This research investigates whether and how perceived firm remorse (PFR) influences consumers’ coping behaviors in the digital media service recovery context. It also examines how an apology should be delivered to generate PFR.

In Study 1, 452 mobile application service users were recruited for a survey study, and Structural Equation Modeling was used to test the research hypotheses. In Study 2, 1,255 mobile application service users were recruited for an experimental study.

Study 1 shows that PFR negatively influences blame attribution and positively influences emotional empathy. Emotional empathy negatively affects coping behaviors. According to this study, blame attribution and emotional empathy do not have any serial mediation effect on the relationship between PFR and coping behaviors. Only emotional empathy mediates the effect of PFR on coping behaviors. Study 2 finds that response time and apology mode jointly influence PFR.

This research establishes the relationship between PFR and coping behaviors and shows the mediating role of emotional empathy in this relationship.

Service providers should consider response time and apology mode, as the two factors jointly influence the extent of PFR, which affects consumers’ coping behaviors through emotional empathy. A grace period, in which PFR does not decrease, is present when a public apology is offered. Such an effect does not exist when a private apology is offered.

This research explains how PFR influences coping behaviors and demonstrates how apology mode moderates the effect of response time on PFR in the digital media service recovery context.

The purpose of this study is to assess the comparative influence of two empathy dimensions (cognitive and emotional attributes) on emotional service experience and behavioral intention among business and leisure hotel guests. Studies relevant to empathy dimensions are relatively scarce in tourism and hospitality.

The current study reviewed the concepts of empathy, and empirically compared perceptions of empathy attributes between the two groups. The survey was intended to examine how well the hotel employees emotionally handle hotel guests’ incidents or inquiries related to any discomforts through personalized attention. The data were collected from 330 hotel guests who had actually complained about service failures while staying at the hotel during the record-breaking summer of 2013 in terms of number of visitors to Jeju. An active empathetic listening (AEL) tool has been taken to measure the hotel guest’s cognitive views and behavioral intentions, as well as emotional empathy measures under the empathic concern and emotional contagion.

The results revealed that empathetic dimensions strongly influenced the service experiences of hotel guests. While the emotional service experience of business guests was almost completely determined by the cognitive empathy, the emotional service experience of the leisure guests was mainly governed by the emotional empathy.

These outcomes suggest that the empathetic services through a “purpose of visit”-oriented manner might enhance the guest’s overall emotion positively.

According to the prior literatures and empirical findings in hospitality and tourism, empathy can be seen as subscale in SERVQUAL instrument. This paper focus on insights of empathy dimensions, and it was revealed that the interaction of both the cognitive and emotional dimensions of empathy conjointly determines the overall emotional service experience and intention of hotel guests.

This paper focusses on the leaders' ability to recognise and empathise with emotions. This is important because leadership and particularly transformational leadership are principally focussed on an individual's social interactions and their ability to identify emotions and to react empathetically to the emotions of others (Psychogios and Dimitriadis, 2020). Many leadership theorists suggest the ability to have and display empathy is an important part of leadership (Bass, 1990; Walumbwa et al., 2008).

To examine the extent to which those who work in jobs with a significant element of leadership education can recognise and empathise with emotions, 99 part-time postgraduate executive Master of Business Administration (MBA) students took part in an emotional recognition test. First, all participants were shown a sequence of pictures portraying different human facial expressions and the electrical activity in the brain as a result of the visual stimuli were recorded using an electroencephalogram (EEG). The second stage of the research was for the participants to see the same seven randomised images, but this time, they had to report what emotion they believed they had visualised and the intensity of it on a self-reporting scale.

This study demonstrated that the ability to recognise emotions is more accurate using EEG techniques compared to participants using self-reporting surveys. The findings from this study provide academic departments with evidence that more work needs to be done with students to develop their emotional recognition skills. Particularly for those students who are or will go onto occupy leadership roles.

The use of neuroscientific approaches has long been used in clinical settings. However, few studies have applied these approaches to develop the authors’ understanding of their use in social sciences. Therefore, this paper provides an original and unique insight into the use of these techniques in higher education.

Emotions and affect continue to garner widespread interest in the organizational sciences, and psychometric instruments tend to be the most often utilized method of assessing emotional phenomena in the workplace. However, psychometric questionnaires/surveys suffer from various shortcomings in that they may not adequately capture the underlying emotional experiences of individuals for various reasons (such as social desirability, lack of awareness, political posturing, and so forth). Neuroscience approaches allow researchers to directly assess the underlying neural activity that is occurring inside individuals’ brains. Accordingly, neuroscience can help researchers to overcome some of the limitations of surveys, thus allowing for both broader conceptualization and measurement. We briefly discuss the various neuroscience methodologies that can be used to help researchers gain insight into how individuals in the workplace experience emotions. Our discussion targets emotional contagion and emotional regulation as two areas that could especially benefit from utilizing a neuroscientific approach. We end the chapter with a consideration of practical implications.

The main goal of the one semester long intervention for first-year Bachelor of Social Services students was to enable them to increase their awareness of a variety of cultures and practices encountered in social pedagogical work and to support the development of their ability to interact empathically with clients.

The aim of this article is to describe an educational intervention focused on teaching Qualified Empathic skills to social work students in higher education at Metropolia University of Applied Sciences in Finland. We introduce the concept of Qualified Empathy to describe professional empathic working skills and define it as: Qualified Empathy requires compassion for empathic action and it includes the ability for professional self-reflection, emotional skills and a healthy set of boundaries. Qualified Empathy encompasses the ability to tell the difference between sympathy and empathy, as it includes the capacity to use compassion to act in an empathic way in professional contexts (Raatikainen et al., 2017). The study was a case study, designed to explore the students' experiences of their one semester long educational intervention (n = 20). Our research question was: How do students construct Qualified Empathy as a dimension of their own professional expertise?

The results of the study demonstrate the progress areas of the students' Qualified Empathy skills. The development stages in the three progress areas are: (1) from emotional reaction to emotional response, (2) from understanding to empathic acting and (3) from client perspective to a more systemic approach. Implications of the results for Social Services students are discussed.

In this study, as in all studies, some limitations need to be taken into account. One limitation of this study is the size and “nature of data”. Secondly, challenges with the concept of Qualified Empathy need to be addressed and more research is needed to define it more concretely. Even so, as it is a new concept, we need more discussion on the differences in the definition of empathy and Qualified Empathy. However, this study offers one new perspective for discussion which is the need for empathy training, in social work education practices and in the field. An important ethical aspect of research emphasizes that its implementation must not be to the detriment of the people being researched (Juuti and Puusa, 2020, pp. 168).

Our findings demonstrate that educational interventions can improve students' empathy skills to more qualified skills. We emphasized that maintaining the skill demands continuous reflection as a lifelong process. This article provides an overview of an educational intervention to improve students' Qualified Empathy skills and suggests a definition for educators to frame the teaching of professional empathy or empathy in a professional context – especially in the social work context. Furthermore, with this educational intervention in social work, we offer a way to support the students to – not only – have a more professional approach to empathy but also to find a way to establish a more emotionally sustainable environment for professionals in social services. It is essential for social work education to focus on the growth of Qualified Empathy in students through supervision and guidance which supports their professional competence. By doing so, we contribute to the development of more sustainable working environments in the social work context.

Professional empathy is seen as an important factor in building a socially sustainable society from the perspectives of employees, clients and patients. We noticed that it is important to allow time and space for the learners to internalize the concept of Qualified Empathy. When we allow for this, students begin to recognize and assign more value to it and, as we suggest, they become more adept in their interactions and work with clients.

The study was a case study, designed to explore the students' experiences of their one semester long educational intervention (n = 20). Our research question was: How do students construct Qualified Empathy as a dimension of their own professional expertise? The results of the study demonstrate the progress areas of the students' Qualified Empathy skills. The development stages in the three progress areas are: (1) from emotional reaction to emotional response, (2) from understanding to empathic acting and (3) from client perspective to a more systemic approach. Implications of the results for Social Services students are discussed.

Empathy, or the process of feeling or knowing how another feels, is a critical component of social interactions, and may be of particular importance to organizational functioning. This chapter addresses a literature gap on empathy in organizational contexts by providing a review of empathy research in a management setting.

We integrate the developing field of empathy research and provide a conceptual framework built on Ashkanasy’s (2003) five levels of analysis in emotions research, emphasizing within-person, between-person, interpersonal, group-level, and organization-level processes.

Our model addresses the complaint that empathy definitions are not consistent by illustrating how the level of analysis alters the view of empathy’s role in organizations.

This multi-level model of empathy provides a framework to identify gaps in the empathy literature and make recommendations for future research.

This new model of empathy will help practitioners use and understand empathy by providing a structure of how empathy is manifested in organizational settings.

The field of empathy research has been limited by inconsistent definitions and a lack of a model that outlines how empathy is used in organizations. This multi-level model of empathy provides the necessary framework for researchers and practitioners to advance the research and practice of empathy in organizations.

Drawing upon the conservation of resources theory, this study aims to investigate whether, how and when salespeople’s substantive attribution of the organization’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) affects value-based selling (VBS). The authors argue that salespeople’s substantive CSR attribution increase value-based selling through two mechanisms (i.e. by lowering emotional exhaustion and increasing empathy), and treatment by customers can increase or decrease the strength of these relationships.

B2B salespeople working in various industries in China were recruited through snowball sampling to participate in the study. There were 462 volunteers (57.58% women; aged 30–55; tenure ranging from six months to 15 years) who provided valid self-report questionnaires.

Hierarchical multiple regression supported the association between salespeople’s substantive CSR attribution and VBS. The results showed that salespeople’s emotional state (i.e. emotional exhaustion and empathy) mediated the association between substantive CSR attribution and VBS. As expected, salespeople’s experiences of customer incivility weakened the mediating effect of emotional exhaustion; contrary to expectations, customer-initiated interpersonal justice weakened the mediation effect of empathy.

This study makes a unique contribution to the existing marketing literature by first investigating the role of salespeople’s attribution of CSR motives in facilitating their VBS, which answers the call to identify factors that predict VBS. In addition, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the authors are the first to test salespeople’s emotions as a mechanism of the link between their CSR attributions and selling behaviors.

This study aims to investigate the relationships between social skills, motivation and empathy (emotional intelligence components) and transformational leadership in Greek organisations giving emphasis on supervisor‐subordinate interaction on a team basis. In particular, this study aims to investigate employees' perceptions regarding their supervisor's emotional intelligence as well as transformational leadership.

Participants were 267 managers working at various functional units and different hierarchical levels. Data were collected by means of questionnaires in a series of face‐to‐face structured interviews regarding subordinates' perceptions for the following: supervisors' emotional intelligence; and transformational leadership.

Results provided support for the model which suggests that supervisors' emotional intelligence components such as social skills, motivation, and empathy are positively associated with transformational leadership increasing team effectiveness with subordinate.

Data were collected from convenience samples that might limit generalisability of results. Implications for management are discussed including the need for supervisors to use emotional intelligence competencies and transformational leadership, so that their subordinates are empowered to participate and increase team effectiveness.

This study contributes to our understanding of the linkage among emotional intelligence and transformational leadership of supervisors in Greek organisations and the impact on teamwork with their subordinates.

To consider the power of psychological well-being, empathy and coping style in predicting staff attitudes towards young people in looked after accommodation, involved in or at risk of offending behaviour. The purpose of this paper is to understand more about staff attitudes which have a significant role in the care and rehabilitation of this client group.

Psychological well-being, empathy and coping style are discussed in terms of their impact on attitudes towards young people. The predictive power of each factor is considered using multiple regression analysis of participants’ responses on an adapted version of the Attitudes to Prisoners (ATP) scale, the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ), the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) and the Coping Styles Questionnaire (CSQ).

Multiple regression analyses showed that empathic concern (affective empathy) was the only factor predictive of attitudes towards young people. The paper discusses the applied implications for employers, including the possibility of empathy training for staff members and highlights the need for further consideration of the factors impacting on staff attitudes.

The outcome suggests that empathy may serve as a protective factor against the development of negative attitudes. This highlights the importance of fostering staff empathy and the possible use of empathy training.

The research findings question the robustness of the relationships between staff psychological well-being, empathy, coping styles and attitudes towards their client group. The outcome suggests that empathy may serve as a protective factor against the development of negative attitudes.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between empathy and social responsibility (SR) practices in a university organization in Brazil during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

The research was qualitative, using case study methodology. The case study was about the Brazilian organization Ânima Educação, which is the greatest among the five largest publicly traded education companies in Brazil. Secondary data collection and content analysis was carried out.

As emotional response toward the problems caused by the pandemic, the company's leadership adopted an empathic behavior, allowing traces of its empathic culture to emerge. Empathy was expressed through the implementation of SR practices aimed at workers (policy of not firing in the first two months of the pandemic), at students (provision of technological apparatus, online classes, physical/psychological assistance and negotiation of late fees) and at the society (assistance to the elderly).

It was concluded that empathy can be taken as the emotional motivator for companies to engage in SR practices, especially in extreme circumstances in society, as the economic and health challenges that the world is experiencing with the COVID-19 pandemic nowadays. SR practices, in turn, can foster even more empathy in organizations, mobilizing leaders and their respective groups in the creation and implementation of new practices, thus demonstrating that the relationship between empathy and SR practices is a “two-way street.”