Muhammad Kashif, Anna Zarkada and Ramayah Thurasamy
The purpose of this paper is to investigate Pakistani bank front-line employees’ intentions to behave ethically by using the extended theory of planned behaviour (ETPB) into which…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate Pakistani bank front-line employees’ intentions to behave ethically by using the extended theory of planned behaviour (ETPB) into which religiosity (i.e. religious activity, devotion to rituals and belief in doctrine) is integrated as a moderating variable.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors collected 234 self-administered questionnaires and analysed them using SmartPLS 2.0, a second generation structural equation modelling technique.
Findings
This paper demonstrates that the ETPB can explain intentions to behave ethically. Moral norms (i.e. the rules of morality that people believe they ought to follow) and perceived behavioural control (i.e. people’s perceptions of their ability to perform a given behaviour) are the best predictors of ethical behavioural intentions. The effects of injunctive norms (i.e. perceptions of which behaviours are typically approved or disapproved in an organisation) and of perceived behavioural control on behavioural intent are moderated by religiosity.
Practical implications
Leading by example, providing ethics training, empowering employees and encouraging the expression of religiosity are proposed as ways to foster an ethical culture in the workplace.
Originality/value
Even though numerous empirical studies have utilised variants of the theory of planned behaviour to explain consumer behaviour, its applicability to ethical behaviour in the workplace has scarcely been explored. Moreover, its tests in non-western contexts are scant. This study demonstrates the applicability of the ETPB in a broader circumstantial and cultural context and enriches it with religiosity, a pertinent characteristic of billions of people around the world. Finally, this is one of the very few ethics studies focusing on banking, an industry fraught with allegations of moral breaches.
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Muhammad Kashif, Anna Zarkada and Ramayah Thurasamy
The episodes of customer rage with employees during service encounters are common and adversely affect the long-term commitment of employees with an organization. The service…
Abstract
Purpose
The episodes of customer rage with employees during service encounters are common and adversely affect the long-term commitment of employees with an organization. The service organizations, in an effort to control employee turnover, are striving hard but have failed. There are a wide variety of studies that address employee turnover but the research which encapsulates a combined effect of perceived justice and organizational pride to study exhaustion-turnover path are almost scant. The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of customer aggression on the frontline food service managers’ emotional exhaustion and turnover intentions. The mitigating effects of perceived distributive justice and emotional organizational pride are also investigated.
Design/methodology/approach
Survey data were collected from 250 frontline employees of global fast food chain outlets located in the city of Lahore, Pakistan. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling by AMOS.
Findings
The customer aggression is found to influence emotional exhaustion which in turn reduces job satisfaction and increases turnover intentions among frontline food service managers. The mitigating effects of distributive justice on the customer aggression to emotional exhaustion path and of emotional organizational pride on the job satisfaction to turnover intentions path are confirmed.
Practical implications
The results reveal importance of maintaining a supportive and justice-oriented organizational culture. Rewarding frontliners, celebrating the organizational successes that build pride, and acknowledging the emotional burden misbehaving customers place on employees are identified as shields to guard against employee dissatisfaction and turnover.
Originality/value
The turnover intentions resulting from the emotional exhaustion caused by customer aggression in the global fast food industry is studied for the first time. Furthermore, the inclusion of distributive justice and emotional organizational pride as cognitive and affective factors that reduce the effects of customer aggression on frontliners is unique to this study.
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Campbell Fraser and Anna Zarkada‐Fraser
Presents a comparison of approaches to negotiation and level of cultural awareness of international business managers in Russia, Greece and the UK. Demonstrates that although…
Abstract
Presents a comparison of approaches to negotiation and level of cultural awareness of international business managers in Russia, Greece and the UK. Demonstrates that although managers in the three countries are distinctly different in their demographic and cultural characteristics they generally exhibit high impression accuracy and adopt a similar approach to the negotiation process. Discusses implications for European business.
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Anna K. Zarkada, Muhammad Kashif and Zainab
This paper aims to examine the structure and content of religious tourism destination image through the reviews of visitors to Makkah and Medina, two of the world’s most popular…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the structure and content of religious tourism destination image through the reviews of visitors to Makkah and Medina, two of the world’s most popular Muslim pilgrimage sites.
Design/methodology/approach
This is an exploratory netnographic study of the 913 reviews posted on TripAdvisor from 2018 to 2022. The structure (dimensions and attributes) and content (variables) comprising the construct of religious tourism destination image emerge through manual thematic analysis and confirmed through content analysis.
Findings
Religious tourism destination image is a three-dimensional – cognitive, affective and conative – construct comprising both religion-specific, generally sacred and secular variables in a single, indivisible crystallization of experience.
Practical implications
Destination marketing organizations and marketers of tourism enterprises should regularly analyze visitor reviews posted on social media and carefully manage all variables of the religious tourism destination image, specifically stressing the religious aspect.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first systematic analysis of the structure and content of religious tourism destination image based on detailed consumer evaluations and unprompted storytelling.
Details
Keywords
- Religious tourism destination image (RTDI)
- User-generated content (UGC)
- Netnography
- Religious tourism (RT)
- Muslim tourists
- TripAdvisor reviews
- Cognitive
- Affective and conative tourism experience attributes
- Tourism marketing
- Tourism experience
- Qualitative study
- Destination marketing organizations (DMOs)
- The Muslim consumer
Campbell Fraser and Anna Zarkada‐Fraser
A method for the development, validation and refinement of a performance measurement tool for retail store managers in Australia and Singapore is presented. This tool is based on…
Abstract
A method for the development, validation and refinement of a performance measurement tool for retail store managers in Australia and Singapore is presented. This tool is based on a set of performance elements – measurable task‐related activities and behaviours – that, when combined, define the performing manager. While organisations in both countries were found to concur on the 50 performance elements which should constitute the overall measurement tool, the importance attached to several of the elements differed significantly between the two countries. This difference is a significant determinant of the transferability of retail management skills between the two cultures and has wider implications for the internationalisation of the retail environment where management from different cultures are required to co‐exist within a single retail organisation.
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Anna Zarkada‐Fraser and Campbell Fraser
Attitudes of Australian and Greek‐Australian consumers towards hypothetical foreign‐owned and domestic‐owned supermarkets in Australia were studied. Although attitudes towards the…
Abstract
Attitudes of Australian and Greek‐Australian consumers towards hypothetical foreign‐owned and domestic‐owned supermarkets in Australia were studied. Although attitudes towards the domestic‐owned supermarket were found to be identical between the Australians and the Greek‐Australians, the latter were significantly more supportive of the foreign supermarket. Consumer ethnocentrism was found to be correlated with a negative attitude towards a foreign‐owned supermarket. Finally, the more the migrants identified with their cultural origin, the more support they showed towards the foreign supermarket. The findings of this paper provide an insight to the complex nature of the relationship between ethnic identity and consumer behaviour.
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Anna Zarkada‐Fraser and Campbell Fraser
International sales negotiations are fast becoming a major part of the marketeer’s mandate in an increasingly globalised economy. To be successful in that role, managers need to…
Abstract
International sales negotiations are fast becoming a major part of the marketeer’s mandate in an increasingly globalised economy. To be successful in that role, managers need to be aware of the limits of acceptability of their behaviours, able to anticipate their counterparts’ actions and understand the motivations behind them. Presents a cross‐national study of 332 experienced sales negotiators’ perceptions in Australia, the USA, the UK, Japan, Russia and Greece. It explores the degree to which different tactics are considered morally acceptable in each country and how the decision‐making frameworks the managers employ affect their evaluation. The results demonstrate that, although moral acceptability of specific practices, the overall level of tolerance and the effect of each one of a set of decision‐making variables vary among different nationalities, the mechanism of the evaluation can be analysed by a single explanatory model.
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Campbell Fraser and Anna Zarkada‐Fraser
Contemporary management thinking is paying a great deal of attention to stakeholder theory which posits that sustainable success rests, to a great extent, with a systematic…
Abstract
Contemporary management thinking is paying a great deal of attention to stakeholder theory which posits that sustainable success rests, to a great extent, with a systematic consideration of the needs and goals of all key stakeholders. This paper examines managerial effectiveness under the light of stakeholder theory. Using multivariate analysis, it investigates perceptions of importance of the dimensions of their effectiveness held by the site managers running 61 high‐rise residential construction projects and 268 key project stakeholders. The views were collected through a non‐results‐based performance measurement tool. The findings of the research show that perceptions of the importance of each one of the performance elements vary significantly across professional groups. Opinions of high performing managers also differ form those of low‐performing ones. The application of the method presented in this paper can provide a framework for improvement of both managerial performance and stakeholder relationships.
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Anna K. Zarkada and Christina Polydorou
This chapter expands traditional approaches to Corporate Reputation Management by employing postmodernist approaches to value co-creation in order to identify how Facebook…
Abstract
Purpose
This chapter expands traditional approaches to Corporate Reputation Management by employing postmodernist approaches to value co-creation in order to identify how Facebook Features can be used to facilitate company–consumer Corporate Reputation co-creation.
Methodology/approach
Using content analysis of Facebook Fan Pages, the chapter explores how 29 of the world’s most reputable corporations use Facebook Features.
Findings
To a surprising degree, the corporations in the sample, despite having virtually limitless access to marketing communications resources, fail to make full use of the opportunities Facebook offers them. It appears that they have not yet fully adapted to this novel medium.
Research implications
Facebook together with the locus has also shifted the focus of corporate communications from one-way company-controlled transmission of information to multiparty user-controlled conversations. Thus, Corporate Reputations can no longer be managed. Instead, by offering consumers experiences and emotional triggers, corporations can engage them into willingly marketing the corporation and its products to each other.
Originality/value of chapter
This is the first systematic analysis of the practices the world’s most prominent corporations utilize (or fail to employ) on Facebook. It illustrates that companies that adapt to the Social Media ecology can successfully orchestrate customer experiences that foster the co-creation of the desired Corporate Reputation.
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Muhammad Kashif and Anna Zarkada
The incidents of customer abuse of frontline service employees during service encounters are increasing which has led to co-destructruction of value. The service strategists…
Abstract
Purpose
The incidents of customer abuse of frontline service employees during service encounters are increasing which has led to co-destructruction of value. The service strategists makers are struggling hard to frame a holistic picture of such incidents to be able to reduce the number of misbehaviour incidents but still are unable to achieve success. The purpose of this paper is to incorporate a social system perspective to study in detail customer misbehaviour incidents from the perspective of frontline banking employees and customers.
Design/methodology/approach
The data from 33 frontline banking employees and 22 customers, 55 in total was collected by structured interviews. The data collection focused a critical incident technique and for the purpose of analysis, thematic analysis was optioned.
Findings
The employees and customers both blame each other to trigger a misbehaviour incident during banking transactions. The results reveal a clear communication gap between employees and customers as none of them understand the problems of the other party. The employees think that customers gain power through such incidents while customers believe employees to be ignorant, wasting the time, and lack complete information.
Practical implications
The marketing policy makers need to pay respect and complete organisational support to frontline staff working in high contact service firms to cope with misbehaving customers.
Originality/value
The study is pioneer in applying a social system perspective to explore employee and customer experiences of misbehaviour incidents during banking service encounters. Furthermore, the study has been first of its type to explore the phenomenon of misbehaviour from a developing country perspective.