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A group of laser techniques developed at the AERE is proving a powerful aid to design of diesel and petrol engines and shows promise for other industries in measurement of gas flow, particulate motion and size, temperature and chemical composition. This article is based on a presentation by the author at the Lasers in Manufacturing conference last November.

Many current video games feature virtual worlds inhabited by autonomous 3D animated characters. These characters often fall short in their ability to participate in social interactions with each other or with people. Increasing the social capabilities of game characters could increase the potential of games as a platform for social learning. This article presents advances in the area of social autonomous character design. Specifically, a computational model of social relationship formation is described. This model formed the basis for a game entitled “AlphaWolf” that allows people to play the role of newborn pups in a pack of virtual wolves, helping the pups to find their place in the social order of the pack. This article offers the results from a 32‐subject user study that assessed the social relationship model, showing that it effectively represents the core elements of social relationships in a way that is perceivable by people. Additionally, this article proposes a game that will allow parents, teachers and children to experiment with computational social behavior through social virtual characters. This research contributes to the development of games for social learning by offering a set of viable algorithms for computational characters to form social relationships, and describing a project that could utilize this model to enable children to learn social skills by interacting with game characters.

After analysing a sample of 442 of the Spanish biggest manufacturing companies, some evidence about the influence of total quality management (TQM) on the companies’ operating performance has been obtained. However, companies applying TQM together with the ISO 9000 standards did not show positive results. This fact leads to the consideration that, despite the beliefs about ISO 9000 as a good first step in the way of implementing TQM, once implemented, some of the ISO 9000 principles are contradictory with TQM philosophy. These not congruent systems applied together would drive the company to obtain less benefits than the use of only one of them. The study concludes that when ISO 9000 and TQM are applied simultaneously, the resultant benefits to the company are not better than those experienced if either system were applied in isolation.

The purpose of this paper is threefold: to examine complaint management among retailers in order to develop a typology of their strategic complaint management system; to develop a profile of each retailer group included in the typology using a set of key relevant variables (e.g. company size, perceived customer dissatisfaction); and to investigate the state of complaint management across different types of retailers.

Data are collected from an online survey of Danish and Swedish grocery retailers, electronic stores, car‐dealers, and furniture stores (n=260) using self‐administered questionnaires.

Cluster analysis identifies two clusters of retailers: non‐active complaint handlers and medium‐active complaint handlers. Medium‐active complaint handlers regard complaint handling as having higher strategic relevance than non‐active complaint handlers and also, medium‐active complaint handlers were more inclined to compensate the complaining customers for the loss they might have experienced. The developed cluster profiles revealed that medium‐active complaint handlers perceive a higher degree of customer dissatisfaction than do non‐active complaint handlers and also that a larger proportion of their customers have complained. Within retailers, grocery stores had the best compensation policies and the most positive attitude toward retailer‐customer interaction, while car dealers are the most likely to have a strategic plan to deal with complaints.

The results obtained in this paper indicate that retailers hesitate from inciting customers to complain. This is unfortunate, as dissatisfied customers should be regarded as a strategic asset, which potentially could provide retailers with important knowledge concerning their products and services and thereby helping retailers in improving their market place behaviour.

No other research has looked across different types of retailers to determine if there are differences in the integration of complaints to the strategic management process.

This study aims to examine the mechanism of action of ethical leadership by testing the direct and indirect effects of ethical leadership on employee work outcomes (i.e. individual job satisfaction, work engagement and customer-oriented behavior) and the moderating effects of group job satisfaction on the relationship between ethical leadership and its consequences.

A hierarchical linear model is used. The valid sample is composed of 285 front-line service personnel in 56 work groups from five hotels and five golf clubs in South China.

Results indicate that group job satisfaction has a significant moderating effect on the relationship between ethical leadership and employee work engagement. That is, compared with that in groups with high job satisfaction, the relationship between ethical leadership and employee work engagement is significantly more positive in groups with low job satisfaction. Employee work attitudes (including individual job satisfaction and work engagement) mediate the effect of ethical leadership on employee customer-oriented behavior.

The main limitations are as follows. First, some of the reported relationships may be affected by common method bias, as our study collected data from a single source. Second, whether the findings can be generalized to other industries in other countries remains unknown. Third, as the current study is based on a cross-sectional design, establishing causality is difficult among the study variables.

The findings show that the managers in hospitality and tourism companies should adopt ethical leadership to enhance employee customer-oriented behavior by improving positive work attitudes. At the same time, hospitality and tourism companies should improve group job satisfaction as a substitute for ethical leadership in the absence of ethical leadership.

A key contribution of this research is demonstrating how and when the effects of ethical leadership occur by analyzing the mediating and moderating effects in the same study. This study systematically examines the mediating effect of employee work attitudes on the influence of ethical leadership on employee work behavior and discusses the moderating effect of the group-level variable. The findings extend ethical leadership theory and make a contribution to the existing research on discussing the substitutes for the leadership model.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the literature on the antecedents and consequences of group cognitive complexity (GCC) and integrate the empirical work by using the composition/compilation framework of emergence and the input-mediator-output-input (I-M-O-I) model of team effectiveness.

Through a systematic search in extant databases, the authors found 27 empirical studies exploring the antecedents and consequences of GCC.

The extant literature is dominated by a compilational approach on GCC, experimental designs and a focus on exploring the antecedents of GCC (group composition and processes mostly), thus providing useful insights for organizational interventions. The work on the implications of GCC for individual or organizational level outcomes is however scant. Future endeavors could rely more on a multilevel exploration of GCC, take a developmental rather than a one-shot approach and explore the impact of new ways of working on the emergence of GCC.

The authors propose an integration of extant empirical work on GCC by using two complementary frameworks: the I-M-O-I model and the composition/compilation framework. The authors highlight the implications for practice and draw future research directions.

The paper seeks to investigate whether the demographic and socio‐economic characteristics of complainers in a monopolistic market are different from those in a competitive market.

A literature review is undertaken, with particular emphasis on the socio‐economic characteristics of complainers. An empirical study is then presented. The empirical study consists of a large survey of satisfaction among consumers of the Norwegian Office for Social Insurance – a monopolistic governmental service provider.

The study reveals that complainers in this monopolistic market belong to lower socio‐economic groups. They typically have low incomes, are outside the labour market, have a modest standard of accommodation, and live alone.

The study analyses only one type of monopolistic institution in only one country. The generalisability of the findings might, therefore, be limited. The study demonstrates that consumer complaint behaviour in this monopolistic market differs from behaviour reported in competitive markets. Moreover, the study indicates that complainers in this monopolistic market are confronted with different complaint barriers when exit is closed.

The findings of the study suggest that a monopolistic institution should encourage dissatisfied consumers to complain, and should make internal switching possibilities known to consumers.

This paper is the first to study complainer characteristics in a monopolistic market structure empirically. The paper questions previous assumptions that complainers necessarily belong to upper socio‐economic groups.

The article is one in a series that offers a fresh look at the paradigmatic shifts being experienced by the traditional, government supported banking establishments, especially those in the erstwhile socialist and mixed economies, in the newly embraced context of liberalization‐ privatization‐globalization. It attempts to fill a great void in debates that consistently neglected every voice except that of the triumphant customer by giving some room for the managerial viewpoint as well. This mission is undertaken in the context of customer complaints regarding failure in the delivery of banking services. The article makes a case for the delicate aspect of employees' attitudes, their satisfaction and motivation, which are posited as prerequisites for customer satisfaction, which is, again, sine qua non for the competitive sustenance of the organization. It argues that sustainable advantage is possible only through people and any normative proposal to rework the “apprehension” traditionally attached to complaints should begin with a radical shift away from perceiving service production and consumption as isolated systems to an altogether new conception of the product as symbolic of a network relationship defined among the stakeholders and co‐evolved in an environment whose parameters are potentially altered through recurrent inter‐party negotiations involved in the contract. Everything, including the formation of appropriate policies and training for the frontline personnel to cope up with the “irate” customers, should be properly informed from this perspective, it advocates.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of ISO 9001 quality improvement requirements in ISO 9001:2008, i.e. the corrective and preventive actions and internal audit, on customer satisfaction.

For the purposes of the study, data were collected via a survey on 200 aerospace and transportation companies that belong to a Canadian multinational company supply chain. The relationships between the corrective and preventive actions and internal auditing, on the one hand, and customer satisfaction, on the other, were examined via the structural equation modeling technique.

The major contribution of this study is that it has identified internal audit as the most influential continual improvement ISO 9001 requirement prior to the ISO 9001 transition phase, along with the corrective actions, while the preventive actions in the present formulation do not significantly influence customer satisfaction.

This study is based on a cross-sectional survey conducted on the supply chain level in the aerospace and transportation sector; hence, a longitudinal study is possible as a future research avenue. The generalizability of this study’s findings is limited to similar supply chains around a multinational company consisted of companies that have at least ISO 9001 standard, but also fulfill other industry-specific requirements. Also, findings are based mainly on quality managers’ attitudes, so future studies are recommended to examine other positions’ views, too.

This research contributes to the literature and bridges the gap between theory and practice. It could be of value to both the certification bodies and the organizations that are interested in improving customer satisfaction by implementing ISO 9001 in the multinational supply chains context such as the aerospace and transportation sector.

While the influence of the ISO 9001 standard on customer satisfaction has been the subject of prior research, this is the first time that the simultaneous effect of the corrective and preventive actions and internal auditing on customer satisfaction has been studied. The validity of the removal of preventive actions from ISO 9001:2015 has also been analyzed.