Search results

This study aims to examine the relationship between concrescent conversation environment (CCE), psychological safety and team effectiveness. Although CCE has been known to influence team outcomes, little is known about how it influences them. Integrating the social constructionist and social psychology perspectives, this study argues that CCE ignites a climate of psychological safety resulting in “joint-action” necessary for positive team outcomes.

Survey data were collected from 301 team members from US firms operating in different industries. Data were analyzed using SmartPLS.

The study establishes CCE as an antecedent to psychological safety and demonstrates that psychological safety mediates the relationship between CCE and team effectiveness.

This is one of the initial studies to show how verbal behaviors socially construct team dynamics in the shape of psychological safety to influence team outcomes. In doing so, the authors advance the theory pertaining to the role of social exchanges in team processes and outcomes.

The results provide insights on how managers can improve team outcomes by influencing the conversational environment of the team to elicit feelings of psychological safety. The results also suggest that managers must focus on relational outcomes as well, along with performance outcomes.

From a social constructionist perspective, team development is built upon the verbal behaviors of the members as they pursue tasks. However, the extant group dynamics literature undervalues conversations’ role in team processes and outcomes. This is the first study that examines the link between a team's conversational environment, psychological safety and team outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of volume flexible strategies on organizational performance in academic medical centers (AMCs). Volume flexible strategies represent a variety of methods where organizations use their portfolio of resources and capabilities to meet fluctuating customer demand while improving organizational performance.

A path model is developed and tested based on a survey of AMCs in the USA as listed in the American hospital directory.

The results indicate that desired levels of volume flexibility have a positive impact on organizational capabilities that in turn, positively influence how internal sources of volume flexibility are leveraged. In addition, volume flexible capability and the use of internal strategies were found to have a positive influence on customer‐related performance that in turn, positively impacts financial and market share performance.

This research was exploratory in nature and limited to a sample of AMCs. To improve the generalizability of these results, future studies should evaluate these constructs using a larger sample of health care organizations.

The deployment and use of volume flexible strategies is germane to any health care organization's strategy and performance. This study offers some guidance to administrators who need both a clear understanding of the underlying tradeoffs involved in deploying these strategies and a prescriptive model to help guide their use.

This work answers the recent calls for more empirical research in general, and specifically, for more operations strategy research on flexibility in service industries. It should assist future researchers who focus on flexibility in health care services and would also be of interest to practitioners interested in keeping up with academic literature.

Responding to demand fluctuations is a difficult problem in the marketing of services. This problem is particularly difficult in the delivery of health care, as it requires a complex network of facilities, equipment and trained personnel. This paper aims to examine how health care organizations are deploying volume flexible strategies in response to these changing demand patterns.

This research used interviews with hospital administrators and a survey of administrators at academic medical centers in the USA to identify the use of internal and external volume flexible strategies, their impact on the creation of volume flexible capability, and their impact on performance outcomes.

The results show that there is a positive relationship between the use of internal volume flexible strategies, volume flexible capability, patient satisfaction, and organizational performance.

Although the measures used in this study were adequate for this exploratory research study, they require further development to improve their reliability as well as to capture additional dimensions of the constructs examined.

The results validate the impact of these strategies and indicate that internal volume flexible strategies are positively related to patient satisfaction and organizational performance.

Although health care organizations have implemented these strategies, little is known about their use or the impact that they have on satisfaction and performance – this work addresses this gap.

The purpose of this paper is to leverage the lessons learned from three published studies on volume flexibility in the capital goods industry to demonstrate the effective use of methodological triangulation in operations management research.

The paper uses lessons learned from three published studies to address several issues that researchers encounter when using methodological triangulation. It also develops a coherent framework for developing a research strategy that uses methodological triangulation.

In demonstrating the use of triangulation, the paper documents several tradeoffs that researchers face including: outlining a triangulation strategy; considering the strengths and weaknesses of different data sources; assessing convergent, complementary divergent and meta inference; and paying attention to errors of inference during the triangulation process.

As with every research method, methodological triangulation has limitations that can be amplified by method specific issues and assumptions related to across‐method generalization and inference.

Provides a detailed example of why and how researchers make critical decisions on the appropriate use of methodological triangulation.

This work will assist future researchers who use triangulation to better position their work and to make informed choices that ultimately lead to more complete theories. This work would also be on interest to practitioners interested in keeping up with academic literature.

The use of reverse logistics has received increased attention in the literature, although the role that reverse logistics capabilities plays in enabling firms to achieve cost savings has not been empirically examined. Reverse logistics capabilities can enable retailers to enhance their return policies and improve their overall cost position. This paper aims to address these issues.

Based on a survey of 295 retailers, this paper evaluates the influence of customer and retailer related antecedents of reverse logistics capabilities and their subsequent impact on cost savings.

The results indicate that resource commitments and contractual obligations positively influence reverse logistics capabilities and that these capabilities result in cost savings. Customer opportunism is found to be negatively related to reverse logistics capabilities. It is also reported that reverse logistics capabilities partially mediates the relationship between resource commitments, contractual arrangements, and reverse logistics cost savings.

This work builds on the recent research in reverse logistics; however, unlike other contributions in this research stream, the role of retailers who perform a critical role in this area is addressed.

The purpose of this paper was to examine the antecedents of strategic supplier relationships in conjunction with outcomes of product and service quality and financial performance. The management of strategic supplier relationships involves the selection and development of suppliers that share common goals and strategies of the partnering organization.

Structural equation modeling using partial least squares is used to verify and test these relationships.

Top management support, technological preparedness and trust were found to have significant positive influences on the management of strategic supplier relationships. Strategic supplier relationships were found to have a positive influence on product and service quality outcomes and financial performance.

The results provide new and original empirical evidence on the relationship between the antecedents and outcomes of strategic supplier relationships.

The findings can contribute to the management of supplier relationships, resulting in improved product and service quality outcomes and financial performance.

The research adds empirical evidence to the literature on the factors that contribute to effective supplier relationships and the customer- and firm-related outcomes of this process.

The distribution literature provides support for examining product returns from a customer-based perspective. Based on this need, the purpose of this paper is to identify the underlying causes of product returns based on a survey of 308 Wal-Mart and Target customers who engaged in product returns.

Structural equation modelling was used to verify and test the relationships examined.

It was found that dissatisfaction with a product results in an emotional dissonance that is positively related to product returns. Two primary reasons for return were examined, the expectation of the customer not being met and the customer finding a better product or price. Both reasons for return were found to influence the frequency of returns. It is also reported that gender, but not store brand moderated these relationships. Males had higher levels of product dissatisfaction and subsequent emotional dissonance than females. Males however did not have higher rates of return than females.

The research provides new knowledge in the management of retail returns by identifying their underlying causes as well as specific reasons for returns. This knowledge can assist managers in identifying the behavioural influences on product returns and in developing methods to minimize those returns.

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to examine key operational tradeoffs and challenges that call center managers face.

To support the concepts advanced in this paper, an embedded case study is used from an inbound call center for a regional wireless phone company that operates in the USA. The research involved: a review of available service quality and call center management literature; development of a resource‐based framework to understand key operational tradeoffs; use of a case study approach with structured interviews of key managers and employees; and synthesis of this data in order to understand why and how these managers made key operational tradeoff decisions. The case study was done on an inbound customer service call center for a regional wireless phone company that operates in the Southeastern USA.

This research suggests that there are four key resource management decisions that must be addressed in order to improve service quality and effectively manage call center operations: the efficient deployment and use of labor, effective leveraging of technology, capacity management, and demand management.

The use of a single case approach limits the generalizability of results; however, this methodology is effective in providing rich data and a research framework to both build theory and advance future research in this arena.

It is noteworthy that while technology, capacity management, and demand management systems are essential, labor remains a key differentiator in achieving high service quality. A call center must provide dependable service with knowledgeable, honest, polite and empathetic employees who can efficiently answer customers' questions while also promoting more products and services to improve profitability.

While this research is primarily conceptual, it also uses a case study to explain why and how managers make key tradeoffs in order to compete effectively on service quality in the call center industry.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight some methodological problems concerning the neglect of participants' voices by workplace ethnographers and neglect of the highly interactional and co‐constructive nature of research interviewing. The study aims to use discourse analysis, to show the phenomena of workplace learning and expertise to be constituted in participants' talk.

From excerpts of natural talk and research interviews by fish culturists speaking about their learning in a salmon hatchery, discourse analysis is used to analyze how workplace learning and expertise are rhetorically performed.

The paper finds that fish culturists drew on two discursive repertoires/resources – school‐ and workplace‐based learning – to account for their learning and expertise. The main participant affirmed the primacy of interest and practical workplace experience in his job just as he presupposed a weak correlation between school‐based (theoretical) and workplace (practical) knowing. However, both kinds of learning were deemed important though articulating this view depended on the social contexts of its production.

Discourse analysis does not establish immutable truths about workplace learning and expertise but rather it is used to understand how these are made accountable through talk in real‐time, that is, how the phenomenon is “done” by participants.

There is increased sensitivity when using ethnographic and interview methods. No method can avoid being theory‐laden in its conduct and reporting but discourse analysis perhaps does it better than its alternatives.

While some contributors to this journal have also approached workplace learning from a discursive perspective, this paper attempts to understand the phenomenon solely from participants' categories and interpretations.

This conceptual, multi-voiced paper aims to collectively explore and theorize family entrepreneuring, which is a research stream dedicated to investigating the emergence and becoming of entrepreneurial phenomena in business families and family firms.

Because of the novelty of this research stream, the authors asked 20 scholars in entrepreneurship and family business to reflect on topics, methods and issues that should be addressed to move this field forward.

Authors highlight key challenges and point to new research directions for understanding family entrepreneuring in relation to issues such as agency, processualism and context.

This study offers a compilation of multiple perspectives and leverage recent developments in the fields of entrepreneurship and family business to advance research on family entrepreneuring.