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The purpose of this paper is to examine the interplay between technical and social systems within an organization that potentially affect the service experience, as perceived by end customers.

The paper explores the potential impact of an integrated service quality system on the service experience. A conceptual model is presented, accompanied by a detailed development of the hypotheses. Two samples (Study 1: n=474, Study 2: n=225) of consumers are used to empirically test the proposed model.

The analysis reveals the impact a technical system has on employees’ inherent abilities (i.e. the social system), which, in turn, affect the overall assessment by customers. Additionally, the situation in which an employee works (i.e. operating environmental conditions) results in differences in the model.

This paper’s main implication is this paper employs established theory to develop a model that is empirically tested to show that implementing and maintaining a quality-oriented service system can positively influence the overall customer experience. The limitations are based primarily on the methodology in which individual employees assessed all aspects of both the social and technical systems.

Managers should be diligent in their design and implementation of the quality components as these affect the work setting in which employees operate.

Prior research has neither explored an integrated service quality system’s impact on the service experience nor employed an established theoretical framework. This work accomplishes both with the results providing contributions to both theory and practice.

Partnership working is critical to delivery across the public sector but can often feel frustrating and ineffectual for those involved. This article focuses on four areas crucial for effective partnership working: ensuring that there is a clear justification for the partnership; involving service users and communities in ways that are empowering and sustainable; developing good governance arrangements; and developing effective performance management arrangements. Throughout the article, the contrasting experiences of crime and disorder reduction partnerships (CDRPs) and youth offending teams (YOTs) are used to illustrate key points.

This research aims to utilize a social network analysis approach to examine the effect of organizational position within a network of strategic partnerships on innovation as measured by perceptions of industry analysts. Specifically, the purpose of the paper is to examine how network characteristics such as degree centrality (being centrally located in a network), between centrality (being positioned as an intermediary), and closeness centrality (having a short average distance to all other firms in the network) affect the innovation ranking of the focal firm.

Data for 563 firms are generated from three distinct data sources (SDC Platinum: Alliances and Joint Ventures, COMPUSTAT, and Fortune's America's Most Admired Companies) and analyzed via social network analysis and linear regression.

The network characteristics of degree centrality and between centrality positively relate to industry perceptions or innovativeness whereas closeness centrality had no significant effect. Additionally, there were no discernable differences in innovativeness when comparing manufacturing firms to service organizations.

Insignificant findings related to closeness centrality and the good/service differential may be attributable to the data sources, in that, the information is limited to firms within the respective sources. This data limitation may limit the potential of examining the effect of all network characteristics. Additionally, some included companies participate in multiple industries (i.e., have multiple SIC codes), which may serve as the blurring of any differences between good and service firms.

The results highlight the importance of considering strategic partnerships that establish configurations of partnership webs when pursuing innovation activities. Specifically, the findings suggest that firms should seek numerous strategic partnerships (high degree centrality) and attempt to broker information or control the extent to which partners collaborate (high between centrality). These results provide insights for firms seeking to establish new supply‐chain relationships in order to enhance their level of innovation.

This research provides a unique empirical examination of the impact of network positional characteristics on the innovativeness of a focal firm.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the institutional factors that affect the productivity of individuals in the field of operations.

This study identifies a sample of graduates from PhD programs in operations and utilizes a partial least squares analysis to examine the effect of academic origin, academic affiliation, and advisor productivity on each individual's research productivity.

The results of the analysis indicate that the productivity of an individual is directly influenced by the aggregate prestige of the institutions where the individual was employed during article publication and indirectly influenced by the prestige of the institution where the individual received the terminal degree. Additionally, differences were found between groups when the sample was divided by focus (operations management (OM) versus operations research (OR). The OM model held the same relationships as the combined model, while the OR model included significant direct effects of academic origin and indirect effects of the advisor's productivity on the individual's productivity.

This research is the first to fully evaluate the institutional antecedents to research productivity of individuals in operations. In doing so, valuable insights are gained as to how to facilitate the success of researchers in operations. Additionally, factors are highlighted that should be considered by institutions looking at hiring freshly minted PhDs. Finally, these results can benefit practitioners when considering working with academics as a source of emerging information or consulting.

There is a lack of extensive research related to the immediate consequences of supply management ethical responsibility (SMER) and the moderating and/or mediating factors that strengthen or weaken its consequences. Although the underlying presumption is that companies no longer have the luxury of ignoring the importance of SMER, the lack of empirical research of SMER's impact on supply management performance (SMP) reflects the need for research that draws on and empirically tests established theories concerning the role of corporate ethics within the context of supply management (SM). Therefore, the purpose of this study is to determine the impact of SMER and strategic supply management skills on SM perceived reputation and performance.

Structural equation modeling is employed to investigate the hypothesized relationships. A sample of 162 purchasing managers provided the data via survey.

Strategic supply management skills and perceived reputation have a positive direct impact on performance. SMER is not directly affected by skills and has an indirect impact on performance through its positive relationship with perceived reputation.

The findings suggest that SMER is limited in its ability to predict performance, but is a valuable component of building SM perceived reputation. Firms should not ignore SMER, as it may provide strategic marketing advantage as an order qualifier or limiting criterion.

This paper investigates the interplay among several important determinants of supply chain performance, including the greatly under‐studied ethics construct.

This paper aims to examine the role of three forms of customer commitment (normative, affective, and continuance) on a variety of loyalty‐related customer responses.

Data were collected from two distinct sampling frames, which yielded a combined metrically invariant sample of 348 consumers. A three‐dimensional conceptualization of commitment is used to analyze impacts on one focal (i.e. repurchase intentions) and two discretionary customer responses.

Results of structural equation modeling analyses indicate that affective commitment is the primary driver of the customer responses and mediates the effects of normative and continuance commitments. These effects are contingent upon the type of service.

This research emphasizes the primacy of affective commitment in predicting loyalty‐like customer responses.

Managers need to focus primarily on generating affective commitment, but be mindful that normative and continuance commitment also play a role in generating desirable consumer responses.

The paper builds on and overcomes several deficiencies in prior commitment research. A more accurate and useful representation of affective, normative, and continuance commitment roles in generating focal and discretionary behaviors is provided.

Academic literature and news media on young people’s activism predominantly champions young people who align with liberal or progressive values, evident most recently in the youth-led climate strikes around the world. Research is often undertaken by scholars who see their work as advocacy for children and young people, countering deficit-based depictions of politically disengaged or ill-informed youth. Yet, this scholarship rarely includes young people whose forms of political activism align with conservative, right-wing, or even alt-right politics. Such ‘selective advocacy’ reinforces a limited picture of the who and what of young people’s political participation. In this chapter, I explore what it might mean for the field of youth studies to provide a more complex picture of young people’s activism and the necessary discomfort that emerges when the desire to advocate for young research participants conflicts with a researcher’s own political and moral concerns. Through a feminist post-structural frame, I examine media and public discourses surrounding instances of young people’s activism in conservative, right-wing, and alt-right spaces. I present the case of a conservative protest organised by a group of university students and targeting a drag queen hosted children’s story time at a library in Brisbane, Australia. This case highlights the importance of maintaining ‘epistemic uncertainty’ when it comes to the complexity of youth and activism. If we are to provide a fuller picture of youth activism, I argue that it is important not to overlook less ‘comfortable’ forms that do not neatly align with the progressive advocacy that dominates the field of youth studies.

Children experience toxic stress if there is pronounced activation of their stress-response systems, in situations in which they do not have stable caregiving. Due to their exposure to multiple poverty-related risks, African American children may be more susceptible to exposure to toxic stress. Toxic stress affects young children’s brain and neurophysiologic functioning, which leads to a wide range of deleterious health, developmental, and mental health outcomes. Given the benefits of early care and education (ECE) for African American young children, ECE may represent a compensating experience for this group of children, and promote their positive development.