Joon-Hee Oh and Judy Ma
Despite its significance in salespeople management, salespeople expectation management has received little attention in the literature, especially in the industrial marketing…
Abstract
Purpose
Despite its significance in salespeople management, salespeople expectation management has received little attention in the literature, especially in the industrial marketing literature. In response, the purpose of this study is to leverage the expectation confirmation theory to present a conceptual framework that provides an effective tool for salespeople expectation management.
Design/methodology/approach
This study first explores the application and strategic implications of expectation-confirmation theory in salespeople expectation management and theorizes that salespeople establish pre-expectations (expectations that are developed before joining the firm), experience multiple stages of the expectation-confirmation process throughout their sales career with a firm and – in each stage – establish either a longer-term commitment to or permanent disengagement from the firm.
Findings
A winning strategy for sales organizations is to recognize salespeople expectations and to meet or beat these expectations. Salespeople expectation management is particularly important in sales organizations that frequently find aligning sales force management strategies with organizational imperatives to be challenging.
Research limitations/implications
This study extends expectation-confirmation theory by presenting a conceptual framework that: identifies the existence of pre-expectations of salespeople and their outcomes; recognizes that the expectation-confirmation process occurs across multiple stages in the salespeople’s career cycle; recognizes that the level of expectations in previous stages of one’s career cycle influences the level of expectations in subsequent stages; and conceptualizes the non-linear relationship between expectations, tenure and turnover intentions.
Originality/value
The multiple expectation-confirmation framework can be used for effective salespeople expectation and turnover management and may also serve as a general model of organizational interventions.
Details
Keywords
Judy Ma, Dongling Huang, Dmitri G. Markovitch and Brian Ratchford
This paper aims to investigate the moderating impacts of seasonality on the effectiveness of new product commercialization strategies in short-lifecycle markets. The authors…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate the moderating impacts of seasonality on the effectiveness of new product commercialization strategies in short-lifecycle markets. The authors contextualize their theory in the vast and culturally significant entertainment industry sector and contrast the effects between independent films and big budget movies.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses an econometric modeling approach.
Findings
This study finds that unlike new films by well-resourced studios, which must launch in a high season for best performance, independents can generate more revenue in low seasons under certain conditions. The study shows how seasonality moderates the effectiveness of new films’ commercialization strategies and how new product outcomes are different for small independent products than for big-budget productions with regards to distribution duration, advertising expenditure and product characteristics.
Research limitations/implications
This research extends the literature on launch timing, which examines various strategic tradeoffs. In contrast with the few extant studies whose concern is sensitizing to the effects of seasonality (Siqueiraet al., 2016), this research treats seasonality as an exploitable opportunity that can be strategically factored into business planning for small producers. Accordingly, this is the first study to theoretically and empirically investigate the moderating relationship between seasonality, marketing decisions, product characteristics and performance.
Practical implications
To achieve useful specificity, the study constructs its discussion around the highly seasonal entertainment industry sector. The study shows that seasonality moderates the effectiveness of new films’ commercialization decisions and that the strategic outcomes are different for small independent products than for major studio productions in particular.
Originality/value
In contrast with extant research whose concern is sensitizing to the effects of seasonality, our research treats seasonality as an exploitable opportunity that can be strategically factored into business planning. Accordingly, ours is the first study to theoretically and empirically investigate the moderating relationship between seasonality, marketing decisions, product characteristics and performance.
Details
Keywords
Judy McKimm, David Rankin, Phillippa Poole, Tim Swanwick and Mark Barrow
Doctors are seen as key to embedding health improvement and patient safety initiatives and there has been much international debate over how best to engage doctors in healthcare…
Abstract
Doctors are seen as key to embedding health improvement and patient safety initiatives and there has been much international debate over how best to engage doctors in healthcare leadership and management. This paper explores the current focus on leadership development programmes for doctors through taking a comparative approach to initiatives in New Zealand and the UK. It also considers the challenges to embedding leadership development programmes at all levels of training, education and continuing professional development and highlights some of the implications arising from the two approaches.
Details
Keywords
On April 2, 1987, IBM unveiled a series of long‐awaited new hardware and software products. The new computer line, dubbed the Personal Systems 30, 50, 60, and 80, seems destined…
Abstract
On April 2, 1987, IBM unveiled a series of long‐awaited new hardware and software products. The new computer line, dubbed the Personal Systems 30, 50, 60, and 80, seems destined to replace the XT and AT models that are the mainstay of the firm's current personal computer offerings. The numerous changes in hardware and software, while representing improvements on previous IBM technology, will require users purchasing additional computers to make difficult choices as to which of the two IBM architectures to adopt.
The purpose of this paper is to highlight both the value and critiques of Erving Goffman’s conceptualization of stigma as well as the emotion work needed to learn the lessons it…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to highlight both the value and critiques of Erving Goffman’s conceptualization of stigma as well as the emotion work needed to learn the lessons it has to teach.
Methodology/approach
I use a personal narrative grounded in my experience as a member of the “wise” category (the mother of a young woman with cerebral palsy) and observations of the reactions of my disabled students as a vehicle for taking the reader inside the experience of the trials and tribulations of reading Goffman as a member of “marked” social categories and the more humanizing experience of reading Spencer Cahill’s work.
Findings
There remains much to be learned from reading Goffman’s Stigma. In many ways his work has set the stage for approaches to the study of disability that we are still discovering. Learning these lessons through is made difficult by the de-humanizing perspective Goffman brings to the work. He clearly locates himself and his readers in the category of “we the normals” who see the stigmatized as “not quite fully human.” For disabled students and scholars and their families, reading Goffman requires a good deal of emotion management. Reading Spencer Cahill’s work can help in that process. Goffman presents disabled students and scholars and their family members with confirmation of what we know to be true about our marked and not quite human status in the eyes of others and in the process gives us our “own.” Cahill helps us all see ourselves in the strangeness that is inside social life. There is great value in both.
Details
Keywords
Susan Frelich Appleton and Susan Ekberg Stiritz
This paper explores four works of contemporary fiction to illuminate formal and informal regulation of sex. The paper’s co-authors frame analysis with the story of their creation…
Abstract
This paper explores four works of contemporary fiction to illuminate formal and informal regulation of sex. The paper’s co-authors frame analysis with the story of their creation of a transdisciplinary course, entitled “Regulating Sex: Historical and Cultural Encounters,” in which students mined literature for social critique, became immersed in the study of law and its limits, and developed increased sensitivity to power, its uses, and abuses. The paper demonstrates the value theoretically and pedagogically of third-wave feminisms, wild zones, and contact zones as analytic constructs and contends that including sex and sexualities in conversations transforms personal experience, education, society, and culture, including law.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to explore the challenges faced by a small, specialized NHS organization in recruiting and retaining a high quality workforce in a highly competitive…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the challenges faced by a small, specialized NHS organization in recruiting and retaining a high quality workforce in a highly competitive market.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper focuses on four main areas: recruitment, employee development, office environment, and management style.
Findings
The conclusion is that against the odds a public sector organization can attract and retain a high quality workforce in a highly competitive market.
Originality/value
An innovative and flexible approach to recruiting and managing your staff can achieve remarkable results.
Details
Keywords
Judith G. Robinson and Jessica Lipscomb Gehle
Librarians at Eastern Virginia Medical School established a proactive role in research support when the position of Institutional Review Board (IRB) librarian was created in 2001…
Abstract
Purpose
Librarians at Eastern Virginia Medical School established a proactive role in research support when the position of Institutional Review Board (IRB) librarian was created in 2001. Aims to confirm that the IRB librarian assists the school's boards in ensuring human subjects’ protection. Generally, this service is provided in the form of comprehensive searches of medical and other literature and news.
Design/methodology/approach
A program was instigated in order to provide expertise in literature searches to support board members, as they review individual protocols.
Findings
Although serving a relatively small number of users, the program has a major impact on the school's research agenda.
Originality/value
Describes lessons learned, problems encountered, outcomes, and professional gains and lists materials for further reading.