This paper examines whether decisions to improve pay for low-level employees lead to more positive attitudes toward firms, depending on firm’s service reputation.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper examines whether decisions to improve pay for low-level employees lead to more positive attitudes toward firms, depending on firm’s service reputation.
Design/methodology
Four experiments examine whether information on compensation decisions for employees affects consumer attitudes toward firms.
Findings
Results show attitudes toward firms providing raises are more positive when firms are known for high quality (vs average) service. This occurs because individuals use information about firm reputation as a cue to make inferences about employees, and fairness of firm pay procedures. Moderators are introduced to show how these effects can be altered.
Research limitations/implications
Drawing from research on the representativeness bias, this work extends theories on justice and equity and contributes to the literature on corporate social responsibility.
Practical implications
This research provides firms with insight on how to promote their efforts to improve employees’ financial welfare.
Social implications
Findings provide guidance on how to increase public support of initiatives to improve financial well-being for low-wage workers.
Originality/value
This research is the first to examine how specific firm factors affect reception of initiatives to improve employee financial welfare and to delineate the process.
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Consumers can provide monetary tips to service employees as a reward for their efforts. However, consumers’ ability to recognize the demands of these jobs could affect tipping…
Abstract
Purpose
Consumers can provide monetary tips to service employees as a reward for their efforts. However, consumers’ ability to recognize the demands of these jobs could affect tipping behavior. This study aims to examine the difficulty consumers have recognized the emotional toll of service work, and how this affects tipping behavior.
Design/methodology/approach
Three experiments were conducted with US participants to determine how the focus on emotional burdens of service work affects willingness to tip lower level service employees.
Findings
Results reveal that when consumers hear about the emotional costs of service labor, they report less willingness to tip low-level workers, compared to when they learn about other job costs or contributions. Results further show that reducing power distance between customers and workers can increase willingness to tip when emotional costs are emphasized.
Research limitations/implications
This research contributes to the services literature by showing how feelings of power affect whether consumers appreciate certain job costs, and, in turn, their tipping behavior.
Practical implications
This research clarifies how consumers perceive job demands, which has direct consequences for tipping behavior and suggests more strategies to improve tips.
Social implications
Findings can help advocates looking to advance the status and compensation for lower-level service workers.
Originality/value
This research is first to explore why the emotional costs of service labor are not recognized in certain cases, and provides insight on how to improve customer treatment of lower-level service labor.
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Nora Moran, Steven Shepherd and Janice Alvarado
The purpose of this paper is to study how individuals assess responsibility during an uncontrollable event requiring collective action, using crises affecting service workers as…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to study how individuals assess responsibility during an uncontrollable event requiring collective action, using crises affecting service workers as contexts. Specifically, the authors examine what parties consumers hold responsible for ensuring service worker welfare following an uncontrollable event and determine what factors make customers more open to accepting responsibility for ensuring worker welfare themselves.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors surveyed a nationally representative sample of US consumers regarding their attitudes toward protecting service workers during COVID-19 and used regression analysis to identify factors that predict attributions of responsibility to customers. The authors also conducted an experiment (using a new crisis context) to determine whether certain key factors impact customer perceptions of their own responsibility for helping employees during an uncontrollable event.
Findings
The survey results show US consumers hold firms most responsible for worker welfare, followed by customers and, finally, government. When examining factors that drive attributions of responsibility for customers, perceptions of how sincere firms are in their efforts to help employees predict higher responsibility attributions, and experimental results confirm that higher perceived firm sincerity increases consumers’ own sense of responsibility toward workers.
Social implications
This research identifies factors that affect consumer support for efforts to help service employees and collective action problems more generally.
Originality/value
This research highlights an under-studied crisis context – uncontrollable events that require collective action – and shows how consumers make assessments about their own responsibility (in addition to the responsibility of the service firm) in these contexts.
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T.K. Das and Rajesh Kumar
The purpose of this paper is propose a strategic framework for understanding interpartner negotiation dynamics in alliances.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is propose a strategic framework for understanding interpartner negotiation dynamics in alliances.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors define interpartner negotiations as a process of reconciling and integrating the interests of the partners in an alliance, and consider four types of interpartner negotiation strategies – problem solving, contending, yielding, and compromising – and then discuss the dynamics of these negotiation strategies in the formation, operation, and outcome stages of alliance development.
Findings
The framework makes clear that the four types of interpartner negotiation strategies identified in the article need to be appreciated as having differential impact at each stage of alliance development.
Research limitations/implications
As interpartner negotiations occur at all stages of alliance evolution, future research may seek to empirically assess the impact of different interpartner negotiation strategies.
Practical implications
The paper discusses how alliance managers can deploy effective interpartner negotiation strategies for achieving alliance objectives at each of the three developmental stages.
Originality/value
The article responds to the need of managers with alliance responsibilities for a framework to help identify and exploit the most effective ways to conduct interpartner negotiations in alliances for productive interactions at different alliance development stages.
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The author argues that we must stop and take a look at what our insistence on human labour as the basis of our society is doing to us, and begin to search for possible…
Abstract
The author argues that we must stop and take a look at what our insistence on human labour as the basis of our society is doing to us, and begin to search for possible alternatives. We need the vision and the courage to aim for the highest level of technology attainable for the widest possible use in both industry and services. We need financial arrangements that will encourage people to invent themselves out of work. Our goal, the article argues, must be the reduction of human labour to the greatest extent possible, to free people for more enjoyable, creative, human activities.
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The aim of the paper is to describe and explain the developments in the regulation of economic crime in Norway the last 20‐30 years. This can help us better understand changes in…
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of the paper is to describe and explain the developments in the regulation of economic crime in Norway the last 20‐30 years. This can help us better understand changes in regulation and the control of problematic economic activity and the consequences this might have for society at large.
Design/methodology/approach
It is mainly based on a research study published in Norwegian in 2002 by the author on four central regulatory authorities. The methodology of this study was qualitative expert interviews and analysis of a wide range of publications on the work of these authorities.
Findings
It documents that there has been a substantial growth in the resources, laws and regulations that goes into the regulation of economic crime for the last two decades in Norway. There has been a shift in regulation from general agreements and incentives by the state towards a market‐based regulation backed by the threat of penal and civil sanctions. Segments of the economy have gone from being conceived as a producer of value to being a crime scene.
Originality/value
The paper describes and explains developments that have not been systematically studied in Norway. It gives sociological and criminological interpretations and provides concepts of important developments in the society and the economy.
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Life studies are a rich source for further research on the role of the Afro‐American woman in society. They are especially useful to gain a better understanding of the…
Abstract
Life studies are a rich source for further research on the role of the Afro‐American woman in society. They are especially useful to gain a better understanding of the Afro‐American experience and to show the joys, sorrows, needs, and ideals of the Afro‐American woman as she struggles from day to day.