Robert S. Keyser and Rapinder S. Sawhney
The purpose of this paper is to propose a contemporary reliability model for lean systems through the development of an innovative lean system reliability model (LSRM).
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to propose a contemporary reliability model for lean systems through the development of an innovative lean system reliability model (LSRM).
Design/methodology/approach
LSRM models the reliability of lean subsystems as a basis for determining the reliability of lean systems as a whole. Lean subsystems, in turn, consist of reliability measures for lean components. Once principal components analysis techniques are employed to determine critical subsystems, Monte Carlo simulations for lean components, subsystems, and the overall lean system are then compared with historical data to determine the adequacy of the LSRM model. If simulation results are accurate to within the researcher's objective of 2.5 per cent of historical data results, the LSRM model is determined to be a validated model.
Findings
A literature search shows limited practical methodologies to assess the reliability of lean systems.
Research limitations/implications
Reliability computations involve many tedious calculations and, hence, require reliability software.
Originality/value
This paper defines lean system reliability, develops a conceptual model to assess the reliability of lean systems, demonstrates how to decompose a lean system into subsystems and components, and compares simulation results versus actual results to validate the LSRM model.
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Dhouha Jaziri and Raouf Ahmad Rather
Ranging from the romanticism era to the postmodern paradigm and the experiential approach, this chapter reexamines the fundamental roots of the consumption experience concept…
Abstract
Ranging from the romanticism era to the postmodern paradigm and the experiential approach, this chapter reexamines the fundamental roots of the consumption experience concept while addressing the conceptualizations and nature of customer experience. In this context, the concept of customer experience in the tourism field is outlined. We set out to readdress the essence of the customer experience in the light of the consumer value (CV) as a relevant empirical ground to study it. Hence, this chapter revisits the intricate epistemological and methodological connection of the customer experience to CV. This leads to a rediscussion of the key role of customer introspection approach while outlining the narration side in studying this intimate connection of both concepts in the tourism field.
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David Leiño Calleja, Jeroen Schepers and Edwin J. Nijssen
Customer perceptions toward hybrid human–robot teams remain largely unexplored. We focus on the impact of frontline robots’ (FLRs) automated social presence (ASP) on customers’…
Abstract
Purpose
Customer perceptions toward hybrid human–robot teams remain largely unexplored. We focus on the impact of frontline robots’ (FLRs) automated social presence (ASP) on customers’ perceived teamwork quality, and ultimately frontline employees’ (FLEs) competence and warmth. We explore the role of interrogation as a relevant contingency. We complement the customer view with insights into the FLEs’ viewpoint.
Design/methodology/approach
We manipulate FLR’s ASP cues (speech and identity) in a hybrid team in four business-to-consumer (B2C) video-based experiments and collect data from online participants. We combine these with one business-to-business (B2B) field survey which collected data from FLEs working in hybrid teams.
Findings
When FLR’s ASP increases, customers more positively evaluate teamwork quality, ultimately affecting FLEs’ competence and warmth. FLEs who correct (interrogate) robotic mistakes strengthen the positive effect of FLRs’ ASP on teamwork quality. When FLRs correct FLEs, ASP’s effect on teamwork quality is also strengthened, while FLEs are not “punished” for erring. In contrast, FLEs themselves do perceive corrections as detrimental to teamwork quality. We term this the hybrid team evaluation paradox.
Practical implications
We recommend that firms deploy hybrid teams equipped with high-ASP FLRs (name and speech suffice). FLEs should be trained, and FLRs programmed, to appropriately use interrogation. Managers should pay attention to the paradox, given the conflicting perceptions toward interrogative behaviors.
Originality/value
We advance the hybrid teams literature by drawing on ASP, social cognition and collective mindfulness theories and behaviors that ameliorate customer perceptions. Our results support using FLRs to enhance FLEs’ capabilities.
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Jan Hendrik Blümel, Mohamed Zaki and Thomas Bohné
Customer service conversations are becoming increasingly digital and automated, leaving service encounters impersonal. The purpose of this paper is to identify how customer…
Abstract
Purpose
Customer service conversations are becoming increasingly digital and automated, leaving service encounters impersonal. The purpose of this paper is to identify how customer service agents and conversational artificial intelligence (AI) applications can provide a personal touch and improve the customer experience in customer service. The authors offer a conceptual framework delineating how text-based customer service communication should be designed to increase relational personalization.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper presents a systematic literature review on conversation styles of conversational AI and integrates the extant research to inform the development of the proposed conceptual framework. Using social information processing theory as a theoretical lens, the authors extend the concept of relational personalization for text-based customer service communication.
Findings
The conceptual framework identifies conversation styles, whose degree of expression needs to be personalized to provide a personal touch and improve the customer experience in service. The personalization of these conversation styles depends on available psychological and individual customer knowledge, contextual factors such as the interaction and service type, as well as the freedom of communication the conversational AI or customer service agent has.
Originality/value
The article is the first to conduct a systematic literature review on conversation styles of conversational AI in customer service and to conceptualize critical elements of text-based customer service communication required to provide a personal touch with conversational AI. Furthermore, the authors provide managerial implications to advance customer service conversations with three types of conversational AI applications used in collaboration with customer service agents, namely conversational analytics, conversational coaching and chatbots.
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Rhonda Harris Taylor and Nancy Larson Bluemel
Provides an introductory guide to basic print and Web resources about pop‐up books. Includes information on paper engineers, producers of pop‐up books, exhibits of pop‐up books…
Abstract
Provides an introductory guide to basic print and Web resources about pop‐up books. Includes information on paper engineers, producers of pop‐up books, exhibits of pop‐up books, collecting pop‐up books, and “how‐to” guidance for making pop‐up books.
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Yangjun Tu, Wei Liu and Zhi Yang
This research empirically investigates how service employees' ratings of technology readiness (TRI), negative attitudes towards robots (NARS), Big Five personality traits (BFI…
Abstract
Purpose
This research empirically investigates how service employees' ratings of technology readiness (TRI), negative attitudes towards robots (NARS), Big Five personality traits (BFI) and emotional demands (ED) affect their willingness to work with service robots (WTW).
Design/methodology/approach
One set of data is collected from 410 service employees expected to work with service robots in Study 1. Another set of field data is collected from 102 employees working with service robots in Study 2. Hierarchical regression is used to test hypotheses about the impact of technology readiness, negative attitudes towards robots and Big Five personality traits on WTW. Additionally, the interactions of emotional demands in the workplace are analysed.
Findings
TRI-optimism and TRI-insecurity significantly affect WTW in Study 2 but are nonsignificant in Study 1. The impacts of NARS-emotions in interaction with robots and NARS-interaction with robots situations on WTW are significant in Study 1 but nonsignificant in Study 2. Moreover, BFI-neuroticism negatively affected WTW in Study 1, while these effects were nonsignificant in Study 2. Finally, emotional demands significantly interact with three of eleven dimensions of IVs in Study 1, but all interactions are nonsignificant in Study 2.
Practical implications
This research provides a guiding framework for service companies to screen employees expected to cowork with service robots, to enhance newly hired employees' WTW and to improve existing employees' WTW.
Originality/value
Integrating the characteristics of service employees, service robots and jobs into a theoretical framework, this research is the first to empirically examine the effects of service employees' several critical characteristics (technology readiness, negative attitudes towards robots and Big Five personality) on WTW and the moderation of job characteristics (emotional demands).
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Artifacts are rarely used today to visualize thoughts, insights, and ideas in strategy work. Rather, textual and verbal communication dominates. This is despite artifacts and…
Abstract
Artifacts are rarely used today to visualize thoughts, insights, and ideas in strategy work. Rather, textual and verbal communication dominates. This is despite artifacts and visual representations holding many advantages as tools to create and make sense of strategy in teamwork. To advance our understanding of the benefits of visual aids in strategy work, I synthesize insights from cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and management research. My analysis exposes distinct neurocognitive advantages concerning attention, emotion, learning, memory, intuition, and creativity from visual sense-building. These advantages increase when sense-building activities are playful and storytelling is used.
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The purpose of this paper is to mitigate the dearth in the library literature of large‐class, active learning pedagogies, by providing examples of these instructional approaches…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to mitigate the dearth in the library literature of large‐class, active learning pedagogies, by providing examples of these instructional approaches used in mega‐classes within the science, humanities, and education fields, for application within the library environment, specifically in large information literacy instruction sessions.
Design/methodology/approach
The author surveys both the library and science and education literatures, comparing coverage of active learning approaches in the professional literatures of each.
Findings
Although the library literature enthusiastically supports active learning approaches to teaching information literacy in theory, there are statistically few librarians who employ these learning modalities in their teaching. There are hardly any examples in the library literature of librarians using large‐class, active‐learning pedagogies. This article discusses some of the reasons behind librarians' reluctance to use active learning techniques and offers pragmatic suggestions from the literature of the sciences and education to alleviate this reticence.
Originality/value
This paper helps fill in the gap in the library literature discussing large‐class, active pedagogies for information literacy instruction. It offers some practical solutions from within the non‐library literature to some of the pedagogical obstacles inherent in mass classes, making explicit applications to information literacy instruction.
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Tunyaporn Vichiengior, Claire-Lise Ackermann and Adrian Palmer
The purpose of this study is to explore consumer anticipation processes that occur after commitment to a purchase has been made, but before consumption occurs. The authors add to…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to explore consumer anticipation processes that occur after commitment to a purchase has been made, but before consumption occurs. The authors add to the knowledge and theory building about anticipation that occurs in this liminal phase by investigating the cognitive, emotional and behavioural processes that interact to influence post-consumption evaluations.
Design/methodology/approach
An abductive research approach used a phase-based research design using semi-structured interviews. The authors identify interactions between cognitive, emotional and behavioural processes that occur during anticipation and associate these with post-consumption outcomes.
Findings
Anticipation of a consumption experience, enacted through thoughts, emotions and actions, and undertaken with peers, is an experience per se, independent from and interdependent with the substantive experience, and contributes to performance of the substantive experience. The authors propose a framework in which anticipation – as a performative phenomenon – influences the overall evaluations of the substantive consumption experience in contexts of delayed consumption. The theoretical grounding of performativity makes a useful contribution through its linkage of thought processes to outcomes. The authors further locate their findings within the literature on attribution theory. By engaging in anticipation, informants perceived the locus of causality to be internal, and expressed pride in having anticipated if the subsequent experience was successful. By anticipating, informants perceived an ability to exert control over future events and felt ashamed of not having adequately anticipated if an experience was subsequently unsuccessful.
Research limitations/implications
The theoretical grounding of performativity makes a useful contribution through its linkage of thought processes to outcomes. The authors further locate their findings within the literature on attribution theory. By engaging in anticipation, informants perceived the locus of causality to be internal and expressed pride in having anticipated if the subsequent experience was successful. By anticipating, informants perceived an ability to exert control over future events and felt ashamed of not having adequately anticipated if an experience was subsequently unsuccessful.
Practical implications
The authors discuss the trade-off service providers face between encouraging anticipation, which raises expectations that might not be met, and facilitating anticipatory preparations, which may reduce the risk of service failure.
Originality/value
The authors provide a new lens by conceptualising anticipation as a performative process and identifying mechanisms by which anticipation is embedded in total consumption experience. This study has important generalisable implications for contexts where mechanisms of performative anticipation may be a means for ameliorating uncertainty about future consumption experiences.