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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.

To the extent that customer relationships with service providers provide value to service firms suggests that these relationships can be viewed as social capital. This paper seeks to use social capital as a theoretical framework to examine the effect of these relationships on customer loyalty.

Data were collected using an online survey of 342 adult consumers of services.

Results of structural equation modeling analyses indicate that social capital variables explain unique variance in customer responses. The effect of each of the three forms of social capital – structural, cognitive, and relational – are contingent on whether the service is personal (e.g. hairstylist, medical services) or non‐personal (e.g. mechanic, banker).

This research suggests that customer relationships can be viewed as social capital and that the form and content of such relationships are important in terms of influencing customer loyalty.

Managers can build “social capital” by focusing on its three forms – structural, cognitive, and relational social capital. The paper provides prescriptions for such relationship building activities. Such social capital translates into firm value/profits through customer loyalty.

This study uses a theoretical framework from research in social capital to help explain the value of customer relationships with individual service providers to the firm. The idea of social capital is compelling to service managers since it implies that investments in relationship building tactics have real results for firm profitability.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the question of whether or not there are three distinct targets of commitment in consumers' relationships with their service providers; commitment to the service company, commitment to the individual service provider, and commitment to the individual provider as a friend or acquaintance.

Initial theories regarding targets of commitment in service relationships are developed with reference to the literature in psychology, organizational behavior, and marketing. Exploratory research into the commitment construct in service relationships is conducted using a prototyping approach. The prototyping approach involves the exploration of natural language concepts including the identification of a concept's attributes, and the concept's relationship to other concepts.

The results of the prototyping analysis give us preliminary evidence to suggest that that the three targets of commitment while related, are independent. Each target of commitment has a number of unique and central attributes.

Commitment is an important variable in the study of relationship marketing; however, in most marketing studies, the target of a customer's commitment is not clearly defined, nor have potential differences between various targets of commitment been fully explored. This research highlights the fact that relationship commitment is a multi‐level variable. In addition, this research demonstrates the effectiveness of the prototyping methodology in the exploration of abstract concepts and the relationship between them.

The majority of research in marketing now represents loyalty as a multi‐dimensional construct; however, agreement on whether it has two or three dimensions is lacking, and measurement of these dimensions has been inconsistent. The purpose of this paper is to utilize theory from the psychology literature on interpersonal relationships to provide theoretical guidance for examining the nature of service loyalty and to uncover its dimensionality.

This paper argues for and tests, using survey data from over 300 service customers, a multi‐dimensional conceptualization of loyalty based on theory from the interpersonal psychology literature.

The findings of this research highlight that service loyalty is similar to loyalty in interpersonal relationships, providing further evidence for the notion that service provider‐consumer relationships can approximate friendships or even romantic partnerships in terms of loyalty‐like responses. It also suggests that to identify truly loyal customers firms should, at the very least, measure loyalty‐related outcomes from both dimensions.

The study was limited to consumer‐based services.

This paper identifies several manifestations of loyalty such as altruism, identification, advocacy, willingness to pay more, and strength of preference that are all‐too‐often ignored in commonly used marketing metrics. Viewing service loyalty in the same manner as pro‐relationship behaviors that develop in friendships and romantic relationships shows promise for the understanding of service loyalty.

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.

The institution of food and cookery exhibitions and the dissemination of practical knowledge with respect to cookery by means of lectures and demonstrations are excellent things in their way. But while it is important that better and more scientific attention should be generally given to the preparation of food for the table, it must be admitted to be at least equally important to insure that the food before it comes into the hands of the expert cook shall be free from adulteration, and as far as possible from impurity,—that it should be, in fact, of the quality expected. Protection up to a certain point and in certain directions is afforded to the consumer by penal enactments, and hitherto the general public have been disposed to believe that those enactments are in their nature and in their application such as to guarantee a fairly general supply of articles of tolerable quality. The adulteration laws, however, while absolutely necessary for the purpose of holding many forms of fraud in check, and particularly for keeping them within certain bounds, cannot afford any guarantees of superior, or even of good, quality. Except in rare instances, even those who control the supply of articles of food to large public and private establishments fail to take steps to assure themselves that the nature and quality of the goods supplied to them are what they are represented to be. The sophisticator and adulterator are always with us. The temptations to undersell and to misrepresent seem to be so strong that firms and individuals from whom far better things might reasonably be expected fall away from the right path with deplorable facility, and seek to save themselves, should they by chance be brought to book, by forms of quibbling and wriggling which are in themselves sufficient to show the moral rottenness which can be brought about by an insatiable lust for gain. There is, unfortunately, cheating to be met with at every turn, and it behoves at least those who control the purchase and the cooking of food on the large scale to do what they can to insure the supply to them of articles which have not been tampered with, and which are in all respects of proper quality, both by insisting on being furnished with sufficiently authoritative guarantees by the vendors, and by themselves causing the application of reasonably frequent scientific checks upon the quality of the goods.

The discussion about public sector performance is still present today, despite the profound research that has already tried to address this subject. Furthermore, theory links negative effects on organizational performance with increased levels of organizational complexity. However, literature thus far did not succeed to put forward a successful theory that explains why and how public organizations became increasingly complex. To answer this question, we argue that increased organizational complexity can be explained by viewing public organizations as the hybrid result of different institutional logics, which are shaped by various management views. However, former research mainly concentrated on the separate study of management views such as traditional public management (TPM), NPM, and post-NPM. Although appealing, research that approaches hybridity from this perspective is fairly limited.

We conducted a literature review in which we studied 80 articles about traditional public management, NPM, and post-NPM.

We found that these management views essentially differ on the base of three fault lines, depending on the level of the organizational culture. These fault lines, according to the management view, together result in nine dimensions. By combing dimensions of the different management views, we argue that a public organization becomes hybrid. Furthermore, in line with findings of contingency theory, we explain the level of hybridity might depend on the level of tight coupling for a given organization. Finally, we developed propositions that explain hybridity as the result of isomorphic forces, organizational change, and organizational resistance to change and that link hybridization with processes of selective coupling.

The value of this chapter lies in its real-life applicability.

This issue is a selected bibliography covering the subject of leadership.

In October, 1902, the Secretary of the Mineral Water Bottle Exchange and Trade Protection Society addressed a letter to the Clerk of the London County Council stating that aerated and mineral waters are, in many instances, manufactured under insanitary conditions, and suggesting that the Council should take action in the matter. The Public Health Committee of the Council thereupon directed that a number of premises where aerated waters are manufactured should be inspected, and, in February, 1903, Dr. Shirley Murphy, the Medical Officer to the Council, presented a report drawn up by Dr. Hamer, the Assistant Medical Officer, by whom the inspections ordered were carried out. Dr. Hamer came to the conclusion that it was most desirable in the interests of the consumer that the manufacture of aerated waters in London should be regulated and controlled. The quantity of aerated water sold in London is very large, and Dr. Hamer's inspection of numerous premises showed that there are many possible sources of dangerous contamination of the water used during the process of the manufacture. We are in a position to state that Dr. Hamer was thoroughly justified in drawing the conclusions which appear in his report. The enormous growth in popularity during recent years of aerated and mineral waters, while unquestionably fraught with a most important influence for good, has brought a number of firms into existence who manufacture more or less inferior and, in some instances, positively injurious and dangerous waters, and who place their products on the market at “cutting” prices, with the result that the honest and careful manufacturer on the one hand, and the public on the other, are made to suffer. Unfair “competition” of the kind referred to exists, of course, in every trade, and only by the authoritative approval of the good and, by implication, the authoritative condemnation of the bad, can such “competition” be effectively checked. But where the health of the consumer is directly threatened or affected, as it particularly is by the supply of inferior or actually injurious aerated waters, the necessity for adequate regulation and control is immediately obvious. The matter cannot be dealt with under the Sale of Food and Drugs Acts. It is not one involving analysis only but, so far as analysis is concerned, the provisions of the Acts make it impossible to carry out the analytical investigations that would be required. In addition to the official registration of all manufacturers of mineral and aerated waters, a combination of inspection and analysis by an authoritative bedy of some kind, or by a recognised individual authority, is necessary to supply a sufficient guarantee to the public and efficient protection to the manufacturer and vendor of pure and high‐class waters.