Search results

This paper aims to comment on resilience research within the context of frontline employees in sales and services marketing.

This commentary is a reflection based on my research, extant academic and managerial literature and personal perspectives.

Research findings show resilience is associated with increased employee effort and reduced turnover intentions in customer-facing roles. In addition, resilience can change over time and is not just a trait the employee is born with (or not). Hence, managers can cultivate resilience in employees.

Resilience cannot be purchased. Instead, managers can inspire resilience in frontline employees by developing their feelings of self-efficacy on the job, a sense of belongingness to the organization and peers and a sense of purpose and relatedness to customers.

Resilience is not merely perseverance or grit; it is overcoming adversity and bouncing back to become better in the process. Thus, resilience is an important construct to study, particularly in customer-facing roles.

This commentary offers a unique approach to understanding resilience, its outcomes and its antecedents in customer-facing roles.

This paper aims to determine what the brand performance consequences of corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities would be during times of recession for well-known brands.

Based on signaling theory, this paper investigates if CSR activities serve to signal higher brand value for consumers via perceptions of better quality and greater differentiation, specifically during recessions. This study incorporates a representative longitudinal sample of known US firms for the analyses, which is accomplished through generalized method of moments estimations.

The findings empirically demonstrate that CSR initiatives during recessions are actually associated with increased perceptions of brand value. More specifically, during recessions, CSR initiatives such as charitable contributions provide a signal to customers of higher brand quality.

This study did not control for the costs of doing specific CSR activities that may be less visible to consumers.

While individual firms or managers may not be able to prevent recessions from happening, they can limit the negative impact of recessions on their performance by engaging in CSR activities (or refrain from cutting back) during these times.

Because CSR initiatives during recessions result in more favorable consumer perceptions of the brand, engaging in CSR aligns both social and managerial interests, owing to the economic gains from CSR investments.

During times of recession, some critics indicate that CSR may be an unaffordable luxury. On the contrary, this research shows that managers may want to consider CSR activities as a means of increasing the value of their brands, especially during economic recessions.

This study examines how executive directors of family business centers deploy sensemaking to create psychologically safe environments while engaging members in peer group activities.

A qualitative case study approach was employed, involving semi-structured interviews with five executive directors from four different family business centers in the USA. The study also draws on document analysis.

The findings reveal that these directors navigate a complex and uncertain environment where the need for member engagement and the need for a safe environment sometimes contradict each other. Their sensemaking draws on both cognitive and social processes to accomplish meaning-making, often involving a cyclical process of noticing, discernment and enactment. This effort is, at times, constrained by the directors’ inability to gather cues due to their commitment to maintaining confidentiality and privacy within peer groups, limiting their ability to directly observe discussions. Despite this constraint, sensemaking enhances the directors’ capability to foster safe and engaging environments, though the challenge of balancing members’ needs for confidentiality with a safe and productive engagement environment remains a continuous reality.

This study highlights the crucial role of sensemaking leadership in family business networks, requiring directors to balance individual and group needs. Leadership development should focus on enhancing this sensemaking ability. Family business centers must be designed with flexibility and adaptability to accommodate evolving needs. This involves attentive observation, balanced programs, psychological safety and continuous learning. These findings extend to any peer group requiring high trust, emphasizing the leader’s role in creating a safe and engaging environment that balances individual needs with collective goals.

This study makes several original contributions to the literature. First, it extends existing knowledge on sensemaking by exploring its application in a previously under-researched context: how executive directors navigate complexity and uncertainty within family business networks. Second, it examines how sensemaking informs the ongoing challenge of balancing peer groups’ need for a safe engagement environment with the need for productive engagement, an area that has not been explicitly addressed in prior research. By shedding light on these under-explored aspects of sensemaking, this study offers valuable insights for both researchers and practitioners involved in family business networks and peer group management.

This paper aims to explore how one industry leader in Indonesia addressed its hiring and training problems while simultaneously contributing to society through an human resource management (HRM)-led corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative involving a vocational education training (VET) intervention.

The VET case study, which is central to the paper, followed a four-stage action research design. Data were collected through series of consultations with the company’s top management, benchmarking companies, the vocational school, local community and government bodies.

The intervention reduced the company’s hiring and training problems and provided jobs for graduates which addressed local youth unemployment. This experience generated lessons on CSR strategic interventions which should be considered when HRM professionals are seeking to address simultaneously organisational and social objectives.

The study is based on a single case in a local setting in one country.

The study offers insights to HRM practitioners who face similar problems relating to upskilling, local talent supply and employee recruitment. The proposed framework is likely to be relevant to HRM practitioners who play a lead role in their organisations’ CSR initiatives.

The case provides a realistic example of how a company, through its HRM function, can play a meaningful role in addressing societal issues and strategic business objectives.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is an original case study based on primary data, conducted as action research.

Red Riding Hood is said to have been assembled from folktales that pre-date the collector Charles Perrault's 1697 re-telling and initial publishing (Dundes, 1989; Zipes, 1993). Since then, it is a story that has been re-told and re-imagined many times in various media contexts, with Beckett suggesting that it is one of the most familiar icons of Western culture, and a ‘highly effective intertextual referent’ (Beckett, 2002, p. XVI). Even though this story has been generally regarded as a children's tale, adult themes of sexuality and transgression have been explored in modern re-conceptions. In this chapter, we examine the representation of gender and masculinity in commercial media output: the 2011 American film Red Riding Hood (Hardwicke, 2011) and the pilot episode of the NBC series Grimm (2011). In Red Riding Hood, a romantic horror film, the male characters may be regarded as satellites that cluster around the female protagonist, whereas in Grimm, through its generic fusion of police procedural and horror genres, the text plays upon strong established examples of traditional male roles alongside more nuanced and contemporary representations of masculinity. Our analysis explores themes of transformation and heteronormativity and the extent to which the texts challenge or conform to traditional tellings.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

This research paper set out to explore how an Indonesian organization addressed hiring and training challenges while contributing to society through a Vocational and Education Training (VET) program. The VET intervention, “Project VALERIE,” reduced costs, provided jobs for graduates, and addressed local youth unemployment. Embracing a strategic CSR approach aligned with organizational and societal goals, creating shared value for every stakeholder. Fostering collaborative industry-education partnerships in this way bridged skill gaps and created a reliable talent pipeline. It’s a great example of a strategic win-win approach that other HR teams can replicate.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

This chapter describes two change efforts involving participatory action research within the pharmacy operations division of Kaiser Permanente. Focus is on a parallel learning mechanism that has been used to support communications and change during two large-scale information technology interventions. It begins with basic background information on participatory action research in organizations. Since the case setting is Kaiser Permanente, the chapter provides some information on the U.S. healthcare industry context and then shifts to Kaiser’s communication forum, a learning mechanism that has been in place for 35 years. Cognitive, structural, and procedural aspects of the learning mechanism are explored, and the chapter features interviews with some of the key forum players. Both in the forum’s infancy and in its current more institutionalized state, the pharmacy organization has been in crisis. Implications for the use of parallel learning structures on a long-term basis to support long-term participatory action research are explored along with contributions to theory on insider/outsider action research.

The United Nations continues to identify street children as one of the most vulnerable sub-populations of children and youth globally. The purpose of this paper is to present social and contextual perspectives of 11 girls living on the streets of Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. Implications with respect to the development and delivery of effective sexual/reproductive and mental health interventions and services are discussed.

Through semi-structured interviews and applied qualitative thematic analysis, this paper aims to achieve in-depth understanding about the lives of 11 girls living on the street. A socio-ecological framework is utilized to interpret the experiences of the girls at the individual (micro), community (mezzo) and structural (macro) levels.

Six main themes evolved from the thematic analysis of interview transcripts: exposure to violence and abuse before and on the street, exposure to violence and sex work, risk and vulnerability to HIV, substance use and sex work, substance use and physical and reproductive health and ways of coping and future planning.

The interplay of experiences illustrates how girls navigate their lives, and along with an appreciation of intersectionality validates the need for an integrated approach to health and social care related to health and mental health services. Integrated interventions should focus on common issues such as improving access to HIV testing and contraceptives for young girls living on the street.

This editorial introduces a special issue of the Journal of Services Marketing, dedicated to the concept of resilience in the services sector. This editorial aims to identify how service organizations, networks and systems are resilient in the face of or wake of marketplace disruptions.

Drawing on available literature in service research, the authors illustrate how service scholars can better understand the processes, relationships and outcomes that are a crucial part of resilience in service organizations.

This editorial presents a theoretical framework illustrating interactive, linked and interdependent resource-based resilience practices that enable service organizations and individuals to develop and grow resilience. The special issue papers identified six themes to guide future research: conceptual complexity and challenges of operationalization; culture, context and resilience; antecedents to resilience and outcomes; resilience and the complex world of artificial intelligence and technology; value co-creation; and service ecosystems.

This editorial presents service researchers with an overview of research examining the concept of resilience. It also demonstrates diversity in how the concept is defined and operationalized. Our theoretical framework illustrates a new way of conceptualizing service resilience by identifying three resource-based resilience practices in an increasingly ambiguous, dynamic and complex service world. Together these underpin the six themes for further research.