A conceptual framework of leaders’ emotional labor: The role of authentic leadership and procedural justice.

In this thesis a conceptual framework of leaders’ emotional labor is explored; therein it is specifically focused on the role of authentic leadership and procedural justice as linking variables between leaders’ emotional labor and follower outcomes. The framework is tested with three empirical studies. Generally, the model is supported. In line with Study 1 leaders’ emotional labor was related to followers’ perceptions of their authenticity. However, therein followers’ gender has to be taken in account. In line with Study 2, authentic leadership was related to followers’ emotional exhaustion through procedural justice, whereby this further depended on the emotional demands the employee was confronted with. In line with Study 3, and in terms of the framework, there is evidence that procedural justice links leaders’ emotional labor to followers’ emotional labor, as procedural injustice impacts the use of surface acting and service performance; although differently than expected. Therefore, the model offers a good starting point for future research and highlights open research questions which should be addressed

Customer Attitudes towards Restaurant Reservations Policies

Reservations give restaurants the capability to select the most profitable mix of customers and help them better control their time. Reservations are not without problems because of the uncertainty associated with customers honoring their reservation and with the uncertainty associated with the length of time that customers will use the service. Many restaurants have developed policies to handle these uncertainties; the question is how customers react to such policies. An online survey on customer attitudes towards restaurant reservation policies was conducted in the United States. Respondents considered table-holding policies and credit card guarantees to be the most acceptable and fairest of the five policies considered. Entire party seating policies were viewed in a mostly neutral manner, while respondents had a mixed view of maximum duration policies. Short-show policies were considered to be the least understandable and acceptable. In all cases, customers who were more familiar with a policy were more likely to consider that policy to be acceptable and fair

Restorative servicescapes in health care: examining the influence of hotel-like attributes on patient well-being

This study examines how 527 patients across different health states assessed the influence of hotel-like attributes on their well-being. Using theoretical mechanisms of attention restoration underlying restorative servicescapes, we postulated that hotel-like products and services will enhance patients’ perceived well-being, which, in turn, will favorably affect their behavioral intentions. We also tested an alternative model that included additional direct relationships between hotel-like products and services and behavioral intentions, based on the tenets of cue utilization theory. After conducting a series of nested model comparison procedures, we confirmed that the alternative model provided a theoretically and empirically stronger explanation for the dynamics of hotel-like restorative servicescapes. Although the differences between less healthy and more healthy patients were not statistically significant, the less healthy group demonstrated the same pattern of relationships as in the overall model, indicating that such patients may be more likely to derive greater restorative benefits from hotel-like hospital rooms, which may also make them more likely to pay higher out-of-pocket expenses for such rooms. The study furthers the empirical research agenda on evidence-based design (EBD) and the role of hospitality in health care.Accepted manuscrip

Customer Relationship Management : Concept, Strategy, and Tools -3/E

Customer relationship management (CRM) as a strategy and as a technology has gone through an amazing evolutionary journey. After the initial technological approaches, this process has matured considerably – both from a conceptual and from an applications point of view. Of course this evolution continues, especially in the light of the digital transformation. Today, CRM refers to a strategy, a set of tactics, and a technology that has become indispensable in the modern economy. Based on both authors’ rich academic and managerial experience, this book gives a unified treatment of the strategic and tactical aspects of customer relationship management as we know it today. It stresses developing an understanding of economic customer value as the guiding concept for marketing decisions. The goal of this book is to be a comprehensive and up-to-date learning companion for advanced undergraduate students, master students, and executives who want a detailed and conceptually sound insight into the field of CRM

Evaluation of the Senior Community Service Employment Program (SCSEP)

Older workers -- defined as those over the age of 55 -- account for an ever-increasing segment of the American labor force. As they grow in numbers, however, older workers are also particularly vulnerable to job dislocation, in part because rapid economic globalization has eliminated millions of jobs in manufacturing and other traditional fields of employment.Older workers are also becoming a growing share of the long-term and very long-term unemployed, a trend that started before the recent recession and has steadily advanced. Between 2007 and 2011, the proportion of unemployed workers over 50 who were jobless for six months or more jumped from 24 percent to 54 percent. Against this backdrop, the assistance offered by the Senior Community Service Employment Program (SCSEP) is of particularly timely importance. SCSEP was established in 1965 and incorporated under the Older Americans Act (OAA) in 1973. Operated by the U.S. Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration (ETA), SCSEP provides subsidized minimum-wage, part-time community service assignments for low-income persons age 55 or older who would otherwise have poor employment prospects. Over its 46-year history, SCSEP has responded to the fact that older workers tend to have more difficulty than younger workers in finding new jobs when they become unemployed because of their greater likelihood as a group to have lower levels of formal education and obsolete skills, and because many employers hold negative stereotypes of older workers

Subscribers’ Complaints and Response of the Global Satellite Mobile (GSM) Network Operators in Nigeria

Global Satellite Mobile (GSM) network was introduced into Nigeria in 2001 amidst various challenges that have serious effect on the quality of the services. The most serious among these challenges is the epileptic power supply. The GSM subscribers on their part also face many problems, major of which is constant network failure. Other problems include card recharging problem; checking of balance difficulty and wrong deduction of credit. The study was therefore designed to examine how the GSM Network operators respond to the complaints of the Subscribers. Implications and consequences of the subscribers’ complaints on the providers were discussed. Both primary and secondary sources were used in obtaining relevant data and information. The primary source includes questionnaire and personal interaction. The secondary source includes the historical background of GSM in Nigeria; relevant extracts from current News Magazines and review of related literature. Selected GSM Operators in Nigeria were used as case study. Based on the findings, the paper recommends ways to tackle subscribers’ complaints. These recommendations were categorized into four- To the GSM Providers; To the Government; To the GSM regulatory body in Nigeria; and to the Subscribers

Speech and natural language processing for the assessment of customer satisfaction and neuro-degenerative diseases

ABSTRACT: Nowadays, the interest in the automatic analysis of speech and text in different scenarios have been increasing. Currently, acoustic analysis is frequently used to extract non-verbal information related to para-linguistic aspects such as articulation and prosody. The linguistic analysis focuses on capturing verbal information from written sources, which can be suitable to evaluate customer satisfaction, or in health-care applications to assess the state of patients under depression or other cognitive states. In the case of call-centers many of the speech recordings collected are related to the opinion of the customers in different industry sectors. Only a small proportion of these calls are evaluated, whereby these processes can be automated using acoustic and linguistic analysis. In the assessment of neuro-degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and Parkinson's Disease (PD), the symptoms are progressive, directly linked to dementia, cognitive decline, and motor impairments. This implies a continuous evaluation of the neurological state since the patients become dependent and need intensive care, showing a decrease of the ability from individual activities of daily life. This thesis proposes methodologies for acoustic and linguistic analyses in different scenarios related to customer satisfaction, cognitive disorders in AD, and depression in PD. The experiments include the evaluation of customer satisfaction, the assessment of genetic AD, linguistic analysis to discriminate PD, depression assessment in PD, and user state modeling based on the arousal-plane for the evaluation of customer satisfaction, AD, and depression in PD. The acoustic features are mainly focused on articulation and prosody analyses, while linguistic features are based on natural language processing techniques. Deep learning approaches based on convolutional and recurrent neural networks are also considered in this thesis

An investigation of key determinants of customer loyalty : evidence from Ghana’s mobile telecommunication industry

In a fiercely competitive business environment such as the mobile network services setting, it is a marketplace reality that the ability of firms to attract and retain customers ultimately determines their growth and survival prospects. This study, therefore, investigates how customer satisfaction, perceived service quality, perceived value, corporate image and switching cost determine customer loyalty in the mobile network services setting of Ghana. A total of 140 respondents completed an online survey via emails and social media platforms in Ghana. The results of the empirical study reveal that customer satisfaction had the greatest impact on loyalty. Service quality and perceived value are both directly and indirectly related to loyalty through satisfaction. The results also show that corporate image is a direct antecedent of customer loyalty. The role of image as a key factor in mobile network services marketing is thus confirmed. However, the influence of switching costs on customer loyalty was not corroborated in this study. We suggest that managers should emphasize service quality and perceived value as core elements for building satisfaction and loyalty. In regard to Mobile Number Portability (MNP) intentions, the study found that there were as many customers who were likely to port their numbers as there were those who might not. Notwithstanding, those with porting intent were fairly larger. Some customers also reported indecisiveness with MNP. As such, brand managers should design unique marketing strategies aimed at each of these consumer groups