Applying a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis for conflict resolution during new service development

The management of the New Service Development (NSD) process remains a key research priority for service organizations. As a diverse mix of team members with different skills, perspectives and backgrounds participate in development teams and close collaboration is required among them, conflicts are likely to arise among team members. Different team members perceive conflict episodes in a different way and often embrace different conflict management behaviours and orientations (e.g. competing, avoiding) to deal with them. This study recognises NSD team as a complex system, through which individual members’ conflict management style choices enable team developmental dynamics, which sequentially lead to intragroup conflict resolution. Although a lot of work exists around the role of individual members’ conflict management styles, little research scrutiny is attracted on how teams solve intragroup conflicts and even limited empirical evidence is available regarding the linkages between individual and team factors can contribute to resolve intragroup conflicts. The present study taking under consideration the causal complexity, asymmetry and idiosyncratic nature of NSD conflict resolution, utilizes Complexity theory and leverages the advantages of fs/QCA in order to shed light on the NSD intragroup conflict resolution. Data was collected from employees in several service industries such as advertising, financial, insurance, consulting, IT services and telecommunications providers. The results confirm the major tenets of Complexity theory highlighting that any attempt to examine complex phenomena, such as NSD conflict resolution, as simple ones, based on symmetrical methodological approaches, may lead to simplistic and distorted explanations. In fact, the results demonstrate that there is not a ‘one fits all’ solution in order to solve NSD conflicts. Different facets for both the conflict-management styles and team dynamics act in various combinations in order to predict high scores in NSD conflict resolution

Re-assessing the influence of mental intangibility on consumer decision making

The present paper explores the influence of mental intangibility on the size of the consideration set, both on tangible products and services. This research also examines the moderating effect of purchase involvement and objective knowledge on the set. Two experimental studies were conducted to examine these relations. Overall, the results indicate that mental intangibility positively influences the size of the consideration set, regardless of the offering type (product or service). This effect is stronger in low levels of knowledge. Consumer involvement does not seem to have a moderating effect on this relation. This study’s implications and recommendations for future research are also discussed

Determinants of physicians' purchase intention for innovative services: Integrating professional characteristics with technology acceptance model and theory of planned behaviour

© 2015 Imperial College Press. This paper seeks to explore the factors that influence physicians' purchase intention for supplementary professional services that have been recently introduced to the market. For that reason, a model has been developed and empirically tested using data collected from 100 physicians regarding an innovative e-detailing service. Results show that physicians' purchase intention is significantly influenced by five factors. Three of them derive from the integration of Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) with the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), i.e., perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and professional image. The rest, namely work experience, working status and innovativeness, refer to physicians' professional characteristics. Work experience and innovativeness were found to have a significant effect on physicians' perceptions of the innovative service, whereas, physicians' current working status was not found to have significant influence on either their perceptions of the innovative service or their purchase intention

An empirical investigation of the path from service blueprinting formality to perceived service quality

This paper provides an empirical investigation of the path from service blueprinting formality to perceived service qualit

Re-examining the influence of service delivery system effectiveness on perceived service quality

This article focuses on the effectiveness of the Service Delivery System (SDS) and re-examines its influence on customers’ perceived service quality. In this study, the influence of SDS effectiveness’ most important dimensions (front line employees’ role performance, their adaptability to individual customer needs, the effectiveness of the coordination and the effectiveness of the process’ control) on perceived service quality is tested, following a hierarchical approach. The results confirm the positive influence of three variables on perceived service quality (role performance, effectiveness of coordination and effectiveness of process’ control). On the contrary, the influence of employees’ adaptability was not found significant

IMO and different fit types as key enablers of employee brand-supporting behaviour

This study integrates the fit theory, the equity theory and the balance theory in order to investigate the role of internal market orientation (IMO) as a philosophy that can enhance front-line employee brand-supporting behaviour both directly and indirectly through increasing their fit with their different aspects of their environment. Furthermore, it is examined whether IMO adoption facilitates several fit types, namely employee–organization fit, employee–supervisor fit, employee–job fit and employee–group fit as well as assessed the joint impact of these different types of fit on front-line employee brand-supporting behaviour